In the summer of 1967 the first live, international, satellite television production, was broadcast. The program was titled Our World, and nineteen different nations were invited to perform or appear in separate segments featuring their respective countries. The two-and-half-hour event had the largest television audience ever up to that date: an estimated 400 million people around the globe watched the broadcast.
The BBC had commissioned The Beatles to write a song for the United Kingdom's contribution. The Beatles were asked to come up with a song containing a simple message to be understood by all nationalities.
The song they wrote for the program was titled “All You Need Is Love”. The song was an immediate hit and became a catch phrase. The summer of 1967 became known as the Summer of Love, and the song All You Need Is Love was the anthem.
Is there any truth to the catch phrase “all you need is love”? I believe that it is the truth. All You Need Is Love – Love is all you need.
Love should be the basis for everything we do. In Matthew 22, Jesus was asked, what is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus answered, "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. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
In the love letter God wrote to you called the Bible it says, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor anything above, nor anything below, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. Romans 8:38,39
How would you feel if you if you wrote these beautiful words to the love of your life and they were ignored. God says to us, there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We will never know all the ways he shows his love to us. We so often completely miss the wonderful revelations of his love for us as we go about our daily lives.
What beautiful words. We need to keep in mind that it is the world that God loves, not a single nation, not a single race. Not just the “good” people, not just the people who love God back. “God so loved the world.” This includes the lovable and the unlovable; those who are popular, and those who have no one else to love them; the ones who love God, and the ones who never think of God.
Reading God’s love letter to you is the only way you can learn to love others. In the Bible we have the example of Jesus. As Christians we are to follow in his footsteps. There is a popular Christian song titled, "The Proof of Your Love". The lyrics to the chorus are: "Let my life be the proof, The proof of Your love. Let my love look like You and what You're made of. How You lived, how You died, Love is sacrifice. So let my life be the proof, The proof of Your love".
Is your life the proof of the love of Jesus? No matter what we do in our life if we don’t have love it is meaningless.
If I could speak in any language in heaven or on earth but didn't love others, I would only be making meaningless noise like a loud gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I knew all the mysteries of the future and knew everything about everything, but didn't love others, what good would I be?
If I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, without love I would be no good to anybody. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn't love others, I would be of no value whatsoever.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Love will last forever, but prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will all disappear. Now we know only a little, and even the gift of prophecy reveals little! But when the end comes, these special gifts will all disappear.
It’s like this: When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now.
