What Love Looks Like

It's crazy how the world takes what God has ordained as truth and reality and twists it to make a false, half-true (at best) version to suit our needs. Love, for instance. I was just listening to a song -- very catchy, very cute -- but one line to it says, "It feels so good, it must be love."

Hold up. Stop right there. Love feels good? Okay... let's play this game.

Scenario One: You genuinely love someone and want nothing but the best for them. And they don't love you back. Does that feel good?

Scenario Two: You're in a relationship and you get into a fight and break up. You still love the person, but they want nothing to do with you. Does that feel good?

Scenario Three: You're a Christian and genuinely love someone who is not a Christian (whether this be in a romantic or brotherly way; it doesn't matter). You think about the fact that they're not saved and what this entails about their eternal future as of right now. Does that feel good?

Scenario Four: You pour yourself out for someone out of love who does not appreciate what you do, who takes advantage of your selflessness, who possibly expects you to act that way for them (like many parent-child relationships). Does that feel good?

Scenario Five: You show nothing but love and truth to people, and they call you a liar and hate you to the point where they plan a gruesome death for you. One day, the people are celebrating you and seem to love you, and the next, they've condemned you as a criminal and kill you in the worst way imaginable. Even those that claimed to be your friends deserted you on the day of your execution. You undergo intense physical and emotional pain despite the fact that you do not deserve ANY of this. You die and people rejoice over your death -- and all of this happened out of your love for them.

Does that feel good?

You'd have to be mental to say that it does.

The world today claims that love "feels good," and that you'll know it's love if it "feels right" to be with somebody. The world tells you that if it's true love, you'll always get those butterflies in your stomach when you see that person, you'll want to spend every waking minute of your life with them. When you DO find that love, you'll never want to look for anything else and you'll be happy for the rest of your life.

It bothers me when people say that love is butterflies and rainbows and fluffy bunnies and skipping through fields of daisies. That's a straight up lie. Now, that's not to say that love can't or doesn't feel good sometimes -- it is and can be. But ultimately, when things get tough or when it doesn't "feel good" anymore, people are so quick to assume that's because the love is gone or it wasn't there in the first place. When the people started cheering for Barabbas and crying out for Jesus to be crucified, did Jesus say, "Okay, I'm done. This isn't what love is supposed to look like or feel like. We're supposed to always be happy and peachy and I'm just not getting that vibe from y'all anymore."

Um, no. He took up His cross and was ultimately crucified on it. He didn't question what the Father wanted Him to do. He didn't doubt what His purpose was. He lived it out and stuck with it until the very end -- until (and beyond) death.

The Bible's version of love is as follows:
- patient
- kind
- does not envy
- does not boast
- is not proud
- is not rude
- is not self-seeking (that's a big one, especially with what the world today says about love -- so many people today enter relationships because it does something for them or leave relationships because it's NOT doing anything for them)
- is not easily angered
- keeps no records of wrongs (also a big one)
- does not delight in evil
- rejoices with the truth (even the truth that love hurts and is not easy? Yeah, I think so)
- protects
- trusts (how many people do you know that are constantly worrying their boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse is cheating on them?)
- hopes
- perseveres (that's right -- even through the hard times)
- never fails
- is the greatest of these (of faith, hope, and love)
Taken from 1 Corinthians 13

Look at that list again. Does it say "Love feels good?" HAH. No. It doesn't even say love is happy. The closest thing to that is "love rejoices with the truth," and even then, that really doesn't have anything to do with happiness.

In fact, the NKJV of the Bible, instead of saying that "Love is patient" actually says that "Love suffers long." (1 Corinthians 13:4)

There are other places all over the Bible that point to the close relationship between love and suffering. Jesus Himself is THE example of love and He, of course, died on the cross as the ultimate manifestation of that. If you go back and think about love in the context of the Cross and how that lines up with the characteristics of love in 1 Corinthians 13, I bet every single one you can find in Jesus on the cross.

Ephesians 5:1-2 also shows the close relationship between love and suffering. "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children, and live a life of LOVE, just as Christ LOVED us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant OFFERING and SACRIFICE to God."

Paul tells us to love like Christ loved. How did Christ love? By offering Himself up as a sacrifice.

Love hurts.

And yeah, it is hard, but I would encourage anyone reading this to ask God to teach you how to love anyway. Because it's worth it. Because He commands us to love. So we need to know how.