Regarding Love - article 1
Sunday, January 7th, 2007Let me say this is one of the greatest challenges I have taken so far. This subject is so important it is the key to real success as a person. To truly grow as a person we must first learn to grow at this level. Every other level of growth or success is just paint on the surface. But this subject defies description in the basic sense. I have been blessed to understand a great deal but I struggle greatly to find any words or context that even begins to live up to the subject I am covering. I do not expect this to be an easy or entertaining article. I do not expect to completely succeed here but any progress I make is a good thing.
Most people misunderstand love. In fact the word love can never properly describe anything since we use it to label or describe so many things. But “love” is the word we have and we must learn to recognize what is meant in the context of its use. Someday, maybe, I will develop a whole new language that will allow for it to be properly discussed but for now lets use English.;-)
Many people get confused by love. It is common to think of it as an emotion. Some have said it is a decision. Some believe it to be an action. But I have come to understand it as so much more. This concept may seem a little deep at first but I think if you try you will see the truth in it. The first realization of the scope of what love really is, is to acknowledge that God IS love. This has been said and many know this but its meaning is usually lost. If you can imagine that God is love then we now can refer to it as Love with a capitol “L”. The difference here is that Love has personality and a self directed will. Love is a personality with all the attributes we expect of God. Most importantly the source of Love is completely separate from us. Love is not part of us. Love is not an intrinsic quality of a human being. All of our experience with love is an experience with an external source. This quality of Love is what has made it so hard to understand.
The second thing we must realize is that we do not have Love, we experience Love. Whether giving or receiving we are not the author or source of any Love involved. We only experience Love as a force. This force can flow into or through someone but it is not of them. As a force Love acts upon us much as gravity does. The big difference is that gravity is a physical force that has simple invariable laws and Love is a living force that has personality and purpose. Also unlike gravity Love affects people at different levels. Because Love is a “person” it reacts specifically to the individual character of each person.
The goal should be to maximize our ability to receive and through put (give) Love. Everybody experiences some level of input and through put of Love in there life. But because we do not understand it we are rarely able to increase our ability to give or receive it. In reality our inability to understand and therefore utilize Love correctly causes us and those around us much pain. We often fail to Love people that we care about (people we love). Some people suffer because they think that the Love they have for someone has been lost. Every scenario involving love that seems to fail is due to the misunderstanding of what Love is and how it works.
Lets learn by looking at how love works in an example. The typical love that doesn’t last is a popular theme. Two people are attracted to each other and they develop a strong love/caring for each other based on some physical and technical attractions. The individuals unknowingly “decide” (the decision concept comes from here) to allow Love to flow through them to this other person. The level of this Love that flows through a person is based on many factors I will cover in later articles. The flow of Love can be seen as the force of Love and the greater the flow the greater the force. Now the real question is what happens when one or both of them fall out of ‘love’? Obviously one or both people have unknowingly “decided” to stop letting the Love flow through them. Since most people have no idea what love is or where it comes from and how it works they are totally powerless to control this event. This causes torment for both the person that stopped letting Love flow and the person that is no longer receiving the flow of Love. To understand what happened we must remember that God IS Love. God IS “The Word” (the message of God). When love stops flowing we have weakened or broken our contact with the source…God. This happens many ways and the greatest description of how is right in the Bible.
Matthew 13
18″Listen then to what the parable of the sower means:
19When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path.
20The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. 21But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away.
22The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.
23But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
We can see from this example that there are many ways that a person looses the blessings of God. Which among many other things also results in the loss of Love. Verse 19 describes people often allow Love to flow without understanding what they are doing and that Love is stolen or lost. Verses 20,21 describes people that jump in with no hesitation but do not consider the deeper questions before allowing Love to flow. These people later realize that they are in a in problem relationship. The problems and persecution overwhelm them and they stop letting the Love flow. Verse 22 describes a person that has by choice or accident too many concerns in life. This also indicates that wrongful desires like chasing wealth can stop the flow of Love.
The important point to be made is that we can all be like the person described in verse 23. We must understand God which is to understand God’s word which is to understand Love. When we do this we produce the ability to flow with Love at a level that goes beyond understanding.
The real question is how? How do I start to know God better and let his Love flow through me? How do I feel love? Just like everything else in life this is not hard but there are many steps. These questions will need to be addressed in other articles.
P.S.
For the sake of this article I assume that the reader has a base knowledge of God’s word and at least a basic understanding of what it means. If this is not the case and you wish to succeed in life, plan to work at learning and knowing God better. Also I have focused only on a small fraction of the concept in order to simplify the discussion. I realize there is far more detail to this subject and it will take a great deal more work to just scratch the surface.