Love is patient and Kind.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NLT
Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.
It does not demand its own way.
It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.
It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever truth wins out.
Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
God is Love, His love reaches out to others.
Our love tends to be directed inward toward ourselves.
We feel we have to get something from the love given.
Worldly Love from Worldly People
The world is impatient and primarily rude.
It is quick to be boastful and proud (loud and proud) creating jealousy at every chance.
This has created an attitude of “My way or the Highway” everyone must be heard.
Due to this the world tends to be irritable and judges others out of feelings of being wronged.
Injustices are quick to be broadcast or shared, while the truth is removed from our eyes like Jesus being removed from schools.
Truth is shoved into the closet so that false truths can be displayed.
The world gives up on you, it loses faith, loses hope, and endures until its death. Pulling all the people along with it.
We are by nature the opposite of God’s Love.
Wholesome Love
We can not reach the love described in 1 Corinthians on our own without the help of God.
It is God who helps us to set aside our natural desires so that we can love without expecting love in return.
As a Christian one should be set apart from the world. We are still human therefore we tend to display some of what was described in Worldly Love. However, we should strive to live a Godly life daily.
They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
1 John 4:5-6 ESV
God is Love
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
1 John 4:7-12 ESV
Define Love
The Dictionary definition of love:
1. Strong and warm affection. 2. A great liking. 3. A beloved person.
This love is based on feelings, human feelings, and emotions.
Both of which cause us to react in worldly human ways.
Love as a worldly definition also has lust and desire behind it.
While lust and desire are not in the definition of love they are often mistaken/disguised as forms of Love.
What is Love
If we aren’t careful love will manifest in many false forms.
“I believe that love is love is love” has been said quoted here in the “Sparkle Creed”
The Sparkle Creed came about in 2021 by Rev. Rachel Small Stokes it’s supposed to be an adaptation to the Apostles Creed. The Apostles Creed has been in the Christian faith since it was first written in Nicaea in 325 when the Roman Empire gained Christianity as its official religion.
“I believe in the nonbinary God, whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child, who wore a fabulous tunic, and had two dads and saw everyone as a sibling child of God I believe in the rainbow spirit who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity. I believe in the church of everyday saints, as numerous, creative, and resilient as patches on the AIDS quilt. Whose feet are grounded in mud and whose eyes gaze at the stars in wonder. I believe in the calling to each of us that love is love is love, so beloved let us love. I believe, glorious God, help my unbelief, Amen.”
False Prophets and Teachers
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.
2 Peter 2:1-3
In conclusion
Worldly Love is always deceptive, it asks something of us, and it turns our hearts inward seeking to fill selfish desires. It has us trying to be all-inclusive and accepting of all things when that is not how our world was intended to thrive.
Pure, Truthful Love, is a soul-changing kind of love. It makes you want to turn your heart towards God, to run to God’s Love, to rejoice in it, to share it with your friends, family, and the world. God’s Love has us craving his love so much it changes us to our core.
There is a big epidemic in our world. A feeling at our core of not belonging, and continuously seeking to belong. Continuously changing things within our life to feel whole, only to still feel a void somewhere else.
I know because I used to look for love in worldly ways. I would search for ways to feel whole.
Graciously, God continued to seek me during that time.
He’d place people in my life to steer me back to Him.
We won’t talk about how long that took for me to listen.
Or how the world can still attempt to lure you with “love songs.”
Even when you know in your heart that God is the purest form of Love.
Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
James 4:8 ESV
We will always fall short. As we are human.
God will always Love YOU.
Abide in Him and He will Abide in you.
*Disclaimer* I spoke some hard truths today, that may have friends questioning if they indeed can be friends with me. If that is you, I’d encourage you to reach out and talk to me before clicking the “unfriend” button. Let us have a conversation first.