Dwight L. Moody once said that a man can be a good doctor without loving his patients, or a good lawyer without loving his clients, or a good geologist without loving rocks, but he cannot be a good Christian without love.

If you know anything about the apostle Paul, you know many of his letters included a prayer for his audience. It was part of his life to pray for people regularly. In Philippians 1:9-11, he prayed their love would "abound still more and more," (v. 9).

He prayed for their love because love is the hallmark of a believer's faith. In 1 Corinthians he said, "And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love" (13:13). And Jesus said, "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35).

Paul was referring to the demonstration of love within the church. In fact, verse 9 could be paraphrased as "to exceed a fixed measure." As he wrote in 1 Thessalonians 3:12, "May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other" (NIV).

If God's love flows into your life, it ought to overflow out of your life and flow to others. And if we have such a capacity to love people, then no one around us should ever feel love-starved. Our love should be plentiful.

Does your love abound? Is your love for your parents, spouse, children, or friends an abounding love? It's easy to say we love people we never see, but it can be quite challenging to love the people we see and work with and live with every day.

How is it possible for our love to continue to grow and abound? In Romans 5:5, Paul said, "Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit." This implies an unlimited capacity to love. So, if you say, "I've got no more love to give," I would say, "You need a better connection." The love of God is poured out by the Holy Spirit, and He never runs out.

Our love should also be a mature love, which is not sentimentality, nor is it emotion. Paul said it should "abound…in knowledge and all discernment" (Philippians 1:9). Discernment means mature insight, or sensitive moral perception.

Jesus gave us an example of mature love. One day He healed the sick and broken, another day He overturned the tables in the temple and drove out the moneychangers. Both are expressions of love, in two different contexts, from the God who is love.

So we must carefully examine every expression of our love in light of God's Word. Instead of asking, "How do I feel?" we must ask, "What does the Bible say about how I feel?"

Above all, our love has a purpose: "being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God." (v. 11). Simply put, when our love is pure and abounds, God is glorified.

For the Christian, the purpose of all love (and our entire life) is to glorify God. It's the ultimate test of whether our love is godly or not: Does it glorify Jesus Christ? When it does, people around us feel loved, cared for, invested in, and secure. And God gets the glory.

I pray that your love would overflow to the people around you, that they would feel cared for with an abounding, godly love.