Love

Love. It is a word that is thrown around a lot today. Sometimes the meaning behind the word is anything but real love. I looked up the word love in the dictionary and this is what I found:

1- a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person
2- a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection
3- sexual passion or desire
4- a person toward whom love is felt
5- direct address as in term of endearment
6- a love affair
7- copulation
8- a personification of sexual affection
9- affectionate concern for the well being of others
10- strong predilection, enthusiasm, or liking of anything
11- the object or thing so liked
12- the benevolent affection of God for His creatures
13- a score of nothing, zero as in tennis

Is is just me or is it odd that the basis of real love didn't make the list until number 12??? The only way we can truly love someone the way God intended it is to model the way we love after Jesus. He set us an example of how to love.

Real love always begins with a decision. It is also maintained by decisions we make. We may be attracted to someone apart from that decision, but that is not love. Attraction may initiate a relationship, but it will never sustain it. A real loving relationship is made by a commitment and a choice to love and give. Love is never based on an emotion or feelings. Those things can change day by day or even hour by hour. It is not based on whether it is deserved or not. It does not set conditions. It just loves. No matter what. The feelings of love are wonderful and there is nothing wrong with them. It's just those always follow behind deliberate decisions to love. People throw the word love around a lot with nothing to back it up. I like to hear my husband tell me that he loves me, but to be quite honest, I love when he shows me how much he loves me. This past summer we planted a bunch of new shrubs and flowers. It literally took me about an hour every night to water them. He came in one night and told me he bought something to make the job easier. It totally blew me away. It was not a big grand gesture, but he was thinking of me and trying to make my life easier. The old saying "you can give without loving, but you can't love without giving" is so true. 1 John 3:18 tells us "My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth." Love requires deeds, not just words. Our words can sometimes be just that- flat empty words. When we love this way, it is a selfless love. Selfless love is what drives a man to get up and work to support his family or a mother to get up countless times at night with a sick child. It just gives and gives out of that love with no expectations. Sometimes those small acts of love can get lost in the busyness of life and go unnoticed. I will be the first to admit that the few times my husband has had flowers delivered at work, I loved to show them off. I loved to hear the women ooh and ahh over them. I just don't want to measure how much my husband loves me by the amount of flowers I get. Real love does not always produce a bouquet of flowers or a piece of jewelry. What real love gives is so much more - it is that secure feeling deep within your heart that you KNOW you are loved. That you can rest in the fact that someone has got "your back" and your best interest at heart.


Most of the love we see today is based on a selfish love. Just look at how Hollywood defines love. Basically, they are saying I love you until: a) I find someone better or b) you do something I don't like. Selfish love wants to call it quits when their needs are not getting met or maybe their love is not being appreciated or reciprocated in they way they feel it should be. Selfish love always, always, always put their own needs in front of the other person. Our nature is to be selfish, but selfishness is the greatest enemy of love, and will destroy any relationship given the time. Selfish love can't weather the storms in a relationship. And take it from a woman who has been married 28+ years, they will come. I would like to say that I have always loved in selfless way, but I have not. I don't think any married couple can say they have. Along the way, I have let my emotions, selfishness, and expectations determine what kind of love I demostrated toward my husand. He would probably say the same thing. Come March of next year, I will be married 29 years. I always say I love him more today than I did in 1982, but it could be that I understand more of what real love is.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
I John 4:11