Isn't that pic just precious? Love is a choice. It doesn’t “just happen” and feelings will always ebb and flow. It is a conscious, everyday choice. C.S. Lewis put it: “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained” -C.S. Lewis. If you ask me, I think this is one reason why many marriages fail today. Many times love is associated with the butterflies that come with compliments, candy and chocolate, and not with a husband holding a wife’s hair back while she pukes from the flu, or a wife who even after a long and tiring day makes her husband his favorite dinner. Love is also not a physical display of affection; it is a byproduct of something so much deeper, two hearts that are so intricately intertwined.
Before humans can even begin to know what love is, we must look to who love is- God. 1 John 4 says, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
I almost think I could just end the blog post here. God is so good isn’t He!?! It gets me every time. From this passage it can be said that love is a choice, love is selfless, and the love God gives us should be given to others. Jesus chose to love when he chose to die for us. When he was dying an excruciating death on the cross he was not just acting on the whims of emotion or feeling an awesome feeling, but making a conscious choice to die for your lost soul. Thank you, Jesus! Love is selfless. Jesus was living in paradise but still chose to come and save us! I heard one story about a family who had a flea problem so they called an exterminator. Just before the exterminator was about to start spraying the husband/dad got really sad and wished that there was some way for him to become a flea himself so that he could warn the other fleas before they were killed. Ridiculous, right? Jesus did that for us. He made a choice that looked out for the interests of others above himself (Philippians 2). Lastly, the love God gives us should be graciously given to others.
A few practical examples:
1- randomly pay for the persons meal behind you/across the restaurant from you. 2- write someone a note of encouragement. 3- go up to a family member hug them and just say I love you. 4-Ask people how you can pray for them, then really do it. 5-preform an act of service for someone. Don’t let them know you did it. Well that’s five. Now think of some and choose to make that choice. It’s life changing.
