Sunday, October 30, 2005

What is love anyways?

God has been speaking to me a lot about love and marriage in general lately. Here is something from scripture that I read a couple of nights ago: This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for [each other]. 1 John 3:16 The commentary regarding this scripture in my Bible says that: Real love is an action, not merely a feeling. It produces selfless, sacrificial giving. The greatest act of love is giving oneself for others. How can we lay down our lives? By serving others (e.g., our spouses) with no thought of receiving anything in return. Sometimes it’s easier to say we’ll die for others than to truly live for them—this involves putting others’ desires first. Pretty profound stuff, huh? I know that for me, it’s really difficult to want to do things that won’t benefit myself and put Rob’s (or even my kids’) desires before myself. We’re selfish, willful beings. Without God’s help, we can only love with a selfish love—a love that cannot be given if it is not received and returned—a conditional love. Only with him can we have agape love and love others regardless of the response that is received. Wow! Now, I need to sit down and apply this to my marriage and to my own life. What steps can I take to love others (especially Rob) with God’s kind of love—a love without conditions? To love them the way they are supposed to be loved. It seems so impossible, but then again, Paul writes in Philippians that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

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