Abound in Love: Create Joy and Happiness in Your World

By Andre C. Chin

We need to crank up the love dial to increase the flow of joy through our lives. It will be our greatest gift to our loved ones, to those around us, and to ourselves. God is love, and He has declared love to be our supreme purpose. There is nothing about us that pleases God more than our love for Him and our love for one another.

Abound in Love takes you on a path of the deepest love and the most fulfilling joy. It is not the easiest path, nor the path most travelled. You will gain the wisdom and conviction to adopt a greater attitude. You will develop practical love skills to attain more meaningful connections, more genuine interactions, and bonds that cannot be broken. You will be well equipped to reduce hurt, increase joy, and profoundly transform lives through Gods way of love.

Your life will make an eternal difference as you abound in love and create joy and happiness in your world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490852768

Andre C. Chin

A few years ago Andre received a specific calling to teach on love. He and his wife Janice have embarked on a journey to live, teach, and encourage others to abound in love. They are the founders of aboundinlove.com.

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Copyright © 2015 Andre C. Chin.

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Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor: Jen MacBride

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-5275-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5274-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5276-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014916758

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/20/2015 

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 Love Essentials

Chapter 2 The People in Your Life

Chapter 3 How You Communicate

Chapter 4 Our Love Walk and God

Chapter 5 Answers to Prayer

Chapter 6 Love in the Church

Chapter 7 Love in the Workplace

Chapter 8 Enemies and War

Conclusion

Notes

INTRODUCTION

You can be a creator of joy and happiness in your world.

When you abound in love, you give the most beautiful and precious of gifts to your significant other, your parents, your children, your friends, and others. They will discover a joy and happiness they may never have experienced before—and so will you.

God places the highest value on love, not just for us, but for Himself. It pleases Him to fellowship with those who have the same attitude to love that Jesus has. This is the reason why love is His primary command, this is His purpose of salvation. There is no greater accomplishment in life than to abound in love.

You might think you don’t need to change anything because you have enough love in your life, but be aware that complacency in the way you love will be limiting the future heights of joy and happiness for your children and others around you. Complacency is contagious and weakens relationships. Real love is not stagnant and bottled up—it is dynamic, strong, and it flows.

The only love you know now is the love you have been accustomed to. You see the world in your own unique way because of the unique life you have lived. You love the way you do because of what you have been exposed to. This book takes you on a journey of love that is longer, wider, deeper, and higher than you have ever been on. The topic of love is described beyond the general, the comfortable, and the poetic, and this book offers very detailed descriptions of how to love day to day, ultimately getting real about love.

Sometimes we go through stormy periods, and sometimes life seems like a never-ending storm. During these times, we can be pushed beyond our breaking points. But with skill, we can learn to sail through these storms with joy and happiness. Becoming a good sailor doesn’t just happen. Unless our sailing skills are developed, shipwreck and disaster are always imminent. Similarly, love is a skill that must be developed.

We are living far below our love potential. Just as we use only a small fraction of our brain power, we use only a fraction of our love power. By following the teachings in this book, which are based on the teachings of Jesus, all of our relationships and even our interactions with strangers will be refined and enriched. Jesus has shown us the way to bring joy and happiness to others, to please God, and to bring us toward a deeper relationship with Him now and into eternity.

We each have different amounts of love in our lives. Some are very blessed to be living surrounded by love. Others live precariously, only one step away from suicide. All of us live somewhere on that spectrum, and all of us have an innate need to be loved. Mother Teresa acknowledges this when she states,

As far as I am concerned, the greatest suffering is to feel alone, unwanted, unloved. The greatest suffering is also having no one, forgetting what an intimate, truly human relationship is, not knowing what it means to be loved, not having a family or friends.¹

You will find a few quotations from Mother Teresa in this book, not because of any rigorous academic research she has done, but because her observations and comments are insightful, helpful, profound, and derived from a life selflessly devoted to countless others.

