Love That Sweats

We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 1:3 (NIV)

Today’s guest devotional is provided by Jon Walker –

When Jesus loves, he works up a sweat; he rolls up his sleeves, gets on his knees, and washes our feet with his blood, sweat, and tears.

He labors at love, though his love is never like labor. He’s a giver, not a taker, loving us into being with a gifted carpenter’s hands. And he’s no slacker, loving us until we can take no more; no more because we’re filled to overflowing, his love spilling and splashing through our pores into the cores of those we love with his love, a love’s labor not lost on a world that needs to be found.

He wrestles our fears and wrangles our doubts and labors at love until he’s exhausted, lying prone in a garden, drinking from God’s cup the nourishment necessary for one last heroic sweaty, bloody, tearful lift of the Father’s infinite love; ready to die for God’s undying love.

A Jesus-love sticks to it, even when the it seems like an unstickable fury that’s no longer fun or convenient or even something you want to do. Jesus keeps on laboring in you and through you, finishing what he started, loving until the last with a love that lasts forever (John 13:1).