Are you searching for love … or searching to understand love? Not the same search. Perhaps your search is for your soulmate. Perhaps you’re searching to know how to recognize Love. Or maybe how to act lovingly. For many of us, the important aspect that everyone needs is to know is how to accept love without squeezing the life out of it or making demands on it.
I haven’t written that often about love, and yet, in many respects, every post, article, writing is infused with love. In so many ways the unspoken motivation in my writing is and has always been love. Part of the reason for my apparent slight is that I believe love is an action word as well as an articulation need. We ‘see’ love in actions, though admittedly it is a word – and we need to ‘hear’ love. Love is a feeling… it’s a mindset… it’s a quest… it’s always a verb. But is it also individually defined? Do we assume that our definitions are the same for everyone and never check?
Have you noticed all of the words used to describe and define love? We are on safe ground when we look to scripture for our definitions and applications. Read again the chapter – 1 Corinthians 13, ESV. The descriptive words are:
“…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. (v.4-8) So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (v.13)
Notice too that control is not one of those definers. Neither are any of control’s expressions – manipulation, passive aggressive behavior, and the over used phrase – ‘it’s for your own good’.
Paul’s description of Love and its manifestations includes what it is not as well as what it is. Love is NOT envious, boastful, arrogant, rude, insisting on it’s own way, irritable, resentful, not rejoicing at wrongdoing. So what IS Love? It is patient kind, rejoices with the truth, bears/believes/hopes/endures all things. Love never ends. And is the greatest among faith, hope and love. These descriptions give us the knowledge to identify in others and ourselves the words and acts of Love. Quite honestly, knowing what it isn’t is valuable. We need to see and understand and practice what is and is not Love.
But how does this help us? Perhaps it helps to identify love, but how does it help us to BE loving? One way is by checking our own motivations. Are we acting in the best interest of someone else… or our own? And no, these are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but what’s primary? (Do not use the old… ‘what’s good for me is good for you’ – not necessarily.)
Actually, I think we do know a great deal about love, primarily intuitive, and when it isn’t love. Our experiences are overflowing with this information. Do we use it? Fortunately scripture gives us many examples of love in action. And, it is the message that Jesus brought.
“But love covers and overwhelms all transgressions [forgiving and overlooking another’s faults].” (Proverbs 10:12, AMP)
“Above all, have [a]fervent and unfailing love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins [it overlooks unkindness and unselfishly seeks the best for others].” (1 Peter 4:8)
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? … For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35-39)
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.” (John 15:9-10)
I could go on because there are over 100 verses that talk about love, that demonstrate what love is, that provide words that touch our hearts. Love is the greatest and most positive force given man to direct their ways.
