Thoughts on True Love

As we are well into our #trueLOVE Initiative, I find myself reflecting on Love. What is love? Is it just the Hollywood nice fuzzy feeling we see on movies? Does that mean when you have the ‘feeling’ you have love, and when you don’t, you’re not in love anymore? Does love just happen solely in a relationship, is it just man and women, or is it more? What the heck is LOVE?

I don’t think love is simply a feeling.

I think…
Love gives.
Love serves.
Love pours out.
Love builds up.
Love loves those who don’t earn it; those who did NOTHING to deserve it.

Love is Jesus. Who gave HIS life for us. Called us and created us for HIS good and his purpose. Love is giving of ourselves to take action to help those He loves.

The ACT of LOVE

Love is taking action on a feeling; knowing that God cannot and WILL NOT bless intention. God can only bless action.That means love may start with a feeling which then leads to action, and then leads to steadfastness. In fact, I don’t know if there is a better word to use for love than steadfastness. When you love, you’re there; present, immovable, and constant no matter what. When you love your wife, you stay. When you love an adopted child, love is steadfast and steady long after the feelings have left. This is where many get it wrong. Love doesn’t start and end with a feeling. Love doesn’t end when the feeling goes. True love remains long after the feeling departs. And the beautiful thing is, those who love with steadfastness feel deeper levels of feeling as time goes on.

Love is choosing to open your heart again after you have been hurt. It’s spending money you could use on yourself to help another. It’s having an open hand holding your time, talents, and treasures with a heart of generosity KNOWING that ALL that we have is God’s and none of it is our own. And that He has made us ambassadors of the Kingdom of God with a mission to go to the four corners of the world and gather into this Kingdom as many as will enter. And the way they will enter is because we love them like Jesus loves us.

Love and Injustice

Love is looking at the atrocity of injustice; a nameless faceless statistic and humanizing her. Giving her a name. Then going out of our way to meet her where she is at and help her into all that God has for her.

Love is welcoming an orphan into your home. It’s serving till it hurts and giving till your used up. Love is giving up the career to raise children or sacrificing your dream to pursue a career so they can eat. Love does what’s right even if it doesn’t feel good. It’s loving like Jesus as best as we can to the people God awakens us to. That might be in your home, down the street, across the city or across the globe. Love is letting others pain intrude on our comfort. Then doing it all over again, even if it almost breaks you.

Jesus said – there is no greater love than this…That one would lay down his life for another.

“This is our greatest commandment. “And he said to him,”You Shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:37-30

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