True Love

I had such a struggle with this that I like to come back to this topic often because I think others must struggle with it also.  What does true love seek?  It seeks the other person’s wellbeing or their good!  

In God’s Word it says this in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Why did He do that?  It was because we needed him, not because He needed us.  John didn’t say that God is a loving God; no, he said God is love.  When you say that someone is loving, you would put that in the category of the person’s attributes, but this is much more than just an attribute with God, this is who God is.  

There is no one that doesn’t need love and everyone is looking for genuine love.  Some might say that God created man so that He would have someone to love but that is not true because God is complete in Himself and He lacks nothing.  Does He want us to fellowship with Him?  Sure, because He loves us, but not because He can benefit from us but that we will benefit from the relationship we have with Him!

I wonder how many people have mistaken love with lust and I wonder how many people really know the difference between love and lust.  Real love isn’t just a feeling or an emotional high or a one night stand or a selfish desire, no true love is a commitment to one another in the good times or the bad times, putting the other person’s needs ahead of your own and trying to meet those needs.  If anyone has experienced true love from the counterfeit, they know that there is no comparison, because true love is so refreshing and so real it compels people to love.

How many times have you used the word love for a chance to manipulate a person or to use a person for your benefit?  Or, just think of how many times others have done it to you!  It is no fun to feel like you are just being used by someone.  Every time the Lord healed a person or cast a demon out of a person or raised a person from the dead or set a person free of bondage or taught people or fed them, He didn’t need them, they all needed Him and the big reason He did it was because He is love and He acted according to what He was.  True love is not an inward expression but an outward expression.  

In 1 Corinthians we can read about the characteristics of true love.  Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

How can you tell that much of the love that is talked about is more about lust and selfishness than anything else?  Just read about the divorce rates in and out of the church!  I believe that genuine love will happen when Jesus is in the center of your relationships and to the people who are committed to Him and His Word, drinking from the fountain of life every day and putting His Word into practice.  I believe that unless the Lord build the house you labor in vain that build it.  The Lord is the glue, so to speak, that will hold the marriage together.  This isn’t to say that you will never have any misunderstandings or any disagreements, after all none of us are perfect, but when they happen there will be forgiveness and restoration and not a trip to divorce court.  This also goes for relationships that are so shallow that they dissolve with a disagreement that many times amounts to no big thing and could be resolved with an apology and a willingness to forgive.  Let me say this, non-believers have relationships that last along with marriages that last and some seem to be very happy, but I don’t think that they can reach their greatest potential without the Lord in the center of their relationships.  I know He has made a big difference in my marriage which started out on my part with lust.  

I have given you something to think about and I hope this has been an encouraging Tidbit.  May the good Lord bless you and yours and may you all have a super, super day!!