Billions of people are living unfulfilling lives simply because of their lack of understanding of how to love. You may know people who are going through various types of difficulties, such as relationship stress, divorce, rejection, loneliness, financial pressure, brokenheartedness, depression, physical illness, mental illness, or despair. You really wish things could be different for these people you care about who are struggling. Well, you can make a difference.

Most people want to have happy relationships both inside and outside the home, but they don’t realize the ways in which they damage their relationships. With a very high divorce rate in the church and in the world as a whole, a vast amount of improvement is greatly needed. We have the same damaging behavior in our marriages as we have in our other relationships with family members, friends, associates, and even strangers. Doing the wrong things in relationships builds up walls or creates tangled webs, which become a source of frustration and unhappiness. A simple problem can cause a reaction, causing a counter-reaction, which, in turn, causes a counter-counter-reaction, and so on. This very often ends with dislike, incompatibility, or even hate.

By understanding the section on Love Essentials, you will avoid damaging and sabotaging your own relationships and will, instead, rebuild and transform them. You will understand the effect of your love in all situations. As you improve your ability to love, the lives of others will be enriched and happier because of your involvement with them. In return, the love received back from them will enrich your life and bring you joy. The lessons from the Love Essentials will have a profound effect on your world.

We have a growing hunger for relationships of greater depth and substance. We are tiring of superficiality. We yearn for relationships that are more real, where we really care about people and people really care about us. Research shows that the quality of one’s relationships is a significant risk factor for major depression.² There is also a strong link between major depression and suicide. Your love walk has a greater effect than you may realize.

Understanding the unique considerations in the section on The People in Your Life will give you a new and insightful perspective on your relationship with your parents, brother, sister, friend, spouse, and children. You have known some of these people so long you may have become stuck in your mind-set and behavior toward them. You have not realized this has been holding back the happiness and joy that should be present for all involved. Your mind-set will be changed as you gain knowledge of the love essentials and develop a more insightful perception of them.

You will also gain a greater understanding of people who are lonely, mentally ill, physically ill, living in poverty, living with addiction, or homeless. Some of these people you may unknowingly cross paths with on a regular basis. When you abound in love, your attitude changes, your skills develop, and you become less intimidated by others’ difficulties. You will create joy in the lives of some people who have never felt joy before. And you may be surprised about the resulting effect upon your own life.

Most people know that communication is important in any relationship. However, adopting new communication techniques is pointless unless you change your underlying attitude and behavior. Knowing the Love Essentials is the first step in improving How You Communicate. Once that foundation is understood, you will improve your use of words, tone of voice, body language, listening skills, and responses.

When you make the changes you specifically identify for yourself in this book, you will be surprised to find that the apparent complexities of your relationship issues are actually quite simple. Swift solutions will become self-evident as you become your own counselor and counsel others. You will discover your ability to be a pipeline of joy to others.

According to Romans 13:10, Love is the fulfillment of the law. The end objective of every biblical law is love. In Mark 12:28, Jesus said the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love your neighbor. While other concerns are still important, our greatest focus should be on love.

Above all our busy agendas, our goals, our knowledge, and our possessions, what God cares most about is that we love Him and love each other in the way Jesus teaches. The greatest attribute that God wants us to know He has, is love. The section on Our Love Walk and God shows that those with faith who have the genuine attitude and desire to love are the people who please Him and are the ones with whom He wants to share eternal fellowship.

Have you ever asked yourself, Why is my prayer not being answered? or Why am I not being healed? or How do I get God’s attention? It is not how long or how loud you pray, or even how much you confess the Word; the Bible is clear that faith works by love. You will see why you receive God’s attention and your Answers to Prayer when you abound in love.

Whenever the world hears about the church in the news these days, it is usually regarding the church’s stance on some contentious issue of the day or about some scandal. But the world needs to know that the church places love and mercy above everything else. The church cannot be complacent when there is so much loneliness, hunger, divorce, strife, brokenheartedness, and suicide. Jesus says, By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:35).

