How Do We Learn to Love?

Steve Brown of Key Life Ministries has a wonderful message from John 15:1-7:
In order to learn to love, we need:

1) A supernatural capacity to love. (the Holy Spirit)
2) A model and teacher to teach us to love (Jesus)
3) A friend who loves us
4) A refuge of love

Steve often says: ¨You can´t love until you´ve been loved; and then you can only love to the extent that you have been loved.¨

Interesting to think about. I can see that although when we first trust in Christ we are given the Holy Spirit who can love through us even when we wouldn´t naturally; and Jesus who ¨loved us to the cross¨ is a great model and His teachings are great instruction in loving; yet we still need human friends who love us now, while we live on earth. And of course, we need God, the never-ending stream of love, who wants us, cares about us, is ¨crazy¨ about us, and never quits loving us.

It´s a lot like the song, ¨Nature Boy¨, sung by Natalie Cole : ¨the greatest thing you´ll ever learn is to love and to be loved in return¨. And I would add, as Steve would likely say, "I'm still learning," ; or as Paul said in Philippians 3, "I haven't arrived yet."