In Love

in love

I've been noticing all the commercials over the past few weeks advertising the perfect gift for your Valentine. Most of them are telling us that it takes diamonds or some kind of jewelry to win the affections of a woman's heart. Ok, so women are built for romance. We want to be that special someone, but so many times a man thinks that this is all it takes in order to skip right to the basic fundamentals of a relationship. Men are programmed for the hands on sex, and love doesn't have to be a priority. But this isn't love in the least. How do we know what love is? And better yet, what love isn't?

in love

The vocabulary of a Christian is quite strange to someone who doesn't know Christ in their life. It's rather hard to be bouncing around in the world with no guidance. Instructions for everything are meant to make things easier for us by avoiding unnecessary mistakes. Life without knowing what God has intended for His children is like bouncing off one wall and into another with no direction. How long can we keep this up? No one can deny that we value education and hope that our own children will also desire to have one. There is power in it. But why, is it when it comes to God's instructions for living a successful life, we tune Him out? Really, be honest, how can we expect to know more than the One Who created us? It's not possible...bottom line. In His Book of "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth" better known as the Bible, we can know exactly what love is and what love isn't. How can you tell if you are truly in love or even better, if your partner truly loves you? Wouldn't you want something in which to compare it to? Is love in the kiss? No. Is it in the way someone looks at you? No. Is it in the way they act towards you? Perhaps, but not necessarily. Let's take a look at some of the ways we can know what love is and what it definitely is not.

in love

Paul the apostle writes about what love is and what it is not in his first letter to the Corinthians. Paul addressed the church at Corinth with the hopes of trying to break them away from their carnality and immaturity. They were worldly and didn't want to give up the world around them. They couldn't break away from their old habits of selfishness, immorality and pagan worship. Paul found it necessary to write to them and correct this as well as remind them of their faithfulness to Christ. He had to make it known to them that as Christians, they had to break off outside relationships with disobedient and unrepentant members. Not only that, but to put these people out of the church! We would never expose ourselves to this kind of behavior today. But this is precisely why we need to know the true facts. We aren't hurting people if they aren't followers of Christ, but we are hurting ourselves and our love walk with Him by compromising. Love for Jesus should not be made subjective, but rather, objective. We can not compromise our love for Christ by subjecting ourselves to hearing and doing the wrong doctrine. He is our main objective in this love walk, it's not how much respect and popularity we win from others that matters. It's what we do for Him that counts. In our true Christian love walk, our actions will reflect Him and this is what others will come to recognize as true love. It certainly does extend into our marriages, our families, and to everyone around us. Our love can not be bought, but rather it can and should be given away freely, with no strings attached. If you are expecting something in return for your love or visa versa, it could be time to examine this relationship. This is not the kind of love that God designed for us.

in love

Paul wrote to the Corinthians about all their good deeds, but if they had the wrong motives, it was not love.

in love

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.

in love

Paul went on to say that even if he had the gift of prophecy and knew all the mysteries and had all the knowledge in the world and even the faith to move mountains but didn't have love, he was nothing. If he gave everything that he owned and fed the poor and volunteered to be murdered, if he didn't have love it would still be for nothing. The Corinthians were puffed up in arrogance and pride and it plagued the church. We should not strive to have the gifts of prophecy or speaking in tongues just to make ourselves look spiritual, rather like the Corinthians we should be concerned with having love, love for one another.

in love

Love at the very essence is an emotion. There are many kinds of definition to what love and emotion is. But Emotion in the purest form is simply Energy In Motion (E-Motion). Feeling is Perception of Emotion. You may not be conscious of an emotion but it still runs by itself in your subconscious. Love is the highest level of energy that exists. God always move out of love because God is love. Love is the purest motive force. Love is God in Motion.

in love

A person might not feel love anymore. But love is still there. It is just buried under other emotions of anger, hurt and fear. Layers of other emotions can override the feeling of love but once these emotions are engaged and liberated instead of being avoided and resisted, the love is able to be felt once again. A person who is Authentic can always cut through all the other emotions and get right to love itself and know that it is always there and feel it.

in love

To love is to accept. To accept oneself is to love oneself. You can't accept if you judge. You have to accept without judging. Accept the good and the bad with equal love.

in love

Love is the purest emotion and it is unconditional and detached. Love freely, freely be loved. Love is expressed in giving. The kind of giving is the kind of love expressed, whether it be selfish or selfless, scarce or bountiful, wise or foolish.

in love

Love is acceptance, therefore love is trust. To trust is to accept as true. When something you accept as true turns out to be false, you can be hurt. That is why when you love, you can be hurt if what you accept as true turns out to be otherwise. The truer the love, the more what you accept as true is the essence rather than the form. The deeper your love is for a person, the more you are actually in love with the person's core.

in love

Love is happiness. To love is to be happy with. When you go for what makes you happy, you are following what you love.

in love

To love unconditionally is to love without expectations. Expectations create fear because when we have expectations, we fear that we do not get what we expect. In fear we expect, in love we accept. There is no fear in perfect love. The love that has no expectations casts out fear because it accepts everything that happens completely.

in love

There are four factors that defines love. They are the type, level, intensity and depth of love.

in love

There are different types of love. You can love someone as a friend, you can love someone as a cousin/sister/brother. You can love someone with the love of the lord. You can love someone as a superstar you adore. You can love someone as the love of your life.

in love

There are different levels of love. How much agape is present in that love? Agape varies in different amounts. To what extent do you have the person's best interest at heart. To what extent do you naturally consider their needs without first being conscious of yours? How much care do you have for them?

in love

There are different intensities of love. The amount of passion, the amount of fire and the amount of energy that you have in your love for that person determines the intensity of that love. How much force is there, how much power and how much focus? Is it like a flood of warm sunlight shining on that person or is it like a laser beam completely targeted and burning ferociously with such intensity and fire?

in love

There are different depths of love. How deep does that love go? Is it so deeply rooted in layers within layers that it's almost next to impossible to remove? Can it come one moment and go the next, or will it remain forever even to the very ends of time and space?

in love

Love is the purest motive force. Love is the most authentic reason for action. There is nothing else that matters. Love is the force that will not only pull you to that which you love but will also pull that which you love to you. So it is never in vain to love that which you love for love will always have an effect in bringing the thing or person you love closer to you.

in love

Do not attempt to create too many entanglements in a relationship in order to make the two of you inseparable. The only force that keeps the two of you together should be purely love. There is no relationship more secure than one in which either party can choose to leave at anytime and live separately without much trouble, but both choose to be together because of love. This is the kind of relationship where unconditional love which is love without strings attached, can be experienced fully.