Saturday, December 27, 2008

Created2 Love or What is Love?


What is it about love that causes us to go to great risks? And How do we really know what love is anyway? We throw this word “love” around like its candy at a parade. Which makes me wonder if we really understand it at all. We love pizza or chocolate or we love football. Go Dolphins! The other day we were talking about, the Office & someone said, “I love that show.” What? You love a TV show. But we also love our children, boyfriend or girlfriend, our spouse and God. It’s no wonder we’re confused.

Still everything we do revolves around love. “The world moves for love, it kneels before it in awe.” – William Walker, The Village. People spend their whole lives searching for love. We write songs about it. We write books about it. My brother just published a book of poetry motivated by love. We talk about it all the time. We even define our church by it – our mission and our very existence as a church is about starting a transformation of faith, hope and LOVE.

Yet with all this focus and attention on love it’s still really hard to find. So, what is love and where do we go to find it?

1 John 4:7 says, Dear friends, let us love one another. John is going to use this phrase 3 times in the next 5 verses – so it must be important. And the first thing we can do is rule out the misconception that love is a feeling. Yeah, it feels good and we love it (pardon the pun) but this is an imperative. Therefore, it can’t be a feeling because you can’t command someone to feel something that they don’t feel. Well, you can try but that doesn’t mean they are going to feel it.

So, that leaves us with only one other possibility – love is a choice. It’s an act of the will. Can love grow in us and can we feel it with every fiber of our being? Yes. But we either love or we don’t. It’s a decision we make.

It’s a risk we take but it’s a risk worth taking otherwise we face a life of solitude and loneliness. See, I don’t think the opposite of love is hate. I think its isolation. Hatred is certainly antithetical toward love but it’s not the end result, it’s only what leads us to isolation and loneliness and that’s the worst thing a human being can experience because we were created2 be known by love.

When we risk loving someone one else we’re putting our heart on the line, no matter who they are – whether they’re our parents, friends, or siblings. There is no guarantee that they’re going to love us back. But we love because the reward is worth the risk. There is no greater experience than knowing you are loved and finding yourself in communion with others.

This is the risk God took when He created us in his image and likeness. He gave us a free will to choose to love him or not. He said, “You can eat from that tree but I wish you wouldn’t because I love you and I want what’s best for you.” And even though we reject Him, he chooses to love us, no matter what.

Back to 1 John 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Now we know where love comes from and where to find it. It comes from God. We’re always looking for it in other people or in things (money, fame, power) but if we want to find love we have to go to the source. We have to start with God.

We’re only capable of loving one another because love originates in God. We couldn’t love if it didn’t first come from somewhere outside of ourselves. None of us would take that risk. No one would allow themselves to be that vulnerable.If you’ve ever experienced rejection you know what I’m talking about and you know that it hurts. The capacity to love comes from God not from us. Since, love comes from God, all acts of true love are reflections of God’s nature. This means that whenever anyone does something out of love God is known even if that person doesn’t claim to follow God because God is known by love.

To be continued…

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