It’s All About Love by Rev. Christine Emmerling, D.D. 2/1/2026

Today I’m speaking on “It’s All About Love.” What mankind has called the big bang of creation is about God - as an infinite power of love, so full that this love had to be expressed as a new form. All this love contained had to be released and thus love burst forth to be experienced through its expression as joy, intelligence, beauty and as the many facets of life. All beings, all creation, all life are the result of love being expressed.

Our Divine Source is love, therefore we are love. Love is a Principle of God, of creation, before creation there was love. Love is the building block, foundation, and core of all existence. Just think, without love life wouldn’t be; I wouldn’t be. I can say, “Love is - I Am. I Am Love in expression.”

Life here on this earth is all about learning about love and what love isn’t. We’re here refining our expression of love. We are like a piece of coal becoming this sparkling diamond. Our nature is love, it’s there all the time, but we can’t see or feel it when its in such a low vibration that it appears as fear, hate, anger and it feels painful. Yet, there deep within, all the time is the diamonds purity and beauty to come forth and shine. When heat and compression is applied to coal over time, it is transformed to this beautiful radiant diamond. A substance so hard that it is used to cut through other rocks and hard substances. Just like how when love is applied to most any circumstance can cut through and heal.

We, all humans, are here to be our full potential - that most perfect love. We have to ask ourselves, “Where did we lose our sense of that most perfect love?” Was it the moment we became individualized states of consciousness?” “Was it before this body or because of this body?”

Just think about the act of coming into this world; we are nurtured within a womb as our body is being formed; first the egg and sperm in a big bang, an explosion of life, and a human body begins to form, and our essence becomes part of it all. Our consciousness is living between two states of being; we are in a protective womb of our mother where all needs are met; we take no thought of how to grow, eat or any of the bodily functions; then when the time comes to be birthed, we are expelled through a very tight, dark tunnel and into the light. We are no longer part of our mother, but now a separate entity, a baby and we cry. This is our first sense of separation, and from thereon we are finding out about our world, our place in it, and why we are here.

We came here for one purpose and that is to discover and be the love that we came here to express. We learn the many facets of what we think love is. Our first understanding of love is to be taken care of, feeling safe and secure. Then its about being accepted in our family and then friends. If at a young age any of this is lacking, then our sense of what love is becomes distorted. Then we get to work through that to discovering our pure love. Some of us may have come into this world with issues from the past to be resolved to rediscover our pure love. Regardless, we all came here to unfold the pure love that we are - our true essence, our Oneness with the Divine Presence of God.

As we become young adults our focus about love changes to attraction and desire. Although its still much about getting our needs met. Parenthood is when we begin to learn the deeper kind of love; caring for another without any expectations from them. We just want to stop their pain, their suffering and crying, and hold them close.

Its not until we spiritually mature that we gain greater insight into what love actually is. Being spiritually mature has nothing to do with our age, but with our experiences, and how we learn and grow through them. Its about seeking deep within ourselves for answers. It also may lead us to spiritual teachers, writers, or religion. The word religion means binding back to God. And, many people are raised in organized religions or turn to them when in pain or feeling lost. Our spiritual path may take us on many different journeys to become spiritually mature. We as diamonds in the ruff tumble and are chipped away until we sparkle as a brilliant diamond - letting our light shine.

Jesus the Christ’s teachings tell us about love: starting with sharing what we have with not only our family and friends but with our enemies too; we are to forgive 70 x 7 or until it is healed, meaning no triggers of stored pain. We are to love God with all our mind and heart, and to love our neighbor as our own self. We really can’t love God or anyone until we love our self, and that requires knowing who and what we are at the core of our being.

Christ Jesus told us “You are gods” and the Father/God is within us, and that God is love. Therefore our true nature is love and is of God. And what is true of me is true of everyone. Now I can begin to forgive, heal and love myself. Then I am ready to love my neighbor as my own self – for we are One in God.

Paul in 1st Corinthians chapter 13 tells us about what love is and isn’t. It reads, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love in my heart, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love in my heart, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love in my heart, I gain nothing.

Love is long-suffering and kind; love does not envy; love is not make a vain display of itself, and does not boast. Does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not its own, is not easily provoked, thinks not evil. Rejoices not iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; where there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is imperfect shall come to an end.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a mirror, darkly; but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abide faith, hope, love these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (End)

Next I’m sharing from Joel Goldsmith’s pamphlet titled Love and Gratitude. The following excerpts helped me through many challenging times:

“Love in its metaphysical appreciation has become a mysterious factor, almost one unknown. And it comes to us now to make clear this idea of love. Love is just devotion. Love is devotion to a person, to a cause, or to a purpose. Love is plain devotion, the devotion we give each other.

