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Love
So I’ve been going through the book “Crazy Love.” Last night I had read a chapter, about being IN love with Christ, and what that word “Love” even means.
First. What is Love?
“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 at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends … Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-8,13
When we say “I love you” to someone, do we really take this into consideration? In this book, Francis says to substitute your name in there in the place of love, and see if that love still remains. (Chad is patient, Chad does not envy or boast etc..)
That hit me really hard. I have quite a few people I say, “I love you” to, and I hadn’t taken what the word means into consideration. It’s a commitment, it’s an extremely powerful thing, and God tells us to love everyone like this?
“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”
John 15:12
If you try to do this, you will quickly find it is impossible. This shows our insignificance. On this surface, it seems like an easy task. Love others, got it. But it goes beyond that, if we could even come close to comprehending God’s love, I don’t think we could be sitting straight up long enough to be able to love others as He has loved us, I think we would be on our face.
Now, take that love that we’re supposed to love others with, and then think, we’re supposed to put God above all else, all belongings, all people, everything. How much more should we love God than others?
This brings me to my next point, how should we feel about God? How should we love such a perfect being? How CAN we love such a perfect being? We can’t without God’s help. That is how insignificant we really are.
Ok so, the book brings up this point: think about the person you care about the most, the person you love. What would you do for that person? Would you not travel hours to be able to see them, even for a short amount of time? Would you not spend a small fortune just to show them you care about them, or even to bring a smile to their face? And how it is almost painful when you are apart, and you miss them dearly. How does that compare to our relationship with God? The God that you can talk to any time you want, the one that’s always watching, always with you, always listening. The one that loves you more than anyone physically can. The PERFECT God. If we can love an imperfect sinful being as much as we do, shouldn’t our love for God be so much stronger? A lot of times its not. I am super guilty of this, I take God for granted. The fact that he’s always there, I almost expect it. What if God wasn’t there all the time? Life would go into total chaos.
But the main point of this is, loving God, are we really doing that? Would we walk “a thousand miles” just to be able to spend time with God? Would we spend a fortune to show Him we care about Him? He asks us to drop everything and follow Him. Do we do that? Or are we lukewarm. This book has really been hitting me hard lately and this is what I’ve been praying about today. I figured I would put this down incase there is someone out there that can relate.
