Leaving A Lasting Imprint

By Alexandra Copeland 

I received a tech-gift for Christmas. It’s the nifty little gadget that responds to voice commands when you call her name. She will ‘drop-in’ on individuals in other rooms via intercom, turn on your lights, update you on the weather forecast, and play music if you tell her too. Technology is advancing at an incredibly rapid pace, and I wouldn’t be surprised if very soon verbal commands are translated telepathically. Life is changing and requiring less physical effort and more mental effort. It is causing us to process mental calculations with such expediency that, consciously, we don’t even think about them. We communicate emotions with simple icons and truncate whole sentences with three letter acronyms. Whether we realize it or not, we are programming ourselves to prepare for what comes next.

If technology is advancing so amazingly, we should expect no less in the realm of spiritual promotions and advancement in Christ; we should be making a greater impact on others with God's love. 1Corinthians 13 is common to many of us as God’s ‘love’ chapter. Through the Apostle Paul, God tells us much about what His love is and how it operates. He also tells us about the extraordinary power He's made available to us through the gift of Holy Spirit. This power is manifested in phenomenal ways, and Paul identifies some of these manifestations in this chapter. He tells us that we can manifest the gift by speaking in tongues, word of prophecy, and understanding the deep things of God. We can move mountains with our faith, give liberally to the poor, and exhaust ourselves physically doing good deeds. We can do all these wonderful things, but if we don’t love others with a Christ-kind of love, all the deeds we accomplish will amount to nothing.

God has made it very plain to us that the way to excel spiritually is through His love. Being God’s child is the highest honor there is. We will only walk under the power and authority of this reality if we understand the truth of what God has made us through His Son. 1John 5:1 tells us that everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God, but you and I also know that not everyone believes this truth. Galatians 3:26 says that our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ makes us children of God, and 1 John 3:1(NLT) says, “See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.”

We didn’t choose God first; He chose us. He handpicked us to be His very own, and this isn’t true of everybody. 1John 4:8 affirms that He is a God of love, and as His children we are called and commanded to walk in His love as well. Through His precious Son, Jesus Christ, Heavenly Father has shown us how love behaves. Love does not constrain, be impatient and unkind, push, shove, manipulate or place in bondage. Love gives us freedom, and through Jesus Christ we also know that love leaves an everlasting imprint within the universe. God tells us through Paul in 1Corinthians 13:13, “Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.”

The gains humanity is making are impressive, but they don’t mean anything without the love of God. It’s HIS purpose that we’re moving towards. He has a plan for the entire universe, and He’s allowing us to create extraordinary ways to reach the masses. So as believers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have no excuses for not reading about him; we have no excuses for not following his example and demonstrating God’s love to everyone. We’re advancing because HE is allowing us to advance, so that His purpose is achieved with greater impact and love.

At any given time, no matter what we’re doing or what is going on in our personal circumstances, God is at work in all the details. He’s working behind the scenes, advancing us so that we’ll wake-up to the reality that our individual brand of love must morph into a Christ-kind of love. This is the only love that transforms lives, makes a positive difference, and leaves a lasting imprint of our time on this earth. ■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.