I read recently of a man named Myo Zaw who lives in an Asian country. He was an alcoholic who abused his wife and children and shamed his community until he met Jesus and became a changed man. At first people thought he had gone crazy because all Myo Zaw wanted to talk about was the love of God that saved him. But Myo Zaw knew he was not crazy; he was redeemed.
Myo Zaw felt that he needed to take the story of Jesus to others, so over the course of three years he walked to more than a hundred communities telling “how a sinner like me was found by God.” His wife supported him and committed to pray, telling him: “if your life can change by Christ, there is no one who cannot be changed by Christ.”
Eventually Myo Zaw and all his family moved to a place very hostile to Christianity. Though persecuted at first, the family trusted Christ to let His love be known. After fourteen years, the people of the village seem to now understand that there is a God who loves at all cost. Myo Zaw said of his new community: “My love has become deeper for them. I care for them more. That’s why I don’t want to go back to my hometown. That is why I would like to sacrifice my whole life for them.”
God loving us results in us loving others. “For Christ’s love compels us…,” Paul wrote as he shared the desire for all to be reconciled to God. Myo Zaw must have thought: “If God forgave me of all my wrongs and if He has changed me into a kinder husband and father who does not get drunk and violent, then he can do this for others. If Jesus loves me, He loves everyone!”
The better we know God, the more we know love. The closer we follow Christ, the more we love like Jesus. The more we yield to the Spirit, the more we live in love.
“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better.” Ephesians 1:17
“I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the full measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:16-19
“We love because He first loved us.” I John 4:19
Myo Zaw story from GFA World magazine, K. P. Yohannan editor, March 2017 issue, pp 9-11