KINGDOM OF LOVE
LOVE
People are created for love. True, genuine love – like the love a mother and father have for their newborn child. Embracing love. Spoken love. Faces with eyes expressing that you are simply a loved person.
To receive and give love is the most beautiful ability we are created with. Why then, is there such a lack of love in this world? Why do so many children grow up with the feeling they are not really valuable, precious, worth being loved? Why are our streets, working places, and many homes full of loveless hearts andfaces?
Do you get true love in your daily life? Did your parents embrace you and tell you that they loved you while you were a child and a teenager? Sadly, many didn’t. With lack of love in our own heart, it might be hard to love others.
JOY
It’s very normal that people want joy in life. We are created for that. Yet there seems to be a big deficit of joy everywhere. Have you thought about how much energy and even money we put into just being happy? Small children are happy from the inside and out, very naturally, so why do we seem to lose this pure, simple joy when we grow up?
What gives you the best joy in life? What takes away joy? Smart to think a bit about those questions, since we all actually have this desire for true joy.
Maybe the most common reason to joylessness is broken relations. Divorce. Abuse. Rejection. Loneliness.
Children who feel their parents don’t love them and parents who feel their children don’t care about them. Drinking, drugs, work and entertainment are very usual, but still poor replacements for true joy.
PEACE
Peace can be different things. Peace in the country means no war is going on. Peace in our homes means we don’t have ongoing conflicts. Then there’s something called peace in heart. You may live in a peaceful country, but still have no peace inside. Or you may have peace in heart in the middle of many storms.
Together with love and joy, peace must be one of the things we need the most. Nobody wants to live their lives in a place full of bombs, warplanes and deadly fighting. We are made for peace, not for war. And that goes not only for the physical world. We also want to have peace with people around us, don’t we?
Do you have peace in heart? What gives you peace, and what hinders it? Are you a peace-maker? Would those around you think of you as one who brings peace into the room?
TRUTH
Who likes to be lied to? Who enjoys being deceived? No one, whichever culture we belong to. We don’t favor half-truths or people holding back information. We have an inbuilt thirst for knowing the truth. In case of fatal accidents, relatives demand to know how and why. Patients want their doctor to speak honestly, even if the prognosis is bad.
We are created for truth and honesty. Why is there still so much untruth and deceit around? Lying is not a stumble, but a deliberate choice to speak right or wrong. Everybody has the ability to discern between true and false. Truth is relieving and makes us free inside. Anything less than the full truth leaves us with an uncomfortable feeling. How precious are those people you just know would never lie! Are you such a person?
FREEDOM
People are created to be free. That is also stated in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which most countries have signed on to. Yet, lots of people don’t experience freedom. Different governments put limitations to what people can say, write, read. Where they can move and even what they are allowed to believe. Even in truly democratic countries, freedom is not granted. Freedom also includes not to be pressured by family members, friends or social codes to think or act contrary to your conviction. It would be interesting to know how many people feel and think they are truly free?
Another threat to freedom is inner bondage, caused for example by fear or guilt. How free are you? What limits your freedom?
FAITHFULNESS
How many children want to see their parents be divorced? Not many. What children want, is to see their mom and dad be friends, clear out their disagreements, treat one another kindly and be faithful all their life. How many employers appreciate a worker who says he’ll stay on duty for two years, and he quits after a month? Not many. Faithfulness fits us, unfaithfulness doesn’t.
Is it difficult to be faithful? It can be. But true faithfulness proves its strength exactly in challenging times. Special situations may come when we have to say stop, but in general, faithfulness is a choice of lifestyle that suits us really well. Just imagine how much pain people carry inside because of people who were not faithful. Maybe you as well?
FORGIVENESS
Do people need forgiveness? Some say they don’t. But thinking we never need forgiveness actually means we don’t realize that we are also a part of this world’s ‘Big Problem’ – the problem of imperfection. Most of us don’t kill people. Maybe we don’t steal either. We think we are ok; at least not worse than average. Yet it will be hard to live an entire life without ever acknowledging the need to be forgiven – and to ask for forgiveness. Our feelings are quite similar: when someone has hurts us, we appreciate if they sincerely admit their fault, apologize and ask us to forgive.
How would the world look if nobody ever admitted wrongs? Never apologized, never asked for forgiveness? Would we survive? How are you to admit wrongs, ask for forgiveness and giving it to those who ask you?
JESUS
The rest of this Passport to the Kingdom of Love will bring in one of the most well-known people in human history – Jesus Christ. If you for some or another reason do not dare or want to read about him, you’d better stop now. If you are bold enough and interested, please continue to read what the Bible, the basis of Christian faith, says about the seven topics we have talked about, and even more.
The first thing to be mentioned may possibly sound dramatic, but even so: Christianity teaches that you were created to be like Jesus. You were formed in his mold, from the very beginning of history. The Bible states that
«everything has come about by him, and without him, nothing is of all that is» (John 1:3). So the teachings of Jesus and his apostles spell out that you – simply by being human – have a clear connection to Jesus and to God, the Father, who created everything by his Spirit and his Word.
