The Best Use of Your Life Is Love
By Rick Warren
“Love is more important than anything else. It is what ties everything completely together.” Colossians 3:14 (CEV)
Do you want to know how best to spend your life? Here it is: The best use of your life is love.
God says you need to make learning how to love your primary objective, your greatest ambition, your life purpose. Why does he say that? Here are two reasons why love is more important than anything else.
Love validates your faith. In other words, love proves that you really are in God’s family.
The Bible says it very clearly: “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8 NIV). God is love, and he wants you to learn to love so that you can become like him.
“If we say we love God, but hate others, we are liars. For we cannot love God, whom we have not seen, if we do not love others, whom we have seen” (1 John 4:20 GNT).
When you love other people, you prove you’re God’s child.
Love integrates your life. Your life has many facets: your social life, family life, church life, sex life, work life. All those facets need a dominant principle—something at the center that integrates them and holds them together.
There are many things that you can make your dominant life principle. Some people build their lives around money, popularity, success, or a hobby. But none of these things are enough. You need something at the center of your life so strong that it won’t fall apart when the trials come—when the road ends, the emotional earthquakes hit, and the financial hurricanes stir.
When all of the tribulations of life batter you, you better have something at the center of your life that’s going to hold you together, or you’ll come apart. The Bible says the only thing strong enough to do that is love—love for God and love for other people. When love becomes the center of your life, it holds everything else together and brings it all into focus.
Colossians 3:14 says, “Love is more important than anything else. It is what ties everything completely together” (CEV).
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This devotional © 2018 by Rick Warren. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
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