Daily Devotionals

Mix Tape Week 7 Tuesday

And do everything with love. 1 Corinthians 6:14

When we show our kids love and teach them how much God loves them, we also teach them how to love. It’s true. The children in our lives are learning how to love and care for the people around us. As a result, as parents and caregivers, we have the responsibility to teach our children how to love others, and one of the clearest ways we can teach this is to show them. 

Paul was very clear in 1 Corinthians 16 when he wrote, “And do everything with love” (verse 14). Everything we do, and I mean everything, is to be done with love. The word “everything” is all-inclusive. Not one interaction is to be left out of this call to love. This means that as we interact with our children and everyone else daily, love is the filter by which we respond to them. This includes people who are difficult to love.

After showing love to others ourselves, we also have to teach our children to love. We have to teach our kids the importance of loving people in every interaction they have. Why is love so important? 1 John 4:19 says it perfectly, “We love each other because he loved us first.” God has demonstrated His love for us, and as a result, we are to love people out of the love we have been shown. 

If you have never had a conversation with the kids in your life about the importance of showing love to others, now is a great time to start. Begin today by having a conversation about how much God loves them and the ways that He has shown His great love for them. Remind them that God’s love encourages us to move and act in love as well.

Moving Toward Action

Spend some time talking to the kids in your life today. Tell them about the verse you studied in your Bible study today. Tell them about God’s call for each one of us to love others. Tell them one way you plan to love other people this week and ask them to think of one way, too.

Going Deeper

1 John 4:7-21 (NLT)

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.

God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.

Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first.

If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.