True Love

"True Love". . . this is a topic that many of us believe we have pegged down. We have come to believe that love is something that you can feel. You feel it with your body and with your emotions. We describe it as the warm fuzziness and the butterflies in your stomach when you think that you may have finally met "The One". It's the feeling of your heart jumping into your throat whenever you see the person you are into. Or it's simply the overall attraction we feel towards another person.

But there is a problem with all this. Love is not really a thing. It is not a noun. It is a verb. Love is something that you do, not something you feel. You can have feelings towards a person, and those feelings can lead to loving them, but those feelings in and of themselves are not love. The warm fuzziness we feel may truly be real, but it is just that . . . a feeling.

In 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, Paul the Apostle writes, "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

All of those things that Paul is using to describe what love is are things you do when you show love. And sadly, most of the time, we fail at showing that everyday.  But there is one person who has never failed to show us his love. That person is Jesus.

Jesus showed us what true love is when he died for us on the cross. He loved us so madly, so deeply, that he was willing to give up everything . . . even his life . . . to rescue us and to call us his own. What is even crazier is that we can never be separated from his love. Nothing we have ever done, will do, or could do can separate us from his undying, never stopping, never giving up, always and forever LOVE. That is so amazing and mind-boggling . . . and freeing!

Paul writes in Romans 8:35-39; "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness or danger, or sword?  As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us. for I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Wow . . . how amazing is that? Every time I read that it takes my breath away! I don't know about you, but that sounds like true love to me . . . especially when death can't even separate us from his love. I was scrolling through my Instagram feed the other day and I came upon a picture with a caption that said; "He pursues us to bring us to himself. Because with Christ, it isn't about "Till death do us part", it's in death we will never be apart."

That is so true! What's even more beautiful about this is that we can only find and experience this type of love through knowing Jesus personally. This is a kind of love that is so great and vast that we are not able to even begin to comprehend it. While I was reading through these passages, I had come to the realization that I was not able to give this type of love to Jess, or my friends and family, because I fail them all the time. So, because of our sinful nature and because it is so deeply rooted in us, we are unable to give this love to anyone. Not on our own or of ourselves alone. That is what makes this love even better, and even truer, even sweeter.

Being able to know and experience God's true love is so amazing, and I'm thankful I am able to live in it and feel it. The best part is that when this love is flowing in us, it begins to flow out of us . . . into and onto others. Jesus' love for us is so deep and so strong that it goes even beyond us and into the people that we come into contact with. I pray that you guys know true love, or will come to know it too. There is nothing better in this world or beyond it that can compare to it.