How was your Valentine’s holiday? Did you do something special for the ones you love? Or are you still looking for love? You can never say ‘I love you’ too much.
This week we are talking about love. I just celebrated a milestone 60th birthday which also happens to be Valentine’s Day. It was the best! I feel pretty blessed that God loves me enough to have a birthday that is all about love.
Our world has this misconception of what love is and I did too, when I was younger. It depicts love as something sensual and sexual. Our young people grow up with this longing for love that can never be fulfilled through human beings and has nothing to do with God. They just want someone, anyone, to pay attention and make them feel loved and appreciated. They are ‘looking for love in all the wrong places’, like that old song from a country bar room.
What Is Love?
Our Bible tells us exactly what love is in the first book of Corinthians. I don’t see the word sex, provocative or alluring anywhere in this description:
4:Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated 5:it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, 6:it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. 7:It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8:Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing, if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.
I Corinthians 13:4-8
Who Is Love?
The Bible also tells us that God is the source and summit of Love in the first book of John and that we, too, can’t help but love others if God’s love is in us.
7:Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. 8:Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. 9:In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. 10:In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. 11:Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.
Longing for Love
When we are born, we are born for this longing for Love, for God, and it has been inside us our whole life. It is through the world that we lose sight of what that Love actually is and looks like, unless we are connected to the One who gives it to us.
There are all kinds of love in the world today, many that are unhealthy, but I am encouraging you to seek the Love that matters most: the One that is life-giving and affirming, because if you don’t begin with that love, none of the other kinds of love in your life are going to succeed.
Show Love
My 60th birthday has been the best. I received so many kind words from friends and family. I feel the love. Be sure to show and tell people in your life that you love them, while they are still here. I want to be remembered for more than just a positive and cheery disposition, although that helps get you though your day. I want to be remembered for loving others in my life like Jesus.
Mother Teresa is my inspiration and one of her quotes hangs in my family room:
Spread love wherever you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
St. Teresa of Calcutta
Today I’m sending out a huge thank you and some love to everyone who reads this blog. I hope you had a Happy Valentine’s Day. I also hope that my blog posts encourage and inspire you to live your life to the fullest with joy, purpose, and a knowledge of God’s love for you.
You can find my page on Facebook: Character & Virtue. Drop me a line or message. Keep following along. I appreciate and love you.
God bless. —Barb
Well said and blessings for Gods love is perfect! 💕