If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

1 Corinthians 13:1-7 (Message)

According to the Apostle Paul, a radical Christian is not the one that has accomplished great things, or lived an amazing life, but the one who abides with Love Himself, and practices love to those around them.

It is possible to do many wonderful things without love, but without love, we will soon falter and fail. God does not judge us by how much we are doing for Him, but by how much love we put in the doing.

Love is at the heart of all we do or say in Jesus' name. Since God shares His life and love with us, we should strive to live and love those around us. We will embark on an amazing journey that enriches others and also ourselves as we learn to do everything with love and from a place of love. Those loving experiences and actions shape us into the persons Christ wants us to be in Him.

Through the revelation of love, we conquer our selfishness, indifference and individualism. Instead, we respond to the call to turn away from our own preoccupations to hear the cry of others, especially those in need of our compassion and mercy. We gain rather than lose when we give of ourselves to help others because we grow into who Christ created us to be.

We must first learn to receive love before we can learn to give it if we want to reflect a deeper Christlikeness. When that happens, we are freed from any personal agenda, yet we are strengthened by His Spirit and sustained by His grace to carry out the ministry of Christ in a lost and broken world.