Subject: What is Love?
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 01:43:53 +0000
To: "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
From: Rhonda Steiner
To: heb_roots_chr@mail.geocities.com
Subject: What is Love?
With Valentines day resently behind us, I thought I would RESEND my
devotional on LOVE. Also I recommend you check out this article on
LOVE. It's a study my pastor did a while back.
http:/www.inchrist.org/lovepcl.html
1 Cor 13:1-13
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of
angels, but have not love, I am only a
resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If 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.
3 If I give all I possess to the poor and
surrender my body to the flames, but have
not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not
envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is
not easily angered, it keeps no record of
wrongs.
6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices
with the truth.
7 It always protects, always trusts, always
hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love 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.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in
part,
10 but when perfection comes, the
imperfect disappears.
11 When 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.
12 Now 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.
13 And now these three remain: faith,
hope and love. But the greatest of these is
love.
Oh how the world has misused and abused this
thing we call love. I looked in the dictionary to see
how it defined love, check this out:
1.A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection
and solicitude toward a person, such as that
arising from kinship, recognition of
attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying
oneness.
2.A feeling of intense desire and attraction
toward a person with whom one is
disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex
and romance.
3.a. Sexual passion. b. Sexual intercourse. c.
A love affair.
4.An intense emotional attachment, as for a
pet or treasured object.
5.A person who is the object of deep or
intense affection or attraction; beloved.
Often used as a term of endearment.
6.An expression of one's affection.
MY OH MY! Look at every definition, love is a
feeling, an emotion, a passion, affection, attraction,
love affair (thats funny), sexual intercourse (even
funnier). This is EXACTLY how the WORLD
defines love, it is a FEELING. And we wonder
why so many people fall out of LOVE and get
divorced. Could it be that they never KNEW
what LOVE was from the get go?
Well my friends love is a verb, an action, not an
emotion. An emotion may be a reaction to love
but love in itself is not, at least God's definition
isn't. Can an emotion or feeling protect? Nope.
Trust? Nope. Hope? Nope. Persevere? Nope.
Fail? of course, our emotions, if we follow them
will always lead to failure, so how can love be an
emotion if, love never fails!?! Love is what you
do. We don't show God we LOVE him by saying
"GOD I LOVE YOU" or by having an internal
mushy feeling. We show him we love him by
doing. By obeying. This is the only way he will
know you love him.
Joh 14:24 He who does not love me will not obey
my teaching. These words you hear are not my
own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
I want God to KNOW I LOVE HIM!!!!
ALWAYS!!! The only way I can show him is
through obedience. God's Love for us is NOT a
feeling, he does for us, he DID for us with the
death of his SON. He is always doing for us and
his love is absolutely 100% unconditional, we
never have to worry about God NOT loving us,
but I want him to know that he never has to worry
about ME not loving him. Not that he would
worry but you get my point.
When I get married I don't want the man who is
marrying me to be doing so because of some
mushy feeling. I want to know that when he says
he will LOVE me every day of my life that he
means he will LOVE as in, protect, trust, never fail
me, every day of my life. Even on the days the
mushy feeling has long past, he will still LOVE me.
Ok I think I have driven the point home. I really
think people, especially in the church where the
divorce rate is as high as the world, need to wake
up and realize what love really is as far as God is
concerned. And stop looking at what the world
says it is. The only way anyone can experience
true love is in the Kingdom of God, so no one
who is out in the world has any idea what love is!
And until they know God they never will! Sad isn't
it? So next time someone says "I am in love with
so and so?" Think about it. The next time you read
a scripture that says love your brothers and
sisters, know that God means do for your
brothers and sisters and not have a mushy feeling
for them. If we live life by our emotions we are
destined to fail. Satan has done a good job at
making people in the world as well as in the Body
of Christ, think that love is nothing but an emotion.
Well on that note, go and LOVE someone today!
God Bless, Kelly
******************************************************************