Guardrails is a series that basically shows
you the importance of setting up boundaries, of protecting yourself from
crossing a point and looking back later with regret, of not stopping yourself
soon enough, getting too close to temptation and then living with the
consequences of stepping over the line.
Anyway, two weeks ago and this past week
Pastor Jeff spoke about the guardrails needed around marriages, around
couples. It gave me lots to think about,
most that doesn’t really relate to what I normally write about here but what he
did say that relates here, that I want to reflect on here is that love is not a
feeling.
Wow… it’s not??? I sure thought it was. I thought that love was something I felt,
that I needed to feel in order to experience life to the fullest. It’s not a feeling ? It’s not an
emotion? Most of the world would
disagree. Ask any ’lovestruck’ young
adult , ok any young female, LOL, early on in a relationship and you will
probably get an enthusiastic answer filled with the affirmation of how wonderful it is to ‘be
in love’ and ‘how amazing they feel’…might even be enough sweetness in the
statement to cause you to go into sugar shock. Ask anyone who has been in a
relationship or married for a while though and the answer may not be quite that certain,
quite that positive. Most will quickly
tell you that yes love includes emotions but not exactly the emotions people
always associate with the common understanding of love. Yes, most certainly
emotion, feeling, plays a big part in what we call love but is it all there is?
Do we even realize the forms of love that have been spoken about since biblical
times? Do we remotely understand the ‘love’ God built into each one of us….
Here
is what I found on ‘about.com’
Eros is the
physical, sensual love between a husband and wife. Although this Greek term
does not appear in the bible, eros, or erotic love, is portrayed in the Old
Testament book, The Song of Solomon. God is very clear in his Word. Sex
outside of marriage is forbidden.
God
created humans male and female and instituted marriage in the Garden of Eden.
Within marriage, sex is used for emotional and spiritual bonding and for
reproduction.
The
Apostle Paul noted that it is wise for people to marry
to fulfill their godly desire for this type of love:
Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for
them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they
should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. (1 Corinthians 7:8-9, NIV)
Storge is family
love, the bond among mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. Storge is the
natural love and affection of a parent for their child.
As
with eros, this Greek
term does not appear in the Bible. However,
many examples of family love are found in Scripture, such as the love and
mutual protection among Noah and his
wife, their sons and daughters-in-law in Genesis; the love of
Jacob for his
sons; and the strong love the sisters Martha and Mary in the
gospels had for their brother Lazarus.
The
family was a vital
part of ancient Jewish culture. In the Ten Commandments, God charges
his people to:
Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long
in the land the LORD your God is giving you. (Exodus 20:12, NIV)
Philia means close friendship or brotherly
love in Greek. It is one of the four types of love in the Bible. It is the
root of the name of the ‘city of brotherly love’, Philadelphia
Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another
in showing honor. (Romans 12:10 ESV)
Agape is selfless,
sacrificial, unconditional love, the highest of the four types of love in the Bible. This Greek word and variations of it are found
throughout the New Testament. Agape perfectly describes the kind of love Jesus Christ has for his
Father and for his followers:
Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves
me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them
and show myself to them. (John 14:21, NIV)
And the more I thought about the various
types of love and Pastor Jeff’s comment that love is not a feeling I began to
wonder just what we really understand about love and feelings. There are likely hundreds, if not thousands
of references to love in the bible.
Dear
friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves
has been born of God and knows God.
Jesus
replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your
soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest
commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as
yourself.'
It says love God, love
your neighbor, do this with all your heart and soul. It doesn’t say when your
neighbor makes you ‘feel’ angry that you don’t ‘feel’ love towards them. It is pretty simple…love and never stop
because God loves us and never stops.
There
is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do
with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We
love because he first loved us.
Exactly…we know how to love because God
first loved us. He didn’t teach us to
‘feel’ love, he taught us to love… no conditions. He showed us that there is no fear in love
and fear is a feeling…
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 our brothers. If anyone has material
possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the
love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or
tongue but with actions and in truth.
