How vital this is. All our gifts, all our accomplishments, or assumed accomplishments, are worthless without this motive of love. We need love for souls; we need love for the word, for the truth of God, for the gospel, for the doctrines; we need love for Christ. Without that triple love we are worthless, whatever it may appear on the outside. So we need an eye which is fixed on his love. He loved me and gave himself for me. He came down from glory, leaving behind the enjoyment of his power and glory, and came into this world to suffer terrible humiliation, rejection, insult, violence, and ultimately the death of the cross for me. The love of Christ is beyond measure, beyond contemplation; I cannot understand it. Not only was the love infinite and eternal, but it was for such a worthless object. I think of his love, and I think of my debt to him and I am going to love those lost souls. What a tragedy is theirs, lying ahead for them! What they lose! I was saved when I deserved nothing at all. Have I no heart for them, no feeling for them? Think too of the little ones: they are going to grow up in this world. All too soon, they will be at school. They will have pumped into them all sorts of things which will make you shudder, and maybe they will be subject wherever they are, to all this current transgender indoctrination. Satan will be working overtime to pluck them, and to cast their souls into hell. We must feel for them. We have got such a short opportunity to round up the children – some of them from very difficult backgrounds; some of them from affluent backgrounds – to reach them for him, and to save them for life and eternity. We need to care for them and love them with sympathy, and, if they are badly behaved, love them with sympathy and concern. Without love, all we do is worthless. Fix your eye on your own worthlessness.
When in trouble, if there is a tiff at home between husband and wife – something has aggravated you, something has made you angry, something your children do has made you unnecessarily and overly irritable and reactive – think of your own unworthiness; think of how much you have been forgiven; think of how much you throw into the pot, into the cauldron of unrest sometimes. Think and humble yourself before the Lord and seek the strength to deal with everything with dignity and affection.