“Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven”
Matthew 7:20-21

There is a teaching tape by Joyce Landorf called "Balcony People" that I used to listen to every day and sometime two or three times a day.  I was going through a period of severe depression at that time in my life and God used that tape to bring me out of my depression.

One of the things that Joyce says on the tape is that people used to come up to her and hug her and say, "Hi, how are you doing?  Jesus loves you.  Got to rush, bye."  Joyce says that one day she told someone, "Well, that’s not enough. I need someone to put their arms around me and prove that Jesus Loves me."

We can tell people that Jesus Loves them but if we never do anything to prove it by our actions and not just words they are not going to believe us.  We need to demonstrate the Love of Jesus and not just tell them that He Loves them.

When is the last time that you went up to someone and hugged that person?  When is the last time you shut the television off and picked up the telephone and called someone that you knew was lonely and needed to hear a friendly voice?

Let me encourage you to not only tell people Jesus Loves them, prove to them Jesus Loves them by the way you act toward them.  Yes, it might be inconvenient and not in our daily schedule for us to do these things but I am sure it was not convenient for Jesus to hang on that cross for us.  He did it to prove that He Love us.

January 22, 2005