Love goes beyond ‘feelings’ it doesn’t’ get
trapped by feelings. It doesn’t say
‘yeah well that guy looks like someone I can’t trust, he does things I don’t
believe in or agree with, he isn’t a Christian’… no where does the bible tell
us those things but everywhere it tells us to lay down our lives for those God
loves because Jesus did that for us.
However,
each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must
respect her husband.
Hmmm…and now we get into a real tough
area. How often have you heard someone
who is struggling in their marriage say ‘well I love her but I am not IN love with
her’ or ‘I just don’t feel like I love him anymore’. God never said it would be easy and he also
NEVER said love was about feelings. He
said it was about commitment, about dedication.
The most common scripture read at a wedding is likely this one…
1 Corinthians 13 4-8a, 13
4 Love is patient, love is kind.
It
does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5 It does not dishonor others,
it
is not self-seeking,
it
is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with
the truth.
7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,
always perseveres.
8 Love never fails
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and
love. But the greatest of these is love.
Anyone
read in there anywhere ‘love is like this until you don’t ‘feel’ it anymore and
then it just goes away’. Yeah…nope, not
there. This ain’t Hollywood
folks, this is no Harlequin romance.
It’s life, it’s real and nowhere has it been said that it should be a
walk in the park. Hollywood
Is the above passage a tall order, a lot to live up to? Heck
yes! Difficult? Intensely so! But is it
impossible? Well I guess the answer is yes,
if we leave it up to us and our strength, but we were never asked to do
that. Never did God say ‘here is what I
command you to do in regards to love. No
go and do it and don’t you dare come to me for help with it’ . If we learn to rely on Him, to lean on him
and the power of the Holy Spirit then the task of loving others is not so
daunting.
Matthew 19:6
"Consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh. What
therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."
Matthew
19:9 ESV
/ 86 helpful votes
And
I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and
marries another, commits adultery.”
Malachi
2:15-16 ESV / 4 helpful votes
Did
he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was
the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and
let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. “For the man who does
not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says
the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your
spirit, and do not be faithless.”
Love
endures all things and it is a commitment, not a feeling. You can’t just ‘bail’ when it gets too tough,
you can’t just find another when you aren’t getting what you thought you would
from the love commitment you made before God.
I am sure it was no mistake that this sermon was presented on Mother’s
Day…a day to celebrate the love that we have for our mother’s and, usually a
day for families. Traditionally families
come together from the love of a man and a woman, a husband and a wife. Two people who made a commitment to each
other…a commitment to love, honour and cherish each other to the end of their
lives. Two people who committed to love
each other enough that they would, together, raise a child or two or more
together. When love becomes a feeling
and not a commitment, a thing of patience, kindness, perseverance hope, trust
and honour, then we hear ‘we are doing this for the kids, we fight too much to
give them the life they deserve’. But
the life they deserve involves love and love involves commitment…you can’t just
give up.
I
pray that each and every one of you can find love, can make a commitment to
love others as God requires us to and that you can put feelings aside, no, that
you can take them out of the equation and follow the instructions of God, honour
the commitments you have made.
P.S.
All
of this seems to tie into marriage and relationships and that is very much what
this is sermon was about but it also made me think about love in general and
how hard it can be for people to understand love. Those 4 types of love that I researched are a
vital part of each of our lives and given that this sermon was presented on
Mother’s Day it did make me think of the love we have for our children. Mother’s Day, as I said before, is a day to
honour mother’s… and a day for mother’s to focus on how awesome it is to be a
mom. And like so many other moms out
there I can’t help on Mother’s Day but reflect on the fact that all who call me
mom are not with me here on earth. For
some reason it is day that I find harder then some, that I miss Cole more then
on the average day. That Storge love,
that natural love and affection of a parent for their child, just seems to
creep up on me on days like that. Most
just don’t understand that either I don’t think. They understand Storge love, that love for a
child that is so intense, so unending, so all consuming. Butt tey don’t understand that Storge love always
protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, that Storge love
never fails even if that child that is
so loved isn’t here. They are forever
here in our hearts. If it is to be
understood that love is something that has
to be worked at and is never easy then it should be equally understood that
learning to live without someone you love is also something that has to be
worked at and is never easy.
I
am so blessed to have been given these four gifts of love and I vow to put in the effort that love requires everyday.
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