Definitions of Love

Transcript

Hi Everyone, welcome to the Living on Prayer podcast. I’m Emily and I’m so glad you’re here with me! In this first podcast series we’ll be discussing various aspects of God’s Love, diving into those topics in detail and talking about how they apply to us in our lives today. If you’re anything like me then you might think the topic of God’s Love sounds a bit simple and that’s what I thought at first when God asked me to take this task on. I really didn’t want to do it for many reasons. And I guess I do feel unqualified to talk about this topic. I’m not a pastor or evangelist or great Biblical scholar. I’m just a regular human being like everyone else. But I am very proud to be a Christian. I grew up as a Christian most of my life and I grew up in a Christian home with an immediate and extended family of active Christians that helped me develop my spirituality so I’m extremely grateful to have had that experience. But it was interesting when God and I were having the initial conversation about doing this series because I was like how much is there to really talk about? So how am I supposed to do a whole podcast series on this topic. And btw I’ve never done a podcast before in my life. I don’t even post on social media so like I’m gonna figure out how to create a whole podcast now? Oh ok sure, no problem got it Lord, will take care of that!! So let me just tell you that this was a huge uphill challenge for me. Like I probably should have trained for a marathon or a Broadway play or something like that because this felt just as hard. And if you know me then you know that I have no endurance whatsoever and I can’t sing or dance so neither of those would’ve been possible!  But they would’ve been an easier challenge to train for in my opinion than doing this podcast!! But you know what, God showed out as He always does. Once I got started He sent me resources that I didn’t expect and He gave me wisdom and strength to help get me through it and I’m so glad I did it. So I really hope that you enjoy the series, I hope that you learn some things like I did along the way. I hope you find encouragement and maybe some pushing or nagging even to get you through life’s journey. But whatever you find, I just hope you know that God loves you. That’s what I hope you know constantly and I hope I can remind you of that. I hope I can remind you that God is love and that He loves each of us and all of us and He so desperately wants to have a relationship with each one of us individually so I hope I can remind you of that as well. 

Now for today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the definition of love. What is love? As humans, we have a lot of uses for the word love. I researched the definition of love in the dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s version of the dictionary to be exact, and there were 13 uses of the word love. In reading those it looks like we use the word love primarily out of affection, attraction, admiration, and devotion. We use it as a noun, verb, an adjective, and even an adverb. However we use it, we use it a lot of different ways it seems. 

Now I want to pull out my handy dandy Bible and read what the spiritual reference is for love. For the purpose of this podcast series, I’ll be using my NLT Bible as it’s the most modern translation I have but I do use 3 different translations in my research which are King James, NIV, and NLT. So I’m reading from First John, Chapter 4, Verses 7-8: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” Also jumping over to Verse 16, same chapter (Chapter 4), it reads: “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whosoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”

So as you can hear there’s a bit more that we as humans have defined to the word love than the Bible defined as love. In scripture, love is pretty simple. God is love. We like to overcomplicate things or over define things here in the world. I mean there are 13 definitions for the word love in the dictionary. Granted in the English language we make things a bit difficult as it is but 13 definitions is a bit much in my opinion. But when it comes to love spiritually, it equates to God and God equates to love. 

And listen, God’s love isn’t like the love we as humans know. His love is not based on attraction or attachment or affection or adoration. It’s not a love of convenience or ego or condition where if the other person adds a value to my life or pleases me then I love them and when that stops then my love for them stops. That’s not how God’s love works. God’s love just always works. There’s no on and off switch. God’s love is not something he chooses to give or to do. He just IS love. It’s who He is. It’s not something he does or gives. It’s something He IS. Love motivates everything about God. Love motivates all of His actions, His thinkings, His desires, His creations. It is who He is. That’s something that we as sinful creatures have a hard time being able to understand but God is love and love motivates everything for Him. 

He isn’t motivated by anything evil or negative or bad or even neutral. Some of us think that God is this bad guy or awful condemning God but God is love and He isn’t bad. What God did was create us all in His image and likeness and that image and likeness included moral freedom which means we have the freedom of choice to accept or reject God’s love. And this is Satan’s world people. God loves every creation in it. He doesn’t want to see anything or anyone hurt or doomed. He doesn’t! He created everything in love. So it hurts Him to see what Satan and evil and sin has done and is doing to His creations. But He allows freedom of choice. He allows the human consequences of sin to take place. He allows us to fail so we can learn and grow. He is a great father who loves us all. 

