In this episode I return to the foundation of everything I am trying to do here each week. Love creates value where there might not otherwise be value. The way you choose to love shapes the quality of your life and the lives of the people around you. Nobody can love the way you love, so the question becomes what you will do with that gift.

I talk about three essential principles that guide this whole journey. Love creates value. Each of us has a unique fingerprint of love to offer the world. And the human condition itself is hardwired to love and to be loved. When we live into those truths we begin to see how love strengthens us emotionally, spiritually, and even physically.

I also reflect on Mother Teresa’s powerful insight that there is more hunger for love in this world than there is for food. That is not sentimental language. That is a challenge to how we live right now in our homes, our relationships, and even in our nation. Love is not agreement or weakness. Love is the work that keeps us alive.

So today I am inviting you again to lean into love on purpose. Do not wait for a better time or a better mood. Tell someone you love them. Choose kindness. Choose presence. Choose the holy habit of love and watch what begins to change around you.

In this episode of I’m Alive to Love, I want to talk with you about something that sits right at the center of our lives. How do we arrive as our authentic self through love. So many of us spend years sending the actor out on stage because we have been hurt, disappointed, or afraid. Today I’m inviting you to come back to your truest self and let love be the guardian of your heart.

From the very first breath we take as a baby, every one of us is searching for love. Our story keeps being written every day by what we receive and what we give. I want to help you see how your life story has been shaped by kindness and by pain, and how you still have the power to write the next chapter with courage and compassion.

We also talk about something very practical. The daily habits of love. Kindness, generosity, patience, courtesy, forgiveness, and joy. These are not abstract ideas. These are the ingredients that shape your story and the stories of the people you meet along the way.

My hope for you in this episode is simple. That you rise and shine as your authentic self and choose love again today. Because love never fails, and even one small act of love can change someone’s story, including your own.

In this episode I’m talking about what the book of James calls the royal rule of scripture which is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. I believe that one command helps all the rest of the Bible make sense.

James challenges us in a direct and uncomfortable way. He asks whether we are showing favoritism to people in what I call the costumes of power while quietly moving those in weakness or poverty to the margins. If the royal rule really is love then how we respond to the least of these reveals what we actually believe.

I reflect on how churches including ones I have served have sometimes been drawn toward influence endorsement and appearances instead of toward the wounded presence of Christ among the poor. That is not an abstract idea for me. It is something I have had to confront personally over a lifetime in ministry.

So this episode is an invitation to notice where power has become attractive to us and where love may have been set aside. It is also an encouragement to return to something simple and beautiful which is learning to see Jesus in the people right in front of us and learning to say with intention and honesty I love you.

Let’s explore together what it really means to live by the royal rule of scripture and do something beautiful in the world today.