God created for rhe purpose of love. Not because He needed any love for He is all sufficient, but for the purpose of sharing His great love with created beings.
What then does it mean to love ?
To love is to give, to seek for the highest good of another.
They are many things that masquerade themselves as love,but under close scrutiny will prove to be selfishness.
An example of what love is not is having sex with someone you are not married to. A man will tell his girlfriend, "I love you and you know I am going to marry you, so its okay for us to get intimate before marriage since we are going to get married anyway." Is this love ? No, its not. Its lust, its selfishness masquerading as love. There are at least two things lacking here and with out these two things you can't have love. Patience and self control. In order to love someone else you must be patient with them, to love someone else require great self control .
The boyfriend or girlfriend demonstrated lack of love for each other because they can't wait until the wedding night to get intimate. They are acting more like robbers than someone who love. If the boyfriend had truly love his girlfriend and desire what's good for her, he would wait until she becomes officially his by marriage before the Lord and before men. By being patient, he would learn to love her for who she is as a person, he would demonstrate that her wellbeing long term is his highest goal. By having self control, he would restrain his own sexual urges in order to protect his girlfriend. If you love someone, you will do what is right for them.
You see patience is very important in love. Being patient with someone shows that you care, it shows that you are not necessarily looking to accomplish some selfish goal, but that you want to walk with them step by step and do what is right for them. Being patient with someone requires sacrifice. A selfish person usually doesn't want to be patient because he/she is only looking to accomplish some selfish aim and they don't have time to waste on others. A selfish person doesn't love, cannot love and so an impatient person can't love others, for he will not invest in them long term. Always in a rush for the next goal.
Having self control means you have power over yourself. You are not controlled by your nature, but you rule over your nature. A man who loves God, who loves others will restrain himself from doing what is wrong to others even if his nature is crying out for it . A boyfriend who loves God, loves his girlfriend will restrain his own lust so he doesn't take advantage of his girlfriend. He would protect her. For if he truly love her then he will wait. Many a times we can't wait because we fear that the person may not stay with us and so we try to rob them of their dignity, not thinking that he or she may get married to someone else later on.
God is love. God is patient with us. He takes His time with us. God doesn't rush us in making decisions, but He walks with us step by step and making at each step we understand the choices we are making and are in agreement with Him. God has great self control. His holiness and absolute purity demands that He should utterly destroy the sinner, but He restrains His wrath and show mercy to the sinner, giving us time to repent, to flee from the wrath to come. God is love in that in every act, He has our best at heart. Even the destruction of the wicked is an act of love from the Lord.
God destruction of the wicked is also an act of love. God would do all to make the sinner happy, but the sinner want nothing to do with Him and since God is the source of life and blessings, there is nothing left that can be done for the sinner, but death. God would not allow the sinner to live in eternal misery, so He destroy the sinner out of love. God is love, for God is always looking long term and seeking to do what will be good for us in the long term. When we learn to love like God, we will seek to do what's good in the eyes of God and what's good for our neighbors.
My question for you today friend is are you looking to love like Jesus or just selfishly trying to get out of others. Let us learn to love like God. Let us learn to be patient with others, patient with their faults, patient with their mistakes, patient with them as they grow and learn. Let us also learn to have self control, self control on how we act with others, the things we say and what we do. Always asking ourselves how will what I am doing today affect the person tomorrow? Will my behavior today benefit them or harm them ? God is love! God look out for our best. Let us learn to be like God, let us learn to look out for the good of others and do what is right always .
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