Do You Believe in Love? - Guest Post

The following is a guest post written by my good friend JC Freak. The original piece has been edited however the origial intent and message are fully in tact.

Do You Believe in Love?

Do you believe in love? Do you believe in true love? There’s a loaded question. I like to listen to the local news/talk radio station. Theres a news radio show that usually covers issues related to the Maritimes. They have guests on the show, and listeners are allowed to call in. A couple of months ago they had an author on the show. I apologize that I do not recall her name or even the title of the book that she was promoting. It was the topic of the book that I found interesting. The author had followed around 9 young ladies, 3 in their last year of high school, and 6 in their early years of university. Her goal was to try to understand why the girls of our day were blatantly more promiscuous then the girls of her day. The girls gave her 2 major reasons.

First was that they all believed in equal rights as they had been taught in school. Whatever men could do, women could do. If certain activities were socially acceptable for men to do, then they should be socially acceptable for women to do. Social acceptability and equal rights are completely other posts.

What piqued my interest was the author’s second discovery: Every one of these girls confessed to looking for love, but they all said that love was not real and did not exist. They wanted to believe, but could not. This seems to be a sentiment of our society. Love is a wonderful concept, but it is not real. People are looking for love, want love, but do not believe in love. Why? I went to my two trusty sources to find out what it was that they were looking for. The first source was my trusty dictionary, which has never let me down when I needed a definition. The Oxford dictionary defines love as, “intense feeling of deep affection or fondness for a person or thing”

Is this really what love is? No wonder people can’t find it. No wonder people do not believe in it. No wonder people are looking everywhere for it. Who has ever had this intense feeling of deep affection for a person, and sustained it over very long periods of time? Not me!!!! Feelings are interrupted by other feelings. Have you ever felt annoyed? Have you ever felt annoyed by the ones that you love? Family? Friends?

If you say no, you are a better person than me. Feelings of annoyance or deep anger replace the feelings of deep affection. What happens then? Is the love gone? According to Oxford dictionary---yes. No wonder people don’t believe in love. This is a kind of love that cannot be sustained. This is a kind of love that will leave you. This is a kind of love that will send you in all directions, to all different kinds of people, looking for it again and again.

The definition also says that this feeling is for a person or thing. WHAT!!! A thing can create love in another? Can a thing be loved? I love my car! Look at this ring he bought me, I love it. I loved that movie. I love turkey dinners! I love my job. I have seen people have an intense feeling of deep affection for their car. I have seen this feeling outlast the one they had for their loved ones. But eventually the feeling goes away, as a new car enters the picture.

I don’t know about you, but I have very little faith in putting hope and trust into my feelings and emotions. They have failed me too often.

I went to the second source that I have come to trust. My Bible. OK, you are saying, this should have been the first source I went to, and you are probably right. I just wanted to know what love meant, and the dictionary is always right, isn’t it? Apparently not. God’s word clarifies what love is for all of us. 1 John 4:7-21 is a passage that clearly defines what love is. 1 John 4:7-21 uses the word love 28 times.

HMMM, my dictionary was wrong. Love is not an intense feeling of deep affection. Now this intense feeling could be part of love but it definitely does not define love. Love is an action and it does not come from within, it comes from God. 4:7 says “Let us love one another for love comes from God” Through God’s grace and wonderful love, He gives us the free will to choose.

We can choose to love or not to love. “Whoever does not love, does not know God”. WOW---you get to choose whether you want to know God more! Do you want to know God more? Then choose to love, for verse 8 says God is love!! Words are meaningless without the actions to back them up. Look at how God backs up his love for us with action. Verse 9. “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”

There have been many amazing events throughout history. The great flood with Noah and his family living in a boat for a year, Moses leading millions out of Egypt, Gideon defeating tens of thousands with a handful of men, Joshua walking around a city seven times and the walls crumbling, Paul’s remarkable conversion, all amazing historical events. BUT…none of them even come close to the biggest event of them all. God allowed His Son, Jesus to be beaten, tortured, bloodied, spat on, ridiculed and humiliated for YOU and ME!!! For you and me!!!! A lot of people have done things for us, but nothing compares to this. Why did God do it? Because He loves us.

This is why we love Him! Because He did this for us. We did not love God first, He first loved us. Do you want others to know the love of God? Do you want them to come to Jesus with outstretched arms? This is more than testifying that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Verse 11 may be one of the greatest understatements of the Bible. John says, “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

Could you see us standing around having tea and coffee and I say, “Attention everyone, I need to share something with you all that just came to me. Do you think that maybe, since God sent His Son to die for all of us to show His love for us, do you think that maybe we should, you know, love each other? It’s just a thought, but I felt I should share it with you all."

What kind of looks would I get? Or better yet, what comments. “You are a pastor and you are just figuring this out now? C’mon pastor Freak, it’s the essence of why we are all here, to love God and each other.” Then why does John say it? Because as obvious as the statement is, we do not always do it. Look at final verses, 19-21.

Is there someone that you brood over, that you hate, that you have an intense feeling of dislike for? God gave us the model here of what to do. We love God because He first loved us. We are to love others first, before they love us. Love is an action and it is a choice. Love is something that we choose to do, not something that we feel.

You may say, “...I can never love my wife, husband, ex-wife, ex-husband, parents, children, the best friend who turned on me or my neighbors. We could all possibly come up with someone that we might say we don’t love or can’t love. In a society that focuses so much on our individual rights, realize now that God has taken away our right to say that! After all the Sins we have committed, after all that we have done to God, and knowing what He allowed his Son to go through for us, we have NO RIGHT to choose not to love someone!! Especially, and I stress especially the one who has hurt us the most! I have heard that the best way to get back at your enemies is to love them. Who knows, they just may end up loving you back---because you first loved them.

Still not convinced? Look at the two greatest commandments that God gives us in Mathew 22:36-40. "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " '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 the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Jesus doesn’t tell us one or the other, He commands them both. Love is an action word. We love God by loving our neighbor; we love our neighbor by loving God.

Is there someone out there that you cannot love? God can teach us how to love by putting the unlovable in our paths. You may feel like you could never love them, but God tells you that you can! Not only can we, but we are commanded to.

Now here is the great news for those of us that struggle with this command. God’s love is not conditional on us loving others. He will never take his love away from you. When you stumble and fail in loving others do not beat yourself up over it! Jesus has already taken that beating for you! God loves you so much that he sacrificed his Son for you. Draw on the love of God to help you love others because this is where love comes from. Love is not a warm and fuzzy feeling. I look forward to the day when we can open our dictionary, look up the word love and see a one-word definition---God!