Valentine's Day: God is Love

Happy Thursday Morning! 

Reminder:Valentine’s Day Is Friday

Recently our church, has been studying through 1 John in a series we have labeled “Love One Another”. The series has helped many change how we love difficult people. The greatest take away for me has clarity on how our definition of love is different than God’s definition of love!

Often when working with engaged couples I give them 13 attributes and have them individually pick 3 attributes that are most important to them regarding love. They then use those 3 attributes like: honesty, integrity, patience, trust… to define love in their own words. Without fail, whether a little or totally, their definitions of love differ, which is the expected outcome. The point of the exercise is, people define and emphasize love differently than each other.

As perspectives of the meaning, expression and receiving of love differ among husband and wives the gap is even bigger when we consider God’s love. As John simply says, God is Love {1 John 4:8, 16}. That God is love, means that for whatever attributes we emphasize to define love, God is those points of emphasis and the totality of all the other aspects of love - at the same time.

1 John 3:16 shares, By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

Wow. The point is God’s love is not romantically focussed, God’s love cares for the soul of people. His love strengthens and provides access to God the Father. Therefore, the epitome of God’s love is Christ’s sacrificial death for us on the cross. That’s love, and having benefitted from His love, we too love caring for outcome of the soul greater than being on the right side of an argument or point.

In marriage, emotions ebb and flow, we get angry, happy, hopeful, scared, thankful and feel like why did I get married, in the span of a few minutes. Yet, as our marriage continually grows more and more toward Christ centered, we pray our love mirrors Christ’s sacrificial care for the soul, because God is love.

Specific to our marriage, God is love changes how we pray for the soul of our husband or wife. We still have the ebb and flow of emotions about our marriage but our leveling ground is God’s love which cares for the soul and shifts our prayer, reaction and responses according to the Lord’s love, because…God is love.

That’s it! That’s all for this week. Happy Valentines Day. In all the ways you express love this weekend, I pray you continually remember - God is Love.

We continue to reach more couples for Christ every week. 👇👇👇