What love is and means to me has changed a great deal over the course of my life. When I was young it was something that I sought after, worked to earn, desired, and gave easily. Life and experiences quickly revealed to me that love was not what I had once perceived it to be as a child. I have discovered that love is not a feeling, it is a conscious choice, an act of our will.  

Sure, we can feel good feelings attached to that choice, we can also feel painful ones. Yet all of it, is love. Recently, a friend of mine was grieving the loss of his beloved grandfather. I was trying to console him, and I told him that his grief was not self-pity, he was feeling real loss and deep pain. His grief was love shown in a very raw, painful form. Love is enduring even after the one who we love is taken from us, then the love changes and becomes a reminder of what we once had.  In this way grief is a very real part of love. 

So is correction. My daughter was acting out. She did not want to comply with my instructions. In love, I disciplined her.  Out of love came consequences. So, love involves correction and consequences. Love doesn’t just feel good. It’s not always easy. In the same way I love her by correcting her, I must choose to act or be loving towards her even when she or another one of my children is acting badly (or maybe even when I am dealing with an irritating person it feels impossible to love). I can still choose to love someone who is not easy to love. 

Love can be looking past another’s actions and seeing the soul of the person. Or as a famous song says “He looked beyond my faults and saw my needs.” We can do the same for others. Having compassion for someone when it is completely undeserved or not easy to give is love.

We all love the love that is touchy feely, the lighthearted free, fun love. Yet we tend to run or retreat from real love. You see real love isn’t about taking for itself, it’s about giving. Real love looks at another’s needs above its own and it meets that need first. It is selfless, and it is not concerned with the cost or effort. It is given even when it is not comfortable or easy to give. Real love doesn’t quit in the face of adversity or opposition, it perseveres, and it is not dependent on circumstances or time. Real love in this way is also constant, consistent. Not given frivolously, but instead, by a conscious choice. Real love is not just some happy feeling. That’s the world’s love, not God’s love. Real love isn’t earned or deserved; it is given out of the abundance of the heart of the giver towards another no matter the worthiness of the person it is being given to.

The ultimate guide to real love is Christ. He showed us what love is by demonstrating love. Scripture declares that the world would recognize that we belonged to him by our love. True love, real love, God’s love.  The love that really is patient and kind; that doesn’t envy or boast; it truly is not proud or rude or self-seeking’; it doesn’t keep a record of wrong; It always protects and hopes just like the Bible says. Those are not just pretty words from scripture that are read at weddings and inscribed on wedding memorabilia, they are absolute truths for all of life. 

That is too much to live up to you might say. How could anybody love like Christ loved? You are absolutely right that it is not something you can do in your own power. On your own, you will never be able to love right or with real love, because your humanity stands in direct contradiction to what love really is. Since we cannot love on your own, we should ask God to help us, to give us what we lack, and pray for grace when we fail (his love won’t fail us).

Furthermore, we need to realize that love, real love is not that easy, superficial feeling that the world portrays as love. It is so much more than just a feeling. It is an act of your own will to choose to put down ourselves and walk as Christ did, to see others as Christ did, and to sacrifice as Christ sacrificed. Love is seen in our actions and treatment of others. In kindness, forgiveness, generosity, and grace towards others. There are many who will stick to the fluff, because it’s easier. They don’t want to work or truly walk in love and are satisfied with the status quo of the world’s conditional, selfish, feel-good version of love. The challenge for us as believers is to show real love.

How? We go deeper and deeper into God and lose more and more of ourselves, of our insufficient and inadequate love. As we grow closer to God, his love begins to shine in and through us. In the world that thinks they need that fake love that they sing about, “all we need is love”, we’ll see that what they truly and desperately desire is real love. Love itself, God. They will see and they will know, even if they don’t understand it, if we will only be the demonstration of love that God has made us to be. The world is crying out for real love, it’s time we step up. Some might say they don’t deserve the effort, but neither did we.  Remember what Christ did for us while we were still a sinner. 

Are we going to take up the challenge and love the way God has called us to love? Will we refuse the call God has given each of us? We have to decide to love in action as Christ did with selfless self-sacrificing love and to put off what we used to do, how we used to love, and instead let Christ transform us and love through us. Will we walk in real love consciously choosing to walk and to act, to be real love in a world that doesn’t recognize it? In response to his love for us how could we not show that same agape real love to others. It is our only option if we’re being honest with ourselves. When we live in this way, the love we walk in becomes our act of worship, our life song of praise to God himself, the God who is love. 

Love may not be what I once thought it was. No, now it’s so much more. It’s better, deeper, wider, higher, and stronger. The closer I grow in my faith towards God, the more he shows me this real love and equips me to love others like he did. The fluff is empty, I want to move on to the deep real love of Jesus, the only one that satisfies. This real love that is working in me to transform me into the hands, feet, and heart of Jesus. It is truly the love that so many are longing for. It’s time to stand as believers together in love, with love, and go out to be love – real love as the God who loved us first has called us to do. Will you respond to his call? Will they know who you belong to by your love?

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13, John 13:34-35, Ephesians 3:14-21, Romans 5:8 12:10 and 13:8-10, Philippians 2:3, Matt. 5:43-48 , 1 John 4:7-8 4:16-19, 1 Peter 4:8