Love is...

Love. The Beatles said it's all you need, John Lennon, well...let's just say He gave a confusing definition: "Love is real, real is love Love is feeling, feeling love Love is wanting to be loved

Love is touch, touch is love Love is reaching, reaching love Love is asking to be loved

Love is you You and me Love is knowing we can be

Love is free, free is love Love is living, living love Love is needing to be loved " That's one that makes me scratch my head. It doesn't say ANYTHING. We use the word "love" as a byword, when it's one of the most POWERFUL words ever created, especially because it describes the Character and Nature of God (1 John 4:7 and onward). We say "I love my mom" and "I love Pizza" in the same breath. We use it to describe how we feel about both a person and a thing, and so dilute it's true connotation. Here is the Biblical Definition of Love: " 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. " Does this describe you? Does it describe how YOU love? Most of us, myself included are, at worst, slightly self-absorbed in our thinking when it comes to love, and at our worst, completely self-seeking and self-centered. We are not patient, or kind, we envy others of what they have, and boast on our own accomplishments, we are often arrogant and, if we don't get our way, rude. We can be easily irriatated, and hold grudges. We rejoice when someone we oppose "gets theirs," instead of seeking their welfare and good in Jesus Christ. We don't bear with one another, don't believe each other, don't hope for the best, and endure the worst in one another. We simply seek after ourselves. Take a look at your social media page. Who does it seek the most? What does it celebrate the most? You might get more than you bargained for in looking this up, but maybe it's time we, Christians, do some soul searching, and seek God and His love to perfect us, so that His love may abide in us.

1 Corinthians 13 English Standard Version (ESV)

The Way of Love

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[b] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Footnotes:

a. 1 Corinthians 13:3 Some manuscripts deliver up my body [to death] that I may boast

b. 1 Corinthians 13:5 Greek irritable and does not count up wrongdoing