"God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love."
--1 John 4:18 (The Message)
What exactly is Love? You can’t really touch it, but you can feel it. You can’t really see it but you can discern it. You can’t exactly taste it, but it satiates your palate. Love. It can touch you at any moment, it can capture your soul and hold you hostage. It can make you a victim to idiosyncrasies and cringe-worthy moments of “What was I thinking?”
Love, it makes you do stupid things. Love has moved mountains—literally—as evidenced by the creators of Mount Rushmore. Love should be selfless, yet many have killed for love. But in its purest form many have also been saved by Love. Love is overrated and underrated all at the same time. And yet, we yearn for it. We want LOVE. We want to be loved, we want to love-love, and more than anything, we want to love; something, somebody, someplace, somewhere, somehow…WE. WANT. LOVE.
Webster defines love as; “A strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties; Attraction based on sexual desire; Affection and tenderness felt by lovers; Affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests”.
Love is a multifaceted beast. You can be in love and you can have a chance at love. You can have Agape Love (sacrificial) toward family, Phileo Love (soul) as with a friend or member of your social network. Then there's Eros Love, felt with the body and directed towards a lover. Your love can also be Storge (dutiful), towards your culture and community. With all these dimensions and quantum complexities of love, it’s easy to see how we humans can sometimes get love...wrong.
We are unworthy of such a task as Love. Bound in inequity and drenched in sin, we come to the world with some catching up to do. We learn how to love from our parents, however, because sin has run rampant our ideas about Love will forever remain tarnished until we look to Jesus to set us straight. God sent His Son to show us the purple and multi-dimensions of Love. It is by example that He has modeled and answered this exact question: “What is Love?”
GOD IS LOVE.
We know that by example we can continue to spread His gospel and share the good news. We know that suffering will continue in this world until His second coming. What counts in this lifetime is what we do with the love we have now and how we can share it.
ReConnect Young Adult Ministry at Restoration Praise Center wants to share this love with you. We know that some of you are hurting and suffering because of this thing called love. We want you to know that you are not alone. Everyday someone dies, weeps, sobs, leaps, rejoices and suffers because of interpretations of Love.
We bring you this blog to share those experiences with the hopes that our triumphant testimonies will bring you solace and comfort. Every month, Reconnect will publish a true story or testament about finding, losing, sharing and having Love.
Christian Perspectives on Relationships is meant to be a CPR forum to breathe new life and hope into our interpersonal relationships and bring us closer to God.
If you have a testimony or story you would like to share you may do so by emailing reconnect@rpcsda.org or submitting it anonymously online here.
This love story is to be continued…
