So whether you’re spending Valentine’s Day with a significant other, hanging out with family and friends, or ignoring the holiday altogether, we hope you’ll do some thinking about love—not only romantic love, but the Christlike love that we’re called to show to everyone around us. To help you focus in on the uniquely Christian understanding of love, our sister site Bible Gateway has put together a list of the most popular Bible verses on the topic of love.

It’s a good list—but also a fairly familiar one if you’ve spent much time in church or reading the Bible. Most of these verses are explicitly about love—defining it, explaining how to demonstrate it, and encouraging us to practice it. They’re the verses that pop up when you put “Bible verses about love” into a search engine. But certainly our Christian understanding of love does not begin and end with a handful of individual verses—we learn about Christlike love all throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. What other Bible verses or stories speak clearly to you about the nature of love? If you were to compile your own list of Bible verses about love, which other verses might you choose?

However, like many frustrating circumstances in life, it has provided daily (often hourly) opportunities to test my commitment to Jesus’ famous words in Matthew 22:37-40:

“Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

It’s easy to love God when life is full of blessings. Likewise, it’s easy to love your neighbor when everyone is being friendly. But what about when your expectations are dashed and your neighbors are decidedly unfriendly? What I’m re-realizing through this experience is that prayer is incredibly necessary. I’ve been praying for God to take my worry and replace it with His grace and His peace. And, unsurprisingly, whenever I can rise above my own issues enough to lay them before God, He has been faithful in answering that prayer.

Perhaps you’re in a similar situation. Have you taken time to pray about the situation? What would it take for you to exhibit God’s love to the people involved?

As time passes it can be easy to forget our first passionate declaration of faith. Consequently, we begin to see our relationship with God as one in which we need to appease Him. As our devotional from Our Daily Bread today reminds us, our faith should be informed primarily by an all encompassing love for God and His ways:

When Jesus was asked to name the greatest command in the Law, He replied, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment (Matt. 22:37-38). The questioner wanted to test Jesus, but the Lord answered him with the key element in pleasing God. First and foremost, our relationship with Him is a matter of the heart.

If we see God as a taskmaster and consider obedience to Him as a burden, then we have joined those of whom the Lord said, I have this against you, that you have left your first love (Rev. 2:4).

Would you say that your faith in God is based on love or something else? If it’s based on something else, what would it take for you to remember and pursue the original love commitment that lead you to Him?

Just a quick note on the relaxed posting schedule over the past few weeks. Most of our team was out on vacation, but we’re slowly getting caught up and getting back into the swing of things. We hope you had a wonderful Holiday season!

Every day, we pass up opportunities to connect with people because we assume that they’re too busy, or too angry, or too different than us. When we jump to such conclusions, we may be missing out on an opportunity to share God’s love. Our Daily Bread offers us a simple story about how reaching out without judgment can be a life-changing action:

Two young men with mischief on their minds approached a missionarys outreach bus parked in a downtown area of a German city.

The missionaries were there to offer refreshments as a way to open up conversations about Christ. The two visitors, wearing skull-and-crossbones bandannas, were there to offer trouble.

But the missionaries didnt respond to the ruffians as they expected. The Christians welcomed them warmly and engaged them in discussion. Surprised, the guys hung around long enough to hear the gospel. One trusted Jesus that day. The other, the next day.

Those two young men and the missionaries who reached them were light-years apart culturally. The guys were German; the missionaries, American. The guys were involved in a culture of darkness and death; the missionaries were shining the light. The cultural divide was crossed with cookies and nonjudgmental love.

Are there particular people in your life that you ignore because you think you’re too different from them? Have you ever shared God’s love with someone who was “different”? How did it go?

God—the eternal God—is himself our support at all times, and especially when we are sinking in deep trouble. There are seasons when the Christian sinks very low in humiliation. Under a deep sense of his great sinfulness, he is humbled before God till he scarcely knows how to pray, because he appears, in his own sight, so worthless. Well, child of God, remember that when thou art at thy worst and lowest, yet underneath thee are everlasting arms. Sin may drag thee ever so low, but Christs great atonement is still under all. You may have descended into the deeps, but you cannot have fallen so low as the uttermost; and to the uttermost he saves. Again, the Christian sometimes sinks very deeply in sore trial from without. Every earthly prop is cut away. What then? Still underneath him are the everlasting arms. He cannot fall so deep in distress and affliction but what the covenant grace of an ever-faithful God will still encircle him. The Christian may be sinking under trouble from within through fierce conflict, but even then he cannot be brought so low as to be beyond the reach of the everlasting armsthey are underneath him; and, while thus sustained, all Satans efforts to harm him avail nothing.

Does knowing that we can never “be beyond the reach of the everlasting arms’ comfort you? How does that knowledge change how you approach situations in your life?

When it comes to loving Jesus though it’s important to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he first loves us. Luckily, as Spurgeon reminds us in this devotional from Morning and Evening, the authors of the Bible have given us ample reasons to trust in Jesus’ love:

True love to Christ is in every case the Holy Spirits work, and must be wrought in the heart by him. He is the efficient cause of it; but the logical reason why we love Jesus lies in himself. Why do we love Jesus? Because he first loved us. Why do we love Jesus? Because he gave himself for us. We have life through his death; we have peace through his blood. Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor. Why do we love Jesus? Because of the excellency of his person. We are filled with a sense of his beauty! an admiration of his charms! a consciousness of his infinite perfection! His greatness, goodness, and loveliness, in one resplendent ray, combine to enchant the soul till it is so ravished that it exclaims, Yea, he is altogether lovely. Blessed love thisa love which binds the heart with chains more soft than silk, and yet more firm than adamant!

