The Power of Love

 I feel God pressing on my heart to write this post. 

Love, I believe is a mistranslated and misunderstood word in a majority of today's world. This leads to the question, if there is a truly loving God, or if God really loves us why would He allow certain things to happen? When perhaps we should question our knowledge of the situation and our definition of the word love. One argument against Christianity is that if God is a truly loving God, He would not have allowed His Son to die, especially not to be crucified. True love looks past the pain of the moment, the temporary situation, to the ultimate result. 

Another example of that would be a toddler wants to watch whatever show she wants to watch on tv. Would loving her just let her watch whatever she wants to? Then after she has watched whatever she desires, she may wake up screaming and crying from nightmares she had during her nap. She may be unhappy when peramiters are given to what she watches, but love doesn't want her to go through those fears and nightmares that could happen without limitation.  

The media is currently filled with messages about "love". They paint a picture of what loving yourself looks like and how to best love others. For loving yourself, media portrays that its all about "treating yourself" "you deserve it" "live your best life" "you do you". However, that is not true love. True loving of self does not listen to every emotion or desire that blows by. Love sees through the eyes of God a person that He dearly loves and is worth taking good and proper care of. 

Since we usually walk through our days living out a flawed definition of the word love, we often don't realize its power. 

The sappy Disney Princess line of "Love has power" is more true than we realize. Even the simplest of actions and expressions of love, a hug, a tender word, listening carefully and actively, can begin to break down walls that took years to build up. Love overcame the powers of death and darkness. Love breaks down hardened walls and barriers because it is willing to see the people behind them. The children that Jesus died to save. The world that we are called to love. We need God's eyes to see this world that He loves so much, that we might do the same.  

1 Corinthians 13 describes love in amazing detail. Since it all fit this post so well I'm going to add the entire chapter instead of just a few verses. 

1 Corinthians 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. 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. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 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. 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. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

May we always walk in the confidence and amazing power of the love of God.

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