Love. What is it? What does it look like? Why share it? Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? There must be a reason behind Jesus’ decision to make the act of ‘love’ his most important command,
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The second is this: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:28-31)
I have been studying Cynthia Heald’s book Becoming a Woman Who Loves with a group of older and much wiser women than I… it’s been wonderful. 🙂 We started the study a few weeks ago and have been laying the foundation for ‘love’. Part of that “laying” requires us to define ‘love’. As we did so, we came across something that was both eye-opening and saddening…
According to Webster, love is:
(1) : strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties
(2) : attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers
(3) : affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interest
(4) : warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion
(5) : the object of attachment, devotion, or admiration
(6) : unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another
(7) : the fatherly concern of God for humankind
(8) : brotherly concern for others
(9): a god or personification of love
According to the Bible, love is:
(1 John 4:9-10) : This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
(1 John 5:3) : This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,…
(John 13:34) : A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
Why does it take the world five definitions to find the true meaning of Love? We noticed that all men and women seek the same ‘love’… it is His love and it is written on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33). Christians and non-Christians alike, we are innately born to thirst for the same Love. It is when people encounter love (try to find it, create it, keep it, change it) that we saw a big difference between the two groups of people. The world will seek it as an emotion, a source of assurance and self-gain, a physical attraction and reaction, a lifetime goal of happiness and human perfection. This is crazy talk and it ends in more heartache than heartthrobs. Just listen to any song on the radio. The non-Christian is seeking the wrong source for this love… God is love and it is only when we seek/believe/abide in Him that we are truly able to love and be loved (1 John 4:16). I feel like I’m skimming over lots of important information and forgetting most things, but please hear these few things… We can only find pure and perfect love in Him. He alone is the selfless, sacrificing, unconditional lover that we all dream of. His Son was a perfect example of that love and it is his example that we should follow. We ought to seek Him for the love that the world wishes to find in other people – it cannot be found solely among us humans. God’s love (agape love) is a form of love that is given unconditionally and deliberately to those who are not worthy… and he freely gives that to us. He created love and us (Genesis 1:26-27). Thus, He also created our hearts to thirst for love just as His does. But, it is only in Him that we can truly find it. Our sin and fall in this world makes us think (and wish) otherwise, but it’s simply not possible. He is our hearts’ true lover and it is with the fullness of love that we receive from Him that we are able to love others. Never perfectly, but always trying. 🙂
Here are a few quotes that we’ve found in Becoming a Woman Who Loves and really enjoyed:
“Any time love is pursued, the pursuer can never be the same for it is the nature of love to transform.” Cynthia Heald
“Love is the most God-like state of the soul. God is not faith or hope; God is love. The Eternal does not believe or anticipate, but He does love – He is love. Love is the life of the soul. It warms every vein and beats in every pulse.” David Thomas
“Love is the greatest of teachers, for there is no authority more compelling, no power more hypnotically transforming, no counsel more wise, no message more longing to hear, no master for whom it is easier to give up absolutely everything in order to follow and obey.” Mike Mason
“Love never fails….” God, 1 Corinthians 13 :8
“To love as Jesus loved is to keep a towel wrapped around our waists so that we are ready to bow down and serve as needed.” Cynthia Heald
“To be a disciple means that we deliberately identify ourselves with God’s interests in other people. Jesus says, ‘That ye love one another, as I have loved you….’ The expression of Christian character is not good doing, but Godlikeness. If the Spirit of God has transformed you within, you will exhibit Divine characteristics in your life, not good human characteristics. God’s life in us expresses itself as God’s life, not as a human life trying to be godly.” Oswald Chambers
“You will give yourself to many things; give yourself first to Love.” Henry Drummond
Lots of Love,
Christina
More Than A Conqueror 