Love

Love: How God Loves Us

We understand what love is as well as who can love and why to love.

I mentioned at the beginning of the series that God is love. We will never truly understand love because God is love and we can never understand God because His ways are higher than our ways. That’s why this series is a tricky one.

Yet, we have some examples of how God loves us. I guess we can say actions speak louder than words.

Probably the most famous example of God’s love is John 3:16. God loved the world so much that He sent His Son to die in our place so that we can have eternal life. When we reflect on the fact that Jesus is God, this means that, basically, God sacrificed Himself for us.

When always consider the ultimate sacrifice as the ultimate sign of love. God sets this perfect example of such love. When you look at the definition of love, you can see God matched the criteria.

God really doesn’t have to do anything else to show love, yet He does. Why does He love us? Because He does…but also, because He is love.

Considering that definition, God embodies that. When we think of that, we think of Him…or we should. It’s really interesting. I talked about how the way we treat others is really how we treat God. Not only does He do such things, He expects love in return. If we don’t love His people…the people of His likeness, then we truly are not loving God. Makes sense to me.

Why we love people is a mystery and it probably will always be simply because love is a mystery. God’s love is likely too much to comprehend. Yet, we are capable of producing this love. It is the very same love so, as we love, we are love. We become the fruit we produce.

Oh boy, let me stop right here.

Love: Why We Should Love Others

I’m going to share a few verses with you explaining why it is important to love others.

But first, some of my thoughts. Love is more of a verb than a feeling to me. You must make the choice to love someone. That “feeling” is often paired with hormones and such. You don’t always feel like loving your friend when he gets on your nerves.

Ha, God definitely chooses to love us. As much as we mess up? If he felt like loving, we’d be dead by now. He chooses to love us despite our mistakes. He loved us so much he decided to send His only Son to save us all. So, now that we know about love, let’s talk about it.

Matthew 22:39 says (from NKJV): And the second is like, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’.

What does that mean? Well, we love ourselves. At least, we should. And, as we respect and love ourselves we should be showing this same love to others. But we’re still at the point of, “Why?” Why should I love someone I don’t even know?

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Love: Can You Truly Love?

A question about love is can we love? The answer is: It depends.

In an older post, I talked about the fruits of the Holy Spirit. I talked about how, without the Holy Spirit, there is no fruit to produce. The Spirit acts as the seed in order to produce such fruit.

One of the fruits of the Spirit is love. Therefore, the only way to produce such fruit is to have that seed in you. If not, then you cannot love, as the Bible would describe.
If you have no seed, can you produce fruit?

Accepting the seed opens up the possibility to love. Yet, we still must make the decision to love. Producing such fruit takes time. We must water it every day. Practice love. It takes practice, buddy. It’s more than a feeling (I’ll talk about that statement later in the series). We know the definition of love so that statement shouldn’t be a surprise.

Those without the seed may produce something that is similar to love, but it can’t be actual love and it cannot be sustained to be love. This is a dark truth about such a thing as love.

Love: What Is Love?

Before we begin tackling love, we need to define it.

You should know something about love…and how I view it…

God is love.

One could say “I’m not here for some religious crap” and that’s fine. However, this series is not a sermon. However, I do use a biblical foundation and if that’s something you want no parts in, you can turn around, though I don’t recommend it.

There is one passage that gives a clear look, or as clear as possible, of what love is.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NKJV):

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;  does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

That’s love. As you can tell, we don’t always love…or at least show it. Let’s break it down.

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Mini Series: Love

What we know about love may not be what true love.

In a series of posts, I will tackle love.

  • What is love?
  • Why do we love?
  • How God loves us

And it could continue after that. It’s not quite done, but you will see those points I mentioned.

Love is so complicated. We have a hard time understanding it. There are multiple forms of love too. I’m going to take my time with it all, while admitting I don’t have the answers.

Wednesday Word: What Is Love?

Okay, a few things about the video. For one, you might just want to listen to it; the camera is shaky. Two, you might want to turn the volume up a little, but even then, the sound quality isn’t the best. Still, this young lady explores what love is. Take a listen:

Great. And she’s absolutely right. I wrote a little on this before so check that out.

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