Love Does

We often talk about love as if it were something that simply happens to us. We “fall” in love. We get “swept away” by emotion. We wait for a feeling of warmth or compassion to rise in our hearts before we act.

But if we wait for the feeling, we might never move.

Scripture gives us this instruction: “Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth” (I John 3:18). When we study the Word of God, we discover His love isn’t merely spoken—it’s lived. From Genesis to Revelation, God’s love is expressed through verbs: He creates, rescues, forgives, restores, comforts, and redeems. His love moves.

Sometimes love requires a heavy lifting of the will—a choice to move our muscles even when our hearts feel frozen. One powerful example of this comes from the story of Corrie ten Boom.

In 1947, Corrie was speaking in a church in Munich, Germany, sharing a message of God’s forgiveness with people weighed down by the atrocities of World War II. During the war, she and her sister, Betsie, had been imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp for hiding Jews. Betsie had died there under the cruelty of the guards.

As the service ended, a man approached the front. Corrie froze. She recognized him immediately as one of the S.S. guards from Ravensbrück—one of the cruelest.

He extended his hand. “A fine message, Fräulein!” he said. “How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea.” Then came the question that stopped her heart: “Will you forgive me?”

Corrie stood paralyzed. She felt no love—only coldness, anger, and grief as she remembered her sister’s starving, dying frame. Yet she also knew that Jesus commanded her to forgive. It wasn’t a suggestion; it was a command.

In that moment, she realized that forgiveness, like love, is not an emotion. It is a decision.

She prayed silently, Jesus, help me! I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.

The feeling didn’t lead to the action. The action led to the feeling.

Today, you may face someone you don’t “feel” like loving—a difficult spouse, an estranged friend, a coworker who has wronged you. Don’t wait for the warmth. Don’t wait for the emotion to make sense.

Love does. It extends the hand. It makes the phone call. It sends the text.

Move your hand, and trust God to supply the feeling.

This year, may we ask the Lord to help us love as He does—with ready hearts, open hands, and lives attentive to the needs around us. Because when God’s love moves through us, someone else feels seen, known, and cherished.

And sometimes, that’s the clearest sermon they’ll hear all day.