Love Smarts

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. –Philippians 1:9-11

My Community Group is going through the book of Philippians in conjunction with the current sermon series “The Joy Genome.” I came across this passage in the study guide we’re following when it asked the question about what those verses have to do with spiritual maturity. At first I thought it was one of those questions that you had to be in the mind of the person writing the question to be able to answer, but then I thought about it some more.

In this passage, Paul is telling the church at Philippi that he is praying that they will love each other with a love that is filled with knowledge and depth of insight so they can discern what is best until Jesus comes back. It struck me that when we are close to God (mature) we will begin to love like God loves. God shows us his love by loving us in ways that perfectly meet our needs. He knows perfectly how we need to be loved. Paul is praying that the church will also love like that – that our love will be filled with knowledge and depth of insight.

Let’s pray this morning that God will give us knowledge and depth of insight into someone’s needs and then let’s love that person in that way.