Love

We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother. 1 John 4: 19 - 21

Love. We throw that word around a lot in our culture. I've never done an official study, but I suspect that most of us use love to describe things more than people.

Oh, I just love pizza!

I love that dress on you!

I love puppies, they're so cute! You can do anything to them and they always love you back.

Maybe that's the problem. Things are easier to love than people. But do they really love us back? Does the pizza love us in the middle of the night? Does that dress love your friend when she's lonely? And do puppies really know how to love?

Love is hard. Believe me, I know that. But I also know that the more I don't give up when love when it's hard, the more I learn to love when it's hard.

Jesus modeled perfect love. Perfect love that lays down it's life for a friend. I have adopted my friend Susan's stance on love, "My job is to point you to Jesus and to be willing to lay down my life for you." That's Jesus' love. It should be mine, too. That doesn't mean that it's immediate. I'm human. And that's why I've also needed to learn that that kind of love doesn't come from me.

When someone close to me hurts me again and again - lying, stealing, ignoring, blaming, yelling - my human nature says to give up. I tried my best. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, right?

Wrong.  That's when I know I need to sit with Jesus. I need to ask Him to fill me up so I can pour out. I need Him to remind me of who I am so I can help someone else find who they are. When we understand Christ's love for us, we are free to love others with that same kind of love. We want to do love like Jesus did love.We don't do so out of a desire to perform or to earn our way into Christ's love. Instead, we walk into the hard and messy and broken because of His love which walked into the hard and messy and broken to rescue me from perfectionism, fear, anxiety, bitterness, and self-absorption. And continues to do so every day.

And in those moments He reminds me that every act against me which feel like rejection, is really rejection of Him. And then my heart breaks again and love replaces the anger and hurt in my heart.

This is love for God: to obey His commands. And His commands are not burdensome. 1 John 5:3

His commands are not negative. They come from His great love for me. He knows that by commanding me to love my brother, my neighbor, and yes, even my enemy, I will better understand His love for me. His commands are life!

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Matthew 22: 37 - 40