When I examine myself and take inventory of my thoughts, motives, desires, and actions, I am continually disappointed in the sinfulness and weakness of my best efforts to love God and my brethren in Christ.

As recorded in John 21, our Lord asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?” Peter’s only reply could be, “Lord, you know all things. You know I love you.” Peter knew his love was nothing to boast in, but he knew he loved the Lord. The Lord told Peter that the greatest expression of love to Him was love to the brethren – “Feed my lambs, my sheep.”

When I see how weak and pitiful I am in this matter of love, how can I be encouraged not to give up but to love more?

It is not by considering the sinfulness and weakness of my own love. It is by considering the greatness and perfection of God’s love to me — “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another” (1 John 4:11).

Think of the free, undeserved, unconditional love of God towards us (SINNERS) in sending His only-begotten Son to die for our sins and give us the bounty of His grace — “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10).

The more we know of HIS love for us, the more we will be encouraged to love one another more.