Subject: What is Love? Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 01:43:53 +0000 To: "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
From: Rhonda Steiner To: heb_roots_chr@mail.geocities.com Subject: What is Love? With Valentines day resently behind us, I thought I would RESEND my devotional on LOVE. Also I recommend you check out this article on LOVE. It's a study my pastor did a while back. http:/www.inchrist.org/lovepcl.html 1 Cor 13:1-13 1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. Oh how the world has misused and abused this thing we call love. I looked in the dictionary to see how it defined love, check this out: 1.A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness. 2.A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance. 3.a. Sexual passion. b. Sexual intercourse. c. A love affair. 4.An intense emotional attachment, as for a pet or treasured object. 5.A person who is the object of deep or intense affection or attraction; beloved. Often used as a term of endearment. 6.An expression of one's affection. MY OH MY! Look at every definition, love is a feeling, an emotion, a passion, affection, attraction, love affair (thats funny), sexual intercourse (even funnier). This is EXACTLY how the WORLD defines love, it is a FEELING. And we wonder why so many people fall out of LOVE and get divorced. Could it be that they never KNEW what LOVE was from the get go? Well my friends love is a verb, an action, not an emotion. An emotion may be a reaction to love but love in itself is not, at least God's definition isn't. Can an emotion or feeling protect? Nope. Trust? Nope. Hope? Nope. Persevere? Nope. Fail? of course, our emotions, if we follow them will always lead to failure, so how can love be an emotion if, love never fails!?! Love is what you do. We don't show God we LOVE him by saying "GOD I LOVE YOU" or by having an internal mushy feeling. We show him we love him by doing. By obeying. This is the only way he will know you love him. Joh 14:24 He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. I want God to KNOW I LOVE HIM!!!! ALWAYS!!! The only way I can show him is through obedience. God's Love for us is NOT a feeling, he does for us, he DID for us with the death of his SON. He is always doing for us and his love is absolutely 100% unconditional, we never have to worry about God NOT loving us, but I want him to know that he never has to worry about ME not loving him. Not that he would worry but you get my point. When I get married I don't want the man who is marrying me to be doing so because of some mushy feeling. I want to know that when he says he will LOVE me every day of my life that he means he will LOVE as in, protect, trust, never fail me, every day of my life. Even on the days the mushy feeling has long past, he will still LOVE me. Ok I think I have driven the point home. I really think people, especially in the church where the divorce rate is as high as the world, need to wake up and realize what love really is as far as God is concerned. And stop looking at what the world says it is. The only way anyone can experience true love is in the Kingdom of God, so no one who is out in the world has any idea what love is! And until they know God they never will! Sad isn't it? So next time someone says "I am in love with so and so?" Think about it. The next time you read a scripture that says love your brothers and sisters, know that God means do for your brothers and sisters and not have a mushy feeling for them. If we live life by our emotions we are destined to fail. Satan has done a good job at making people in the world as well as in the Body of Christ, think that love is nothing but an emotion. Well on that note, go and LOVE someone today! God Bless, Kelly ******************************************************************