I’m no expert on the subject of love, but I’ve been around for a while, and from my experience and perspective, passive love-the kind you feel inside-isn’t of much use at all. If you can’t show it or do it or speak it, with warmth and sincerity, it isn’t love at all. Don’t kid yourself that you’re a loving person if you don’t act it out: you aren’t.
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It’s a sad thing indeed to have to qualify what love actually is and what it isn’t, but it’s necessary in our day. Love is absent from most of our interactions, as Jesus himself predicted. Of our times, and particularly speaking of our relationship with Him, he said this:
Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold (Matthew 24:12-13 NIV).
And here’s the motivation to be otherwise:
“…but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”
Love is kindness, caring, commitment, helping, encouraging, compassion, acceptance. Love is touching, hugging, smiling. Love is wanting the best for others, whoever they are. Love is a doing word. Love is like a ray of warm sunshine.
Love is not sex, though love should undoubtably be at the centre of sex. Contrary to popular opinion, we do not have to have sex with someone we love: we can love someone without having sex with them. In fact, it’s usually more loving to not have sex with them. And sex is not love: it’s a physical act which should be one form of the expression of love, limited only to those we are totally and unconditionally committed to, of the opposite gender, and who we are married to. But love should be spread abroad by us to all those we come in contact with, even if it’s only in the form of a heartfelt smile, or a warm word.
Remember that without love, I am nothing at all:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
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 (1 Corinthians 13:1-7 NKJV).
Thank you for reading.
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 