“If you love someone . . you will always believe in them.” 1 Corinthians 13:7 TLB
“Love is clearly the strongest force, and the most personal and precious of gifts.”
My thoughts today are about “love.”
Love is longed for by everyone, yet misunderstood by many. A lot of things masquerade as love that are not really love at all. People will touch your life and claim to love you. They may be sincere but do not act in loving ways. It is not intention that qualifies one’s actions as loving; love is a manner of relating to another with kindness and understanding, evidencing the selflessness of love’s character. For instance, extreme jealousy is not love, but a hurtful possessiveness that only postures itself as love. Love trusts rather than distrusts, believes rather than doubts.
Any attempt to control another individual’s will is not love, even with assurances it is. Love cares and desires to contribute to another’s well being, even when tempted to control. Love does not seek to gain advantage or satisfy one’s own desire or need, at the expense of another. Love wants and seeks only the highest and the best for the other, even at the sacrifice of one’s own wants. Love is never selfish; love serves and sacrifices.
Every effort to limit and confine another is not love. Love allows room for a person to grow and be free to become more, respecting the individuality and uniqueness of the one loved. Love does not coerce another to conform to your wishes against their will. Real love accepts people as they are, and then enables them to become what they should. See John 1:12 KJV.
That’s why love is not always easy. Love will not hold on, when it needs to let go. Love does not insist on unquestioned rightness when there are honest differences. Love may well choose to defer to another without demanding or leaving.
Does that sound like love is weak, or that to love you must be willing to become a doormat to someone else’s abuse? Love is anything but weak. Love is strong enough not to impose itself against another’s will. Love is the most personal and precious of gifts you are able to give, and the strongest force of which you are capable. Read 1 Corinthians 13:1-7/13 TLB.
God’s love is the highest and purest love known. “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.” John 3:16. Everything costs somebody something, but God’s love cost Him everything. “Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the (price) for our sins.” 1 John 4:10. Your love is a learned response, the result of the love that you have received; the love you can offer is more than any love you naturally would have been able to give. John 13:34-35.
My prayer for you today is: value what is priceless, and refuse every cheap substitute.