Read the entire devotional at ccel.org.

What aspect of Jesus’ love for humanity helps you the most when it comes to loving him back?

First, we prepared an answer…Whether speaking to the protestors, counter protestors, or the media, we were prepared to speak about what God is doing in our community.

Second, we told the congregation. One week earlier, Ed told the church we would be picketed and to expect the counter protestors and media to be present as well. But we also made it clear that church members should not engage either side…

Third, we appointed one spokesman for the church. For Sunday, I was the one. If the media wanted to do an interview or get answers to questions, they could talk to the representative from the church. This is normal for how we do things at Two Rivers.

Fourth, show hospitality. One of our staff members recruited several deacons to serve at a Baptist breakfast table: coffee and donuts. It was positioned near the protesters, counter protesters, and media. Anyone was welcome to come to the breakfast table.

Finally, we went on as usual. We gather to worship God in such as way that it bring Him honor and is comprehensible to those who are yet to place their faith in Christ. Two Rivers has become one of the hubs for relief efforts in the wake of the Nashville flood. We have been a command center for Samaritan’s Purse and housed a Christian school while their building is being repaired. Every week, we meet new people by clearing debris and offering grace. The last thing we have time to do is shut down because five people show up with offensive signs.

It can be extremely hard to respond with love when someone criticizes you, and relying on instincts and feelings in the moment often results in a messy situations. I like Two Rivers’ plan because it emphasizes their core value of love and gives the congregation practical steps to follow in order to channel their emotions.

Has your church ever had protesters or encountered vocal criticism? If so, how did you handle it? If not, what do you think of Ed’s advice?

As Andy stated in the first post in the series, “Our intent isn’t to play devil’s advocate, but to let you share how you would respond when your faith is challenged.”

To reiterate, we want to hear how you would answer this question. Try to think how you’d respond if a friend asked you this question in a coffeeshop. You don’t have access to any books, sermons or publications to show them. Your friend doesn’t want a reading list—they want to hear your response!

How would you respond to this statement:

“Christianity purports to be a religion based on love. The New Testament writers regularly state that God is a loving God. However, they also state that many people will suffer in Hell. How could an omnipotent, loving God allow the existence of a place of eternal torment?”

Share your response!

Delve Into Jesus takes a thorough look at this passage and explains Jesus’ command:

We don’t usually choose whom we love romantically, and we may fall in and out of love at the whim of our emotions. Since this is the kind of love with which we are the most familiar (and perhaps the most comfortable), we struggle when we hear Jesus speak of “loving our enemies.” A contradiction forms in our mind as we think, “How can I love them? I don’t feel a shred of sympathetic emotion for them at all!”

The love of which Jesus speaks is not a feeling in any sense of the word. It is a decision resulting in action. It is a choice you make that has nothing whatsoever to do with how you feel, and quite often, occurs in spite of a feeling to the contrary. This kind of love judges the needs of a person but never the person themselves, and responds according to the gravity of the need, never the character of the person.

Understand that you must absolutely restrain whatever you feel for a person and treat them with as much compassion and kindness as you would show your own mother or child. This is the kind of love that Christ demands – not a feeling, but rather a spirit of service, selflessness and humility. It is the ability to give to others with no regard to what they can do to repay you, what they feel for you or what you feel for them.

Read the full devotional at Delve Into Jesus.

I’ve found in my experience that this command is easy to accept in principle, but excruciatingly difficult to carry out in practice. Have you recently found yourself in a situation where you had to choose to love someone in accordance with Jesus’ command, despite their behavior?

Jesus reminds us that love is foundational to the law and the prophets. Everything builds upon fully loving God and others. We have opportunities each and every day to love each other, but how many of those opportunities do you actually take? When is the last time you knowingly showed your love to someone else?

Lifetime Guarantee Ministries explores the necessity of love in our daily lives, and encourages us to show love to someone today:

My eldest, Pres, wrote a note to me one Sunday morning in church many years ago with his first wobbly manuscript printing skills: “YOU ARE PRETTY. I LOVE YOU.” I saved that scribbled note, along with others from my little tow-headed boys (who are now grown men) expressing their love. Those notes are some of my most precious possessions.

That’s nothing out of the ordinary. God knew how important love expressed would be. Love was the passion that relentlessly drove Jesus as He carried the cross to a hill called “Calvary.” Love was the passion that would not release God until He gave His only Son: For God so loved . . .(John 3:16). All of that to say when we express our love to others we are fulfilling a very important commandment. It isn’t tithing. It isn’t singing in the choir. It isn’t perfect attendance every time the Church door is open. It isn’t a rote visit on Tuesday night visitation. It is all wrapped up in a package labeled LOVE. And according to I Corinthians 13, there is nothing that we can do (nothing, not even sacrificing our lives) that impresses our Lord if it is done without that same passion, that LOVE….

So what is the most important thing you can do today? Very simply, show love to someone. Have you called your mom recently? Dad, how about taking your son to supper and a movie and then later taking your daughter for breakfast? Perhaps give a prolonged embrace for a woman who has recently become a widow, or jot a note to a person just out of the hospital. Maybe you are being called to reach out to someone who’s having a rough time in her/his marriage, to a young man who just lost his job, to your pastor, to your daughter-in-law, or to a child who is struggling with rebellion. You might give someone a vase of flowers with a note that reads, “Just to let you know that I’m thinking about you and that I love you.” Or visit an invalid who never steps outside the house and leave them softly murmuring, “It is so nice to know someone is thinking about me.”

Read the entire devotional at Lifetime.org.

What can you do today to show love to someone in your life?