GOD IS LOVE

Love is a commandment.  We have been commanded to love.  God will never tell us to do anything that he hasn't already empowered us to do.  In order for us to walk in love we need to know how much God loves us.
1John4:7-11 Beloved, let us love one another for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.  He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.  In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.  Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
We have to walk in love on purpose.  Our flesh is inherently selfish and self centered.  Real love will cost you something, it will cost you some time, some effort, even cause you to swallow your pride just to keep peace in your home.  We have to practice love, the more we practice it, the bigger it will grow.
One of the Pharisees, who was a lawyer asked Jesus a question, saying, Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law?  Jesus said unto him, thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
The bible says that whoever hates his brother is a murderer and no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.  Since Jesus laid down his life for us, we should lay down our lives for the brethren.  If you see that your brother or sister is in need and you have no compassion for them, how is that showing the love of God.  We cannot love in word only, but in deed and in truth.
Romans 5:8  But God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.  Love suffers long, love is kind, love envieth not, is not puffed up, thinketh no evil, rejoices not in iniquity, rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all thing, endures all things, love never fails.
In the last days, perilous times will come, men will be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, despisers of those who are good, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of Godliness, but denying the power of God.
The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance.  If we live in the spirit, we should also walk in the spirit.
The opposite of love is not hate, it is lust, because love gives, but lust takes.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, and though I have the gift of prophesy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and have all faith, so that I could move mountains and have not love I am nothing.