LOVE
"1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For so long I have been living life as if I truly knew what "Love" was... Boy was I wrong! God has recently opened my eyes up to what TRUE Love is! It all started with Cheerleading. Last week I was preparing devotions for the team and I was so confused on what God was wanting me to do them on, but then God gave it to me! 1 Corinthians 13, is what God gave me, the well known passage about Love. We went through the passage before the game that night and little did I know that our team Bible study, after the game, would be about the same passage.
After the game we went through the same passage on a different level than I brought for devotionals. We hit the verses 5-8 hard, with emphasis on the beginning of verse 8.
"5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away."
We talked about how God is Love and how God never fails us, in the team Bible study. And the saying Love never fails kept burning its way into my brain! Love never fails! Love never fails! Love never fails! It made me think of times when I thought that Love failed. This made me think of failure too. So I had two thoughts running through my head. Let's hit the first one when Love failed.
- Love failed... I bet we can all think of a time when we feel like Love has failed us. But what does that even mean? How can Love fail if it is just an emotion? Well let's get down to the root of. There are 14 definitions for Love under the contexts of a noun, and 6 as a verb. For this we will use the second definition of Love, as a noun, " a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend." So how can a "feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection for a 'being'" fail? Think about it... can a feeling fail? No. The actions that are motivated by the feeling can fail, but the actual feeling itself can not fail. So how can we say that Love has failed us? In this we have to look at failure.
- Failure is a noun that is defined in 7 ways. The one we will use is, "an act or instance of failing or proving unsuccessful; lack of success." In today if we are afraid of failing because we do not want to be look down upon for messing up or not succeeding. Why are we so afraid of failure? Self-image? Monetary gain?
The way that God hit me with this whole thing first was with 1 John 4:18, one of my favorite verses that applies to this. It says, "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made in perfect love." Perfect love drives out fear. If God is Perfect Love, then we should have no fear... and if we have no fear of failure all we have is love and that is all we need, love. Because, again, Love = God. God Blew my mind to pieces in how to Love Him. This is just part of the story though; the next part takes place at the Winter Retreat.
When I was going through my Time Alone With God this weekend at The Effect Winter Retreat, I was reading a book called Soul Cravings. In the 3rd entry, it says this, "When you give up on Love, everything else seems to go with it- joy, hope, forgiveness, compassion- they're all interconnected." Joy, hope, forgiveness, and compassion are all characteristics of God. So I took this as, if we don't have Love, we don't God. (Also 1 John 4:8 says that whoever doesn't know God, doesn't know love.) But perfect Love is God, so our love is for the one who created love, God. (Sorry if I confused you with that!) Also in Soul Cravings, it says, "It's as if we've been purposefully designed with a factory defect that keeps us searching... for love." This concept blew my mind!!! God created us with a purposeful defect that has us searching for love, but not any love, God's love. We have been created to seek Him and to seek love in and through Him! It's so simple, but yet so complex! And I couldn't be more happy to have a defect!! :)
So God has shown me what TRUE love is! It is something more than just a feeling, something more than just a word, and something that is conveyed between two people who are married. God is love, and when we love others, we are showing them God. But when God isn't in the picture and the word love is being used, that is a distorted view of love. When it is said between two people and God isn't the focus, it is just infatuation, so it is fake love. When a person says that they are loving their neighbor, but is mean to them and hurts them. That is fake love too. So the true meaning of Love is God. And now that I know this, I can better know how to love those around me and deepen the love for my family and friends.
This was my view of Love before God transformed my view of Love from:
Disillusion of Love
to...
Disillusion of Love
to...
This, my
Clear View of Love.
God has been moving through me and teaching me a new way to love and what TRUE love is and I am excited to see what God has in store for me next in my walk with Him! :) God Bless you all and I will post y'all later! ByeBye!
-Carter Bob
