Love is the answer

 

This post has been on my heart for a while and for me personally it been something that God has been challenging me with for a while now and it's the whole subject of Love.

Love is a very powerful word and these days especially with our day and age more precisely in youth culture the word "Love" always brings to extremes, one of which is the whole boyfriend and girlfriend being very lovey dovey and the other extreme is the use of the word just thrown around loosely for example a guy telling a girl he loves her just to satisfy his own sexual desires. Over the last couple of weeks I've been thinking about this whole subject of love and I started of by reading the Gospels and seeing the way Christ lived his life and just the Love he displayed to those who were classified as the outcasts of society. I then began to look at myself and think about how I measure up to his standard and without a doubt I failed but I began to notice a lot of things about my understanding of Love.

Firstly I read 1 Corinthians 13 verses 1-13 which reads;

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.

I also began to look for passages that mentioned one anothering. Here's what I found

Wash one another’s feet—John 13:14.
Love one another—John 13:3; 15:12, 17; Romans 13:8; I Peter 1:22; I John 3:11, 23; 4:7, 11.
In honor preferring one another—Romans 12:10.
Don’t judge one another—Romans 14:13.
Receive one another—Romans 15:7.
Salute one another—Romans 16:16.*
Greet one another—I Cor. 16:20, II Cor. 13:12, I Peter 5:14.
Serve one another—Gal. 5:13.
Don’t provoke one another or envy one another—Gal. 5:26.
Bear one another’s burdens—Gal. 6:2.
Forbear one another in love—Eph. 4:2, Col. 3:13.
Forgive one another—Eph. 4:32, Col. 3:13.
Teach and admonish one another with song—Col. 3:16.
Comfort one another—I Thess. 4:18.
Edify one another—I Thess. 5:11.
Exhort one another— Heb. 3:13; 10:25.
Consider one another to provoke unto love and good works—Heb. 10:24.

The Biblical view on Love is so different to what we see in the World. We live in the a "Me,Myself and I" World where everything is based on what can I get to make myself happy and it's very individualistic. As I was thinking about my view on Love I began to think about the whole concept of "The focus of your attention". Like being a very big Football fan this World Cup I have seen my hopes rise and fall with how well the team I was supporting were doing. For example Ghana went out to Uruguay and for the whole game my attention was fully focused on Ghana and I was going for it willing them on but when the went out on penalties I just began to feel like noooo this can't be what happened. This can be the applied to some Christians that put all their attention and energy into worthless things especially with relationships. both parties in the relationship will put all there attention in making the relationship work and stuff that sometimes their own walk with God will determined to how their relationship is doing. I began to think about the passage in 1 Corinthians and for me personally the love that is spoken in that passage is Unconditional Love and this is what God has been challenging me to do. Just a study of Jesus life shows that he loved us so much that he done two of the greatest acts of love of all time. Firstly Jesus gave up his Heavenly Privilege and humbled himself to be a human being just like us. Just think if we were Jesus and we were in his shoes and we had to come down to the Earth full of sin, for me personally I wouldn't be able to that but because he loved us so much he did and to top it all of he died for all the sin of the world that had been committed and the sin yet to come but also to bridge the gap between mankind and God. Now that is Love and that's the challenge for me and also to you to Love as Christ did but remember its Unconditional Love as Jesus showed us we show others.