When love is expressed in service, in appreciation, in cooperation that is divine love itself expressed on our plane of understanding, on our plane of consciousness, only it is love when that love, when that devotion is expressed without thought of a return, without thought of a desire for gratitude, or appreciation, or recognition. It is in that point that we lose all sense of the meaning of love. There is no such thing as love or devotion that looks for a return.

Love is that of our own being, of our own nature that we pour out to each other merely for the sake of the devotion itself, for the joy that it creates in us in loving. It is not love; it is personal sense when it seeks a return, and it is on that point that we know when our love is really divine, when it is being expressed for the purpose of fulfilling our own feelings toward the other person, toward a cause, or toward a purpose. Real love, whether you call it divine or human, real love only begins when desire for something for ourselves begins to drop away.

Here we come to the point that wrecks many lives. We believe that there are those who could give us more love, and we believe that there are those who are withholding love from us. That is the fatal error. No one can give us any more love than they are giving, and no one has the power to withhold love. Love is God expressing Itself, and God cannot express Itself finitely. God cannot express Itself in a limited form or a limited way or in a limited amount.

The error has been that you are looking to a person for love, and a person does not have love to give. Love is of God. In fact, love is God. In fact, God is love. If you look to a person for love, you will often find in place of love, hate, or you will find a love that turns to hate or to indifference.

The error, then, is not the other person’s. The error is not on the part of those who withhold love or seem to withhold it; the error is on our part in expecting love from a person, or in condemning them for withholding love. They cannot withhold what is not theirs. They cannot give what is not theirs. Love is of God.

The moment we turn our thought from the idea that a person can give or withhold love, we find love pouring itself out to us in infinite abundance, although not always from those we have been expecting it from, or not always from those from whom we have the right to expect it.

It does not lie within our ability to change people in their demonstration. All we can do is change our demonstration. If we are not receiving enough love in the world, let us stop looking to persons for it and look to God for it, and it will appear, not always through the person that you expect it from, that is true. That is one of the things we must learn: that it is not up to us to determine from what direction love is to come since love must come from God.

As long as we look to someone out there for love, gratitude, supply, we have not realized that God is our own individual being. Now, we have no right to look out there for love or gratitude or supply. We must only look to God – the God of our own being – not out there, not in our homes, only to the God of our own being; then let it come through whom it will or from whatever direction it will.

If we look to the God of your being, we might look amiss. We should look to the God of our own being. God is individual being; God is your individual being; therefore God is pouring Its love to you, through you, as you out into the world, and that is true of every individual. Then why, as long as you have God, and the kingdom of God is within you, as long as you have the entire kingdom of God within you pouring Itself forth as love, as joy, companionship, supply, gratitude, why should you be looking out there for it? And as long as you do not look out there for it or to somebody out there, or many “somebodies,” these will be the vehicles or avenues bringing it to your door, but looking out there for it is the error.

The moment you realize God as individual being, the moment you realize God as your individual being, the infinity of good must unfold from within you, through you to the world – nothing less than infinity.

In all of our relationships do not look to each other as though that person could give or withhold. Let us realize this: that we are not looking to a person but to the Christ of their being and of our being. It is for this reason that at some period in our study, we must make a conscious exercise along this line. Call it a discipline if you will.

At some period, we must agree that everyone we meet in the course of the day is Christ. As we get up in the morning and greet members of our family, we do not dwell on personalities by liking this one and disliking that one and finding fault with another one, but rather, secretly, inwardly, greet each one as the Christ. The Christ of you greets the Christ of them. The Christ of you loves the Christ of them. The Christ of them loves the Christ in you. In our Christhood, we are one.” (End)

In life, when I found myself looking to a person and being disappointed, I would take this little pamphlet about Love out of my purse, reread it and turn within until I could once again see aright. When going to face a difficult situation, I would silently say “The Christ in me speaks to the Christ in you.’

The following is a spiritual practice that Nona Brooks shared about an unfriendly lady and how this was healed through her saying repeatedly to herself, “I love you, I love you, I love you, and you love me.”

It’s all about love; loving God, loving our self and loving each other and even our so called enemies. Threefold in nature and at the same time being One. In earthly life we are learning to grow from a personal sense of love to a Divine love, a love that expands and is all inclusive. God is all love and is the activity of love in expression; all life, all beauty and all joy.

The Christ in me acknowledges the Christ in you. So it is.