What is Love?

Hi everyone,
So I am going to try and keep this post short and simple today if I can manage to pull it off. For some reason lately the "what is love?" question has been popping up in my mind. What is love truly? You watch the sappy movies, the relationships around you, the hookups and the breakups, the families, the books, the cards...ask anyone about love and you are more than likely to get a tale of warm and fuzzy feelings and emotions that make us feel good. The love that involves us the receiver. But as I look around I see a lot of people who are unhappy and unfulfilled and they are just waiting for the right kind of love or the right kind of person. They feel distant from their family, their friends, their spouses, and they feel as they have been cheated. They feel as if the spark they once had is gone. But I ask do you really know love truly at all? I thought I did until I realized I wasn't living like it. So I am going to share with you right now what love is and what I wish I had the chance to say to everyone who is struggling and doesn't understand why they are empty.

Love is Patient
Love is Kind
Love doesn't envy
Love doesn't boast
Love isn't conceited
Love doesn't act improperly
Love isn't selfish
Love isn't is not easily angered
Love doesn't keep records of wrongs
Love finds no joy in sinfulness
Love Rejoices in truth
Love Bears all things, Believes all things, Hopes all things and Endures all things.
Love NEVER ENDS    (1 Corinthians 13:3-8)
Love is Sacrifice (John 15:13) (Ephesians 5:25)
Love is Redeeming (1 Peter 4:8)
Love is Unafraid (1 John 4:18-19)
Love is Obedient (John 14:15)
Love is Unifying (Colossians 3:14)
Love is Forgiving (Proverbs 10:12)
Love is Sincere (Romans 12:9-10)
Love is Continual (Proverbs 17:17)
Love is Comforting (Zephaniah 3:17)
Love is Compelling (2 Corinthians 5:14)
Love is for those who don't deserve it (Luke 6:35)
Love is Boundless (Psalm 36:5-6)
Love is Light (1 John 2:9-10)
Love is Action (1 John 3:18)
Love is as Strong as death (Songs of Solomon 8:6-7)
Love Stands firm (Psalm 89:2)
Love is Deep (1 Peter 1:22)
Love is a commandment (Matthew 22:37-39)
Love is better than life (Psalm 63:3)
Love is Unconditional (John 3:16)

Now if you really ponder on those things and read those verses you are going to see a different picture than what the world chooses to raise you with. Some these verses make it clear of the true love that the Heavenly Father showed us by sacrificing His Son for us. So yes we are created to be loved. But when you read these verses the mass majority of them have a challenge for us. And let me tell you it isn't all warm and fuzzy. Love isn't about what we get, it is about what we give. This world says that it ok for us to give up on love if we just aren't feeling it anymore with someone. We can use people, get what we want, and then leave when we don't "feel it" anymore. The Bible says love, even when you don't feel like it. Love is not just a feeling. It is an action, a choice, a promise that even when circumstances aren't going our way we choose to love anyway. Love is not about having a good time and then ditching when things get tough. Love is about putting someone else ABOVE yourself and your desires. Love is dying to your own wants and wishes and paying attention to others. Love is saying I'm sorry, I forgive you for the 15th time, I am going to hold my tongue instead of making a smart remark, I waited up for you, I showed up at your door when you were having a hard time, I made you dinner, I put down the phone for you, I shut the TV off for you, I cleaned the house for you, I put the kids to bed for you, I gave up drinking for you, I gave up watching trash on the internet for you, I gave up the job promotion that would take me away from you, I love you enough to stop before it goes too far, I will love you in sickness and health, for richer and poorer, I will love you when you are old and gray, I will love you when you mess up, I will love you when you forget things, I will love even after we have a fight, I will love you even if at some point one of us wants to walk away....I LOVE you! That is love. The feeling of love does not always last and we have thousands of broken relationships, homes, and friendships to prove it. But the decision to love can always be made with lasting resolve. God loves us unconditionally beyond what any human being could. He knows we are not perfect and despite all the horrible things people have done in this world, He choose to still love us. And we are to do the same. We face repercussions for our actions just as people should, but instead of being bitter we must conquer that with the action of love. Because we may not feel it all the time, but if we choose to act in love I believe we will find ourselves seeing things in a new perspective over time. Love cannot be about what we are getting all time. It has to be about what we are giving. Within the bounds what is honorable and of God's righteousness, we are to give of ourselves to others, placing them above ourselves. And that is beautiful lasting love. When we stand strong even if no one else will because we have the love of a Savior who laid his life down over 2,000 years ago that is love that lasts. This is the love we are to imitate and that is the love that I want to have. That is the love that I won't settle less for. That is the love we been given, what are we going to choose to do with it?

“This is how God showed his love among us:  He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love:  not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ”  1 John 4:9-11