Is Love Enough? A New Approach to the Holiday Season

Are you looking forward to holiday family gatherings or cringing at the thought? We all have those family members and close friends who are far from God, the ones who it seems like anything you say or do bounces off their hearts with no affect. With the holidays approaching, you may be wondering how your family gatherings will turn out this year.

I’ve been watching a TV show and in a moment of heartache, the female lead stated, “Maybe love isn’t enough.” Everything in me wanted to immediately reply. “Love is enough! Love can conquer anything!”

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that love is not enough. God is enough. Our love is not enough to satisfy the deep cry planted in every person’s heart, the longing for purpose and reason for being. Only a relationship with the living God can fulfill that deep need. Our love can help a person find that experience, but our love is not enough. God is.

If you’re trying to love someone into God’s kingdom and you’ve grown frustrated at the lack of results or response – reconsider your approach and pray.

Pray them into the fulness of God. Pray them into the power and saving grace that comes from his hand. Your love will be a very necessary and critical element of their journey, but their saving will take supernatural intervention. As Jesus explained to Nicodemus in their late-night conversation about spiritual birth, “‘Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.’” (John 3:6 NLT)

Your mom or dad or brother or sister will never be able to grasp the things of God’s Spirit until their spiritual eyes are open. So before you head to your next holiday family gathering, pray for your loved ones:

• Pray for the blinders to be removed. (2 Corinthians 4:4)
• Pray for their eyes to be opened. (Ephesians 1:18)
• Pray that they would be able to grasp the height and depth of God’s love. (Ephesians 3:17-19)

And pray for yourself that you would be the embodiment of that love to them. (2 Corinthians 5:20) God has called you to be his ambassador in this earth, but that doesn’t mean that your love will save the lost. Your love is important, but God is enough.