By Mycah Rosario
Sacrificial love, I believe, is the foundation for every healthy family, community, and relationship. It is from this place that all other God things flow.

In the word, Jesus states the greatest commandment starts with love (Matthew 22:37); and the greatest love of all is not found in Whitney Houston's hit song—which I love—but in John 15:13. It says,
“There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friend.”
This is manifested in the catalyst of everyone’s redemption story: the cross. Jesus’ death and sacrifice was the greatest display of sacrificial love. And this kind of love that restored creation to its creator is the same love that we are called to walk in with one another. This may mean giving up your time even if you have little of it to give, or giving someone money with no expectations of it being paid back. It can even mean putting aside your own preferences, opinions, dreams and desires for the betterment of another.
This kind of love can take many forms and is one that I work on constantly. Am I good at it? No, not all the time. For me, loving sacrificially usually looks like helping around the house on my one and only day off or helping feed the family. It even sometimes means me leading worship on the weekends that I don’t want too. (And you can trust that I do have those weekends. Just keeping it real!)
But I love God and I'm so thankful for all that He has done, that it exhorts me to lay my life down in this way. Like I mentioned I’m not always good at it and I may not always have a good attitude about it. But none the less, we are called to live like this, because I believe this love is what will change the world. It already did once. To extend that kind of sacrificial love to another is to truly see the face of God. (For all my Les Miserables lovers).
Loving this way is an act of worship. We lay our lives down for God’s greater call. We are never more like Christ than when we are loving in this way. Now I will say from experience that this kind of love is not of this world and requires a divine helper to live it out. That’s why we need the Holy Spirit. To try and love like this from the flesh will only foster wrong expectations, entitlement, and bitterness. When you love like this with the wrong motive, you may feel that you constantly sacrifice and yet others don’t do the same. You may feel like you want something in return for you acts of service. That’s a wrong expectation of people. Remember Jesus loved unconditionally. He didn’t die expecting people to love Him in return. He died knowing good and well that people would still reject Him, and he was okay with that. That’s why this love is so radical. It can only be seen through Jesus Christ.
This is why we must keep Christ at the center of our homes and relationships. When Christ is there love abounds, and Love conquers all sin and darkness. He did it once, he can surely do it again.
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