Real love is one of the most misunderstood gifts of all time. I say “real love” because I’m talking about unconditional love, the kind demonstrated in the person of God. We long for it, search for it and even try to create it, but love is hard to maintain because outside of relationship with God, we have no idea what that really means.  Do you ever wish you had a handbook that breaks it down and walks you through step by step?  Well, good news, there is one!  God, in His perfect wisdom and infinite grace, gave us a written testimony of His story with humanity.  The Bible, breaks it down demonstrating what real love looks like.

While I do not pretend to have it all figured out, I do have some thoughts and ideas that I’ve gathered over the years.  Re-Defining your understanding of love may be necessary to help you move forward into the places the LORD is leading you.  The love of God is perfect and complete touching your heart and bringing healing.  Real love is multifaceted, requires diverse applications, must be accepted before given, and it’s always initiated by God.

 

Real Love is Multifaceted

 

Love is a feeling which is easier to experience than to explain. You know what I mean, because the way it feels has nothing to do with how it looks.  Ask anyone to describe an experience with love and you will get some crazy ideas ranging from butterflies in the stomach, weak knees, and giddy happiness.  When you feel love you feel it in the gut. I know, it sounds weird, but it’s so good!

I remember a conversation with a friend while we were in College. Laura had recently become engaged and a group of us had gathered to hear her story. She excitedly shared the details as we hung on every word.   She stopped speaking for a moment, clearly searching for the right words. And then she said something I’ve never forgotten.  When she looked up she asked, “You know how they say, ‘when you’re in love you’ll just know?’  Well, that’s exactly true.”

The other side of love is that it is active.  Demonstrating and proving love are important, because tangible expressions support and feed the feeling of love.  The heart is filled when love is expressed. Sometimes that is hard to remember.  Life happens creating a backlog of busy and the practice of love gets set on the shelf.  If you don’t feed love, it dies.  Real love remembers that it is both felt and rendered.

 

 

 

Real Love Requires Diverse Applications

 

There are many ways to demonstrate love.  I like to play a game with my husband called, “Why do you love me today?”  He hates it, because it always catches him off guard.   My goal, is to get to his heart, to hear what it’s saying and why. Love reciprocates so when I understand what induces love for him I’m better able to keep at it. Love takes practice.

 

Words of affirmation are audible expressions of the heart.  Find the words, because they are a valuable tool when it comes to building intimacy. Here’s the thing, words are the product you give, but there is always a process/journey to get there.  When the process feels hard don’t opt out.  Press in and trust God to lead because the words you are looking for are always imbedded in the process.

 

Real love is demonstrated through compassion and mercy.  In fact, many of the love one another scriptures are tied to such expressions.  “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39) begs for excessive love and mercy. Compassion and mercy feed the poor, minister to the broken-hearted, and care for the sick.  You have to set your desire aside to love your neighbor as yourself.

 

Serving one another is an expression of love that is delivered through encouragement, help, support, and sometimes even rescue.  This is benevolence, which is easier to apply in close relationships; harder to sustain when love is not reciprocated.

 

 

 

 

Real Love is Disciplined

Tough love is also a powerful demonstration of discipline. Learning how to say “No!” when you are involved with someone who can’t, actually becomes an act of mercy.  I know that can sound a little contrary, because it may not evoke happy feelings. But here’s the thing, God is very interested in the desires of our hearts, but he will not tolerate idolatry. Tough love is about restoring.  So when desire manipulates you have to say no, because abuse of freedom can kill the very thing you are trying to preserve.

Let me illustrate with a little word picture. When you have already said no and your child throws a fit in the department store over a toy he wants now, tough love says no and redirects.   Enabling in the name of Love is not real love, it is fear of punishment. Tough love is not about punishment, its goal is always to lead the wayward heart back into alignment.  This is what God did with Israel and it’s what he does with us.  Tough love denies distorted wants, restores the heart, and releases every good and perfect gift.

 

Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first.” (1 John 4:18-19)

 

Real Love is, Accepted before Given

 

God IS love; he embodies it and gives it—extravagantly.  He loved us first, initiating a relationship that holds not equal. There is no real love apart from him.

 

This is real love—not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”  (1 John 4:10)

 

 

 

Listen, you cannot lead where you’ve never been, and you can’t demonstrate something you’ve never fully experienced.  Love is one of the hardest commandments to practice, so if you really want to love, you have to learn to receive and accept it first.

There is a healing that happens to heart, mind, and soul, in the presence of God, but you can’t get there until you surrender and assume a posture of acceptance.  Compassion may move you, but the extent of your capacity to love only goes as far as you have surrendered to the compassion of God toward yourself.

Your family, friends, and community need love, but you can never be or do enough to satisfy that cavernous need, not without the love of God in you.  You need to know who you are and to whom you belong.

My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.” And my heart responds, “LORD, I am coming.”  (Psalm 28:8)

Real Love is, Initiated by God

God is generous, lavishly extravagant, and relentless in his pursuit for your heart.  Embrace that gift with a surrendered heart and see how he supernaturally imparts a deep understanding, beyond words and experience, of perfect, real love.

Don’t be afraid. Respond to the invitation of God, because he loves you perfectly. The impartation of love is not meant to be hoarded, but to be invested in others.

When you experience real love, you will render real love, because God’s love is abundant, faithful and measureless.  There is always more. In this way, giving love to someone doesn’t rest on getting it in return, because God is abundant in love.

 

Real love does not withhold when it gets hard. The truth of the matter is sometimes you won’t feel like loving.  The ability to love, before the feelings kick in, comes from a deep place of trust, which chooses in faith to obey.  Love one another is commanded, so when hard and yucky stuff arrive ahead of the person remember to look into the heart, not the junk.  Always keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, so you can draw out of his well when yours is tapped.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Real Love is, Brave

 

Real love is brave.  Choosing to love takes a certain kind of moxie that many take for granted until pressed.  Love is a two-way exchange which requires vulnerability and trust.  Courage is needed to both receive and reciprocate. Brave doesn’t concede to fear, and it doesn’t back away from hard.  It works it through, drawing from the well-spring of a heart, lavishly filled up with love, by God.