Usually, I love these conversations. Matt and I both enjoy sitting down together and talking about the things that really make a difference in our marriage. The things that hurt but then allow us to grow even closer once we bring them to the table. On this particular night I was confronted with a deep conviction about something that I realized was a deep rooted problem in my life. Something that I always thought I understood and something that now I was realizing I didn't understand at all. Love.
I know that sounds a bit dramatic or maybe just too big a concept to say you don't understand. In our conversation I was linking together many specific people and instances in my life. All of which I would have said I "loved" at some point. As we were talking it was as if the holy spirit was convicting me by throwing all of these pictures of my past through my mind in order to help me understand that I had it all wrong. I could go on and on about all of these instances, but I won't. What I can say is that all of them had a very strong commonality. I had learned early in my years to associate my love for people and things with the feelings that those people and things stirred up in me. The better the feeling the more I loved them. The worse the feeling the less I was inclined to show them love. This was a huge realization for me because this way of thinking and living my has greatly affected my marriage and relationships.
As often happens when you are in a relationship with God, He has been inserting messages and scriptures into my weekly readings that have been leading me to the truth in this matter. Your earthly parents often remind you when you are wrong, and try to point you in the right direction. Likewise, your heavenly Father is the expert in this area. When I am convicted by the Holy Spirit I am so comforted to see that He does not leave me to feel broken and sad in my sin. Every time the Lord reveals my sin to me He puts His loving arms around me and points me in the right direction for healing. I was listening to Nancy's program on Revive Our Hearts and it was a pastor and his wife speaking on difficulties they were experiencing in their marriage. They were not speaking of minor problems but depression and complete separation from each other. Something that the pastors wife said really stuck in my mind these past weeks.
At that time we were operating from the worldview of “love is what you feel; love is what you experience.” The demonstration of love does evoke wonderful emotions and experiences, but love is the choice and willingness to demonstrate the love that God has demonstrated to us to others.
Immediately I am drawn to the gospel. Love is not a feeling that pulls us around based on circumstances. Love is a choice. I went into the back of my bible to find some reference points about love. Lets just say that the word Love is no stranger to the pages of the bible. 1 John 4:16 says "So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." God is love. Apart from God there can not exist real and meaningful love. There is so much that can be said of this verse alone. With God abiding in me...I cannot continue in my sin because I am a child of His. He will continue to sanctify me and lead me in the Truth. But I must obey His commandments and practice righteousness. "And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us." 1 John 3:23.
The love that Jesus (who is God) demonstrated to us while He walked this earth was not based on circumstance. Had His love been based on circumstances He wouldn't have loved a single person. His love was so pure and sacrificial. God Himself loved the people who beat Him, spit on Him, cursed Him, hated Him, and ultimately killed Him. He loved the ones who wreaked of sin and were hopelessly trapped and afraid. I find myself thinking about the people I attached myself to that I thought "loved" me and didn't. I realized that the "love" I thought I had with some, wasn't love at all. In fact, it was so harmful to me that I based my definition of love on circumstances that were very harmful to my soul. I find myself thinking about the people that I currently say I love...and I don't really show them the love of Christ. Do you show sacrificial love to the people in your life? Do you run from the people that you should love because they stir up feelings inside of you that you would rather avoid? Or is love a choice for you.
Love does evoke some very powerful feelings in us. And those feelings are very real. But, those feelings are not to determine the choices we make concerning the people in our lives. It's not a sacrifice when we love only when and if it makes us feel good. We must honor our marriage covenants before God and we must honor our fathers and mothers. There are so many relationships in my life that go up and down with my emotions. They are unstable because my emotions are unstable. God is my rock. God is love. And therefore, if I set my feet upon the rock I can love more fully than I have been.
There is so much joy that comes from the love of Christ both for us and for us to pour out on others. So many women are trapped in relationships (I am speaking of those outside of marriage) that are unloving. I am pained to see that the love that they think they have for their significant other isn't really true love at all. I have been trapped in such relationships. When we measure relationships up to anything other than Christ we can be greatly deceived. Our feelings can make us feel obligated to continue in patterns that are extremely harmful to us. I also know women who demonstrate true sacrificial love in a hard marriage. And I see the joy in their lives for honoring their spouses even though it is hard. We need to analyze our relationships and acknowledge the true definition of love. I am going to continue to acknowledge my need for Him in this area of my life. I am going to analyze my relationships and my understanding of love. If I want to know more about how to love I need to know more about Him who is love.
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