IN HIS IMAGE
“’Let us make man in our image, in the likeness of us’. Then God created man in his image … he created them man and woman” (Genesis 1:26,27).
God was Father before he was Creator. As Christians we believe that Jesus, the Word of God, has existed from eternity in the same way as God the Father and God’s spirit. God created man in His image to be family and produce family. God’s first instruction to the human he had created, was to multiply. God’s plan wasto spread His own fatherhood through every father and mother on this earth. Through abundant and expressed love from a loving mother and father, every child should grow up in the knowledge of God, and in that sweet, safe and joyful atmosphere which always reigns in God’s heaven.
We’re back to the starting point of this book: Created for love, joy, peace.
LACK OF LOVE
The Bible teaches us that God is our Father. However, God created both man and woman in His image. Adam and Eve have equal value and a shared calling to receive and spread God’s love to their children. Fathers’ love and mothers’ love are different. The two parents, with their specific differences, were supposed to complete one another in giving every child the fullness of God’s love.
The lack of love in the families, and especially the lack of fathers’ expressed love to their daughters in many cultures, is a major problem, causing lots of pain. Since it’s so common to grow up as a child and teenager without experiencing dad’s embrace and his voice saying: «I love you, my daughter. I love you, my son», people are not even aware of how devastating it is. But lack of love is not a small thing!
Think for a minute: How would this world be if every child received all the father and mother love they wanted during their entire childhood and teens? Imagine that they never started being shy to receive or give hugs, smiles, loving words? Every street full of smiling, laughing, embracing people who – as the most normal thing of all – just spread out God’s true love? It would be Paradise. And that was exactly what God had planned!
Why is it not like that? Why can’t our politicians adopt a law or present a plan to make us loved and loving, 24/7? People have traveled to the moon, but we can’t change the human hearts to love? Change of heart is what the world needs, and that is exactly what Jesus brings. He is the ultimate proof of God’s love, sacrificing His own life in order to reconnect us with God.
GOD´S WAY TO EXPRESS LOVE
HOPE
Faith, hope and love are three core values in Christian faith. It is being said: «A person without hope, will die».
People need hope in their lives. But as years pass by, hope tends to shrink. Hope for a better job, hope for better life conditions, hope for better health.
There will be a time when we all face the point of no more hope here in this world. Life is coming to an end. Is there anyone who can bring hope in the face of death?
Yes, there is. There is One who faced the most hopeless and painful death, being hung on a cross, who challenged and overcame the power of death and destruction. One of the most well-known verses in the Bible says: «Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.» (1. Peter 1:3)
FAIT MORE WORTH THAN GOLD
The saying goes: «All that glitters is not gold»? Gold is a highly valuable metal. However, many imitations, which look similar, are actually fake.
Statistically there are around 2.5 billion Christians in the world. Unfortunately, most of them are not true believers. Please don’t think that true Christian faith is found in every church building or every Christian school. If we assume all church members or everyone wearing a cross is a true disciple of Jesus, we may be very discouraged. The Bible defines who Jesus is and what it means to believe in him. To know the truth about Christianity, you should read that book!
Real Christians both believe in and practice the teaching of Jesus. They admit their failures instead of defending them. And true Christians love people – so they will love you!
WHY ONLY ONE GOD?
Some people easily accept that there is only one God, others don’t. Anyway, It is true that those who want to become true Christians, has to leave every other god behind – and there is a good explanation to that.
If you ask married women: «Would it be OK for you if your husband has just one extra love-lady besides you?» very few will say yes. We don’t share matrimonial love to anybody but The One.
What are the fake, competing gods of this age? Here are some: Money. Desire. Pride. Individualism. Self-focus.
Jesus Christ is a loving and very personal God! He is described as a bridegroom in love with his darling. Jesus paid the highest price to have her – alone. Those who embrace him as their only God, become his beloved, divine bride!
NARROW ROAD
Imagine you come to an unknown crossroad. There are two alternatives: One is a narrow, winding road that seems to have plenty of uphill, while the other road is broad, straight and plain. What, if anything, could make you choose to take the narrow road? Exactly: If you knew that this road leads to the place you want,and the other one absolutely not.
We compared Christian faith to gold. Gold is not cheap, but it’s still worth its price. To follow Jesus Christ is not necessarily the easiest life. There is truly a price to pay. Jesus said it clearly and simple: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13,14). Are you ready for that choice?
HAPPY ENDING
Where do we come from? Jesus says we are created by God, in His image, to be like Him. Why are we here? Jesus says we are here to live a life in true love and joy. A life with peace in heart. A life with truth, freedom, faithfulness and forgiveness. Forgiven by God, so we can stand righteous before Him – thanks to the blood Jesus gave on the cross.
Where are we going? Jesus says: «I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me» (John 14:6). What does that mean? It means that if we want to reach Heaven and be with loving Father God when we die, we must give our lives to Jesus while we are here.
Everyone makes this choice, somehow. Some put it on hold. Some laugh and reject. Some find the price too high. And some choose that narrow road. This book is written with the hope that you will make
the good choice!