Ok so let’s talk about how we can help ourselves a bit because we all have issues, problems, troubles, complications, loss, heartbreak, sadness, hurt coming at us to influence our concept of love. And these experiences can taint us, jade us, build up the walls around our hearts, manipulate our thoughts, and distract us from what we might have once really felt or thought. Why is that? Because love is precious and valuable. So think about that. When you have something precious and valuable, whether it be money, jewelry, a nice car, a new home, children even, do you leave them unattended, unlocked, out where strangers could just take them? Not likely, right? And you don’t let strangers influence your kids or enter your home or drive your car or put on your jewelry or loan money to them either, right? So using that same analogy you wouldn’t leave love out for anyone to influence or take. Ok, Emily, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. How am I supposed to guard love? How am I supposed to protect it? Well, it does start to make more sense if you understand that “God is Love” and then we connect that reference with these two scripture verses. Romans 5:5 states “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” and then Proverbs 4:23 “Above all else, guard your heart, for it determines the course of your life”.

So let’s break that down. Per Romans 5:5, God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. God, who is love, poured His love, the Holy Spirit, into our hearts. The Holy Spirit, which is part of Himself, is given to us, His children, when we accept Him and invite Him into our hearts. We are receiving the Holy Spirit which is God’s love, part of God Himself and God is love so we are receiving not only God Himself to live within us but we are receiving God’s perfect love into our hearts as well. 

And then let’s put all of that together with Proverbs 4:23 that reminds us that above all else, guard your heart, for it determines the course of your life. Proverbs is a book that is full of guidance and wisdom. This verse is an example of that. Guard your heart. Why is that guidance and wisdom written down not only in the Bible but in this specific book of the Bible? It’s so that everyone would know that it carried such weight for us readers, that we should understand that this guidance is not only important but it's relevant to all of us as Christians across all of the years that the scriptures are in existence. You know, God chose the writers and the words for His scriptures so there are no mistakes in it and no coincidences to it either. Proverbs 4:23 tells us exactly what we were meant to know. Guard your heart. Why? For it determines the course of your life. I love the end of that verse. Here’s why I do. If God is love and God’s love resides in your heart and you’re doing your job to protect your heart from evil persuasion then based on the end of this verse, your life’s course is in God’s hands! For someone like me, who is a heart person and not so much a head person, this gives me a ton of peace. I might not know everything but knowing that God’s in control and I can just sit back in the passenger seat and let Him drive is really pretty relaxing. That doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes become a backseat driver or at times want to take the wheel but I have to come back to my resting place and understand that He’s got this and we get into this great relationship where we’re just cruising down the road, which is my life’s path if you will, listening to tunes and chatting up a storm, we’re just having road trip snacks, sometimes I might even take a nap! But for some of you that are more head people than heart people, this could be tougher. The control aspect is harder to give up. Maybe you’re that person who always has to drive when you go somewhere, or you are always the trip planner or always the host/hostess. Like I get that! But that has to get tiring. I mean, like let God have your heart and let Him take you down the road of your life. He can give you peace and help you to understand some of the things that you might need help understanding. If you’re willing to get in the passenger seat and let Him drive and be willing to listen more, have that relationship with Him, talk to Him, share with Him your bag of Skittles or Pringles, get to know Him and let Him know you better, you’ll find so much peace, you’ll find that the ride is smoother with Him as the driver too. And I promise, He’s not going to care what’s on your Spotify playlist or how dirty your car is. He’s not a bad guy at all, He’s actually pretty cool when you get to know each other. He is love and He loves you deeply. Let Him tell you that. Let Him remind you what love is and what it feels like. It’s a really great feeling when you have it!

Ok so I hope that I gave you all either a refresher on the definition of love or maybe a little more insight on it. This is just scratching the surface of this series but I definitely wanted to start off with defining what love is before we dive deeper into the topic of God’s love and peel back the onion of it a bit more. I’ll share a little bit about myself and how God’s love has impacted me throughout the series as well. God’s love is something I struggled with for so long so as I learned it and still haven’t perfected it by any means, but as I have learned more and more, I’m sharing what I’ve learned over this series. 

I’m glad you’ve joined me today and can’t wait to share more with you. I also want to remind you how much God loves you. How incredibly proud of you He is and how much he wants a constant relationship with you. Never feel as though you’ve fallen too far or gone too far from Him that you can’t reach out. He is always there. He is the one constant we can count on. 

 In closing I want to leave you with a passage from Ephesians. Part of Paul’s prayer for the church – in Ephesians Chapter 3, starting in Verse 16 “I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” 

 I hope you all have a safe and blessed week. We’ll talk again soon. Thanks everyone!