Love: What It Is and Where to Find It
Last week we talked about what love isn’t. Now let’s talk about what love is.
What is love?
Love is a choice.
Why did God create people? Because He wanted someone to lavish His vast love on. He wanted to be in relationship with us. God created you because He wanted to love you.
But God knows everything, right? So why did He give us free will even though He knew we would rebel against Him, when He knew we would just break His heart, even though He loved us?
Because love is a choice. If God had programmed us to love Him automatically, our love wouldn’t have been love. It would have been exactly what love isn’t.
Love is not a fleeting feeling.
A lot of people get married and then, in the day to day, fall out of love. They get busy. They get tired. The old spark of passion just fades away as time goes on.
They wake up one day and realize they no longer love their spouse. Maybe it’s time for a divorce.
No. Love is a choice. You made a promise when you said your wedding vows. It isn’t easy, but it is something you have a say about. Love isn’t passive, a feeling that comes and goes on its own whims. Sometimes you’re not feeling it. But if you make the choice to express love anyway, no matter how you feel, love will follow through your dedication and expression.
God is a champion of love. He will always fight to see love triumph. So keep contending to keep love alive. If God is for you, who can stand against you?
Love is a lifestyle.
Love isn’t relegated to romance, either. Love can and should permeate all aspects of our lives.
My father always told me:
Love is desiring its object’s highest good.
It’s choosing to ignore or forget the other person’s negative mistakes and focus on their God-given identity, their potential, and their goodness.
A speaker at a conference I attended once referred to this as “drawing out the other person’s gold.”
Everyone has gold in them. Everyone has a rich deposit planted in them by their Maker. Everyone has unimaginable potential and a glorious destiny written on their hearts. When we choose not to be offended but to persevere until we find the gold in them, and choose to focus on that instead of on the dirt and soot around it, we do the work of God by nurturing the identity He crafted in them.
Everyone has a purpose and love is the way to roll the away the tombstone so that long-buried dreams can come alive and shine.
Love is an identity.
When you’re touched by love, it begins to permeate you so thoroughly that it becomes who you are. It also becomes the way that others see you and how you are recognized by the world.
It’s also God’s identity.
1 John 4:8 says:
But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
God is love.
This brings us back to the second part of our question. Now that we know what love is, where can we find it?
Spend time with people who love
Have you ever been around someone and just known that they loved you? Don’t you find that you always want to spend more time with them?
On the other hand, sometimes we fight and fight to earn love from someone, and all we end up doing is pushing them away.
Have you ever noticed that some people just love, and some people just don’t?
What’s the difference between people who love and people who don’t?
In order to love, you must first receive love.
People who haven’t received love can’t understand it and can’t give it. We are inherently selfish as humans, and until someone else teaches us what love is we cannot let go of ourselves enough to show love to another.
On the other hand, when we have received enough love, it transforms who we are inside and enables us to let go of our fear, our greed, and our selfishness so we can finally begin to love like we’ve been loved.
Love heals us because it teaches us to trust again. It helps us overcome our fears. It proves that hope is not a lie.
Love changes us and teaches us how to think of others first. How to have healthy boundaries instead of toxic attachments. How to both respect ourselves and honor others. Love arms us to lay down our defenses fearlessly and live in selfless ways we never could have if we hadn’t first been loved by someone else.
You cannot give love without first receiving it.
Everyone who has ever loved was first shown love by someone else.
Therefore, all love can be traced back to a single origin and a sole source.
God is the only One Who can understand love and express love without first receiving it from someone else, because God’s identity IS love.
God is the source and origin for all love - yesterday, today, forever.
So one way to find love is to spend time around people who have been changed by love, but anyone who has known love has also tasted God, because only God’s presence and goodness enable any human to be capable of showing love. So you could just skip the middle man and go to God directly.
After all, God is love, and God is good.