A Gift in Interesting Packaging

Do you like receiving gifts? Especially if they represent value and can serve you. I recall a time when I, being a teenager, dreamed of new jeans that all my peers wore. I walked around stores and looked at different models, dreaming that someday I would become the owner of this clothing. But the price for such items was very high, and I understood that I would never buy jeans for myself.

While resting during vacation at my grandmother's in the village, I received a package from my mother. It was strange to me that mother decided to remember us in this way. In the package lay various food products and a bag with new jeans. I could not believe my eyes. As if spellbound, I opened the bag and tried on its contents. Everything was sewn to my size. I temporarily lost the gift of speech from joy, and then my cousin and I began jumping around the house and shouting: "Delicious package! Wonderful package!" And grandmother sat quietly nearby and rejoiced at our merriment.

I put on the new pants and did not want to take them off. When I went out of the house in this attire, it seemed to me that the whole world was looking at my new clothes, but most of all I myself rejoiced at my new acquisition.

Time passed, and I do not know where those jeans are now, and those that came later no longer delighted my heart so much.

When I receive as a gift something very valuable and needed, my heart rejoices from the awareness that now I have a thing that will delight me very much.

Jesus knows the desire of my heart and prepared for me a gift in unusual packaging. All the things we acquire bring us temporary conveniences, but they cannot satisfy the heart that thirsts for love and relationships in love and friendship. Knowing this, Jesus gave us the most beautiful gift of Heaven in the form of a new commandment about love for one another. He pronounced this command three times and each time offered new packaging for it, making it clear that special God's blessings are wrapped in the wrapper of trials, and whoever becomes their possessor will have the greatest God's approval.

Commanding us to love one another, Jesus anticipated the joy of our love in these relationships. By faith He was touched by that genuine joy that His disciples would have when they received each other as a gift.

I did not understand what the joy consists of in love for a friend until the Lord gave me this friend, and me to him. When I realized what this gift represents, how beautiful it is, and how it can rejoice in me and delight my heart at all times, I was in special delight. The joy from such understanding is so great and so intangible by hands that you do not know from which side and how to thank God for such a miracle. And then another friend appeared and another, and another, and all this brings incredible joy to the heart.

A friend after my heart is a gift from the Lord. It is difficult in this world to find those who suit you like this. But the School of Agape Love can raise such gifts and then delight your heart with them.

It is natural to want to tell everyone about the beauty of God's commandment, about its importance, about how wonderful it is to love a friend who loves you.

When I receive something like this from Jesus, my heart begins to delve into the essence of the gift. How tasty it is! How it is able to always delight my heart! How one wants to always thank God for such miracles!

It is incomprehensible to me why God's children seek various problems on the side, consciously avoiding accepting what lies in plain sight and brings happiness?

The message to Laodicea also contains in it the acquisition of love, and it explains to me in more detail how important it is to be the possessor of gold refined by fire. Love for one another in the last time will become one of the criteria according to which the Lord will place His seal.

God's seal is the affirmation of consciousness in truth. If there is no love for one another in this consciousness, then what should the Lord seal? My lawlessness.

The choice of a friend for relationships in love is very simple. We begin to communicate on this topic and come to mutual agreement to love one another. And then we begin to develop our relationship.

If no one taught me what love is and how it works, then perhaps I will invent various things that will open to me some facets of love. But when I am taught by God and understand how agape works, then all my relationships develop more successfully.

The unusual packaging on the gift of love is all kinds of trials that reveal to us gradually, step by step, all the beauty and power of Heavenly agape.

Embark on this path, and you will see for yourself that receiving a friend as a gift for all Eternity is truly royal generosity. Nothing and no one will delight the heart as much as a friend from the Lord.

Earthly things can very quickly turn into a pile of garbage, disappointing us with their fragility. Everything in this world is perishable. But a friend and his love will always be relevant.

But it is worth noting that only mutual love brings special joy. If my friend loves me and I do not reciprocate, then it will be difficult for us to delight each other's heart. And if I love a friend and he is indifferent, then my love will be one-sided and incomplete, although my heart will rejoice in this.

I ask you, friends, fill your pockets with God's gifts, sow love everywhere possible, taste and you will see how good the Lord is.

When I prepare as a gift for a friend something desirable and useful, I rejoice even before the moment when this gift will be presented. I can even say in advance what I will give, so that the friend rejoices. But I cannot force him to love my valuable gifts. The friend must decide this himself.

The commandment about love for one another is very important in God's eyes, and He awaits those who will observe it, to give a true evaluation.

A living friend is a source of many God's blessings. He is alive in all respects. God's plan does not include friendship with the world and love for what is in the world. But God's children have a special status and unlimited potential to delight with themselves those with whom they decided to love one another.

To love one another is an endless celebration. These are abundant and constant God's blessings for all life and for all Eternity. This is the spirit of Christ in my heart. This is constant gratitude to God for such a beautiful gift.

But it must be tasted by oneself and evaluated from within one's heart by one's own discoveries.

The packaging of blessings can hide my true motives from outsiders' eyes, but at the same time reveal the value of the friend's soul, which opens up in my research step by step and delights me at all times.

1. Please read John 13:34-35; 15:12-13,17-19; Is. 53:11; Prov. 17:8,17; 1 Pet. 1:22; 1 John 4:7-13; Rom. 12:10; 1 Thess. 4:9; Jer. 29:11; 1 Cor. 13:1-3 in light of this chapter.

2. What did you understand from this topic?

3. What other verses from the Bible came to your mind?

4. Have you already experienced love for one another? If yes, can you share your joy?

5. Do you believe that to love one another is beautiful?

6. What does love produce in the hearts and souls of friends who love one another?

7. If you do not yet have a friend with whom you love one another, is it worth praying about this?

8. How long should the love of friends for one another last?

9. Do you believe that love for one another is a special gift from the Lord for our mutual happiness?

10. Is it worth bringing relationships of love into one's family, or should one love one another only within the framework of church brotherhood?

11. What to do if I want to love and do love friends, but they do not love me?

12. Should one respect the choice of a friend with whom we love one another and take into account his interests and other attachments?

13. What will happen to me if I live my whole life with faith in God but never learn to love?

14. Is there any connection between the commandment about love for one another and the message to Laodicea?

15. Did you notice that Jesus puts His love as an example for us? John 13:34: "... as I have loved you, so you also should love one another."