Love. A concept, an emotion, something beautiful that has been used and abused in our society. Another attribute of God that the devil actively tries to manipulate and destroy. Our generation, our world is constantly trying to tell us what love is or what it feels like or how to get it. It breaks my heart because over and over the bible tells us what love is and shows us examples of what true, pure love looks like.
The world has fell for the lie that romantic love is lust. Love is the emotion that drives us to the bedroom. That love is a passion, hot, heavy, intense and rough, a little toxic even. Girls don’t lie and say you’ve never said, "I fall for toxic men." Joking or not there is truth to that. It’s because the entertainment industry pushes the “bad boy/good girl” narrative ALL the time. The guy that is lowkey verbally abusive, the guy that in an argument reaches for your throat, the 50 shades of grey, weird, violent love that is supposed to be, I don’t know, sexy? It preaches that a masculine man that loves you is scary... And in turn it tells women that it is okay for a man to treat you that way. That you love him by staying with him. That out of love you stay with him while he works through anger issues... Well, if that is love, then what does it mean when we say God loves us, or for God so loved the world that he gave his only son...
Switching from the world’s idea of romantic love, to the world’s idea of love we are to show to everyone, we have toleration. Love is tolerating others. Love is minding your own business and letting them do their own thing. Love is when your friend is making a bad decision and you cosign and support them because you love them. Love is sugarcoating everything you say. Love is walking on eggshells to not hurt feelings. When did we start believing that love is so passive? That kind of love is weak and does more harm than good. If you are truly friends, you should be able to disagree and speak without getting angry and hurting feelings.
What about the statement love is love? That we as people can love whoever we want because we can’t control who our heart decides to love. That there are no limits to love, there is no definition for love because truth is relative. Everyone can have a different idea of what love looks like to them because as people we are free to create our own morals and definitions. Even if that love is unhealthy, even if that perception of love is not reality, we are free to make it truth. And we justify our truth to others with the statement “the heart wants what it wants”. What a dangerous life to live when you let your heart rule your life.
Here is what the bible has to say about love.
1 Cor. 13:4-7 – Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
In this one verse Paul debunks the world’s type of romantic and friendship love. Love is patient and kind, not intense filled with violent passion. Love does not rejoice in evil but in truth! And not the truth we have created for ourselves, that we have let our hearts decide, but God’s truth! And if your friend is falling into some bad things, you can approach them in love and advise against whatever it is. (Also sidenote) We cannot trust the desires of our heart, even as Christians we can have self-seeking, fleshly desires that don’t line up with God’s desires. Jeremiah 17: 9 says “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Our own hearts can lead us astray when we let it make decisions. But I will say that the closer you stay to Jesus, the more you learn about God’s character and the desires of his heart, the more your heart will desire the things of God. But our hearts left unchecked can become a stumbling block.
God has shown us what real love looks like, not just by loving us, but by sending his son to be an example. Real, agape love is what the Bible explains and demonstrates. This type of love, that is a choice (not a fuzzy feeling that comes and goes), is a sacrificial love. And Jesus, being the exact imprint of God’s nature, is the ultimate example as he became fully God and fully man, humbled himself by choice, lived to serve His Father and us, and then took on all the sins of the world so we could be redeemed. Knowing that even some of the people He died for would still reject and ignore Him. What a love. And to settle for anything but that love, to chase anything but that kind of love will not fill you. Even if you finally get your definition of love, you will be left empty. I’m telling you; you will never be satisfied. We are created in God’s image; our hearts are made for agape love and won’t accept anything less.
Please, please know that when you are chasing anything or anyone other God, you will never find rest. You will be running all your life. You will live a life of perpetual exhaustion, going from thing to thing to fill you up just enough to keep running to something that cannot offer what you need.
In conclusion, do not fall victim to the world’s idea of love. It isn’t real. It isn’t fulfilling. The love the word offers is conditional, fleeting, and convinces you that love should hurt. The love God wants for us is the complete opposite. His love is unconditional, steadfast, and tells us we wanted. We are desired by the King of Kings.
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