Love That Shows Up

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 165, Love That Shows Up.

"Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth." First John, chapter three, verse eighteen.

Notice how John opens: little children. That's not distance — that's closeness. That's the voice of someone who loves you enough to tell you the hard thing gently. Because John knows — and if we're honest, we know it too — how easy it is to say the words and never follow through. How easy it is to say "I love you" and keep your hands right in your pockets. How easy it is to feel warm toward someone and never once let that warmth cost you anything.

Words come cheap when the hands stay closed.

The love God calls real takes shape. It gives. It visits. It helps. It stays when staying is inconvenient. The person who truly loves doesn't wait for perfect conditions — they find a way to serve today, with what they have, right where they are. That love doesn't sit inside you like a feeling. It moves. It shows up. It has weight.

But acting isn't enough on its own. John says: in truth. With sincerity. Not performing kindness for applause. Not giving so you can receive. True love doesn't make a deal — it gives because it has already been given to. It serves because it has already been served by God in a way it never earned. When that lands in you — when you really understand what God has done for you — love stops feeling like a duty and starts feeling like the only right response.

And here is where it gets close to home. Because this concrete love almost always begins in the hardest places: inside your own family, with the neighbor who wears you out, with the friend who let you down and from whom you've held yourself just a little bit apart. That is where love is tested. That is where faith stops being an idea and becomes a life. Not in the comfortable places — in the costly ones. Right there is where God's love needs to show up through your hands.

And when it does? It speaks. One sincere act says more about God than a thousand sermons. People don't come to faith through polished words — they come through love they can feel. Through care that arrives without a price tag. Through a presence that shows up when everyone else has gone. That is what opens hearts. Not the speech. The love that shows up, that reaches out, that costs something.

You want someone to know who God is? Show them with your hands. Go. Stay. Help. Give from yourself.

So today's call is clear, and yes, it is going to cost you something. Choose someone — someone you have been loving mostly with words — and give them one concrete proof today. Not a text. An action. Your time. Your hands. A care that moves you out of your comfort. Something that says, without having to say it: you matter to me, and you matter to God.

Today, love with your hands.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.