Read 1 Corinthians 13. What Love Isn’t
Love isn’t the warm, gushy feeling you get when being romanced by your sweetheart. Love is not a sexual desire or longing for physical interlude with another person. These are examples of mere feelings. While feelings may accompany love, they are not love.
What Love Is
According to 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.” In addition, we know from 1 John 4:16 “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” These attributes of love are really attributes of God and those who love God.
Steps to Love
We need to realize we have a choice to love. Love isn’t easy or free of effort. It takes a decision to love. It takes determination to continue to love. Most importantly it requires the Holy Spirit to love. As God is love, we can not love without God’s presence. That’s where the Holy Spirit comes into play. For those who believe Jesus died for our sin and rose again for our eternal salvation, the Holy Spirit is given to us and enables us to love.
Results of Love
There is no doubt when someone loves. You can see it in their life. Love exhibits it self in your life and the lives of others around you. Jesus gave us lots of examples to follow: washing His disciples’ feet, feeding thousands, denying His will and following His Father’s will, and laying down His life for His friends, as well as many other examples. Love changes things. Love forgives. It extends mercy rather than judgment. Love builds up rather tearing people down. Love seeks to restore rather than destroy. Just look the relationship of God and His people. Although His people repeatedly sinned and rebelled against Him, He still made it possible, through Christ, to be saved.
Above all else we can choose to do in this life; the greatest of these is the choice to love. Pursue love today. 1 John 4:7 NKJV says “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”
Lord, thank you for loving us and enabling us to love you and others. Help us choose to love and follow your example. Thank you for your Holy Spirit in us to lead us in your love. In Jesus’ name Amen.
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