Love should be at the top of the priority list and should be the most talked about topic from the pulpit. If churches begin to place an emphasis on teaching and developing love, this message will strengthen love and unity within families and congregations, bring people closer to God, increase faith, attract new followers, produce strong churches, and bring joy and happiness to a hurting world.

This book also covers love in the workplace since we spend half of our waking hours there. That’s a significant proportion of our lives. While at work, we approve of behavior that is intolerant of mistakes. We accept the concepts of being fired or of firing others if a job is not done as expected. We accept that there is not much room for patience, mercy, forgiveness, or spending time meeting the needs of others because we are paid to be productive. Jesus wants us to love our neighbor and forgive seven times seventy times, but that doesn’t happen in the workplace. So for many people, loving-your-neighbor behavior is either put on hold for half the day, or else they have become so conditioned by their workplace behavior that it has become their all-day behavior, which is unfortunate for their loved ones.

The chapter on Love in the Workplace describes the right attitude, mind-set, and behavior to adopt in order for us to abound in love and be pleasing to God while still meeting workplace expectations.

The most difficult concept to accept and to put into practice is to love an enemy by doing good toward him or her. We have a hard enough time dealing with being offended by loved ones, let alone by an enemy. We want to avoid or retaliate against enemies, not help them. Conflict with enemies, taken to an extreme, can result in war. Today’s ongoing wars have caused over forty million precious people to be forcibly displaced from their homes, causing them to live in inconceivable misery. Enemies and War are topics we would rather avoid because we feel avoidance makes our lives simpler. But this chapter brings us face-to-face with the realization that the underlying issues with enemies and war are not so different from those we have in all our other relationships.

Most of us can honestly say we have not placed any great priority on developing our knowledge and behavior of love. Love is just something we have taken for granted; we simply assume there is not much to know. We receive training in many areas of our lives, but in the area of love, there has been little.

The apostle Paul constantly encouraged people to increase their knowledge of love, as revealed in his letter to the Philippians: And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment (Philippians 1:9).

Again, in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, he writes,

And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all, just as we do to you, so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints. (1 Thessalonians 3:12-13)

As you gain a clear understanding of how to love, you will not only be a good husband, wife, brother, sister, parent, child, or friend, you will become a complete loving person. Further, you will become a more lovable person in the eyes of others. You will love at the higher level that was shown to us by Jesus, and you will love in a way that pleases God.

It is the Lord’s will that your world be free from brokenheartedness and oppression, and instead, be full of joy and happiness. So turn these pages and begin to make it so, as you abound in love.

LOVE ESSENTIALS

While walking down a hospital corridor with Mom, I suddenly realized I was walking alone. I turned around and noticed her standing there behind me, looking into a hospital room, and then she entered it. I thought she must have recognized someone she knew, so I went back to see who she had seen. I saw Mom holding the hand of an unfamiliar woman. Both were smiling, yet Mom had never met this woman before in her life. It’s not like Mom had nothing better to do with her time; Mom (Lily) and Dad (Ivan) are parents to ten children. Who has time to think about anyone else when you have ten kids? Okay, my story is not earth-shattering and it may not seem like a big deal—but it is.

Mom’s simple action was the result of an attitude of kindness and mercy she has developed. She looks out for the needs of those around her, including her husband, her children, her friends, her acquaintances, and even strangers. Mom avoids being critical, judgmental, and rude. The lives of many who are close to her have been enriched by the kindness she has given and by the negative attitudes she has avoided. Mom’s life is enriched by the numerous people who keep in close contact with her and who care about her. In fact, the simple action I saw in the hospital was only the tip of the iceberg.

Over the years, I have learned from my mom by observing how she subtly and gently handles a troubling relationship situation with a loving approach. At times, I remember feeling a bit surprised when I or someone else would express frustration or irritation about someone, and she would advocate patience, understanding, or forgiveness. She lives a life of love out of her desire to please God. Who will ever know the vast ramifications in the lives of others by the attitude adopted by this one woman?

I remember having a discussion with my dad about someone he was helping. I thought Dad was being