What is love?
Love is so valuable that the enemy wants to steal, kill and destroy it. John 10:10 The thief cometh not, but to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. The longing for love is built into every human being from the beginning. It is an emotion so strong that people have stolen for it, killed for it, and destroyed other people because they could not have it.
My sister-in-law, Kristin, used to say the opposite of love was not hate; because hate is a passionate emotion, just like love is a passionate emotion. The opposite of love, she would say, is indifference. She got this from Elie Wiesel, in the U.S. News and World Report, October 27, 1986. The Quote goes like this: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
Indifference is lack of interest in the people around you. It’s a way of telling the people who love you that they are not worth your focus, time, attention or energy. The opposite of love.
The point is strong emotions can’t be opposite sides. They are on the same side of the fence, strong and full of energy, lively, and active. So, the opposite has to be the opposite of this: Indifference.
When the enemy comes to steal love, He is very subtle. He simply has the parent get distracted from the value of the child. The parent’s focus is moved off the child to something else. The parent’s energy gets directed away from their offspring for just a second or much longer. And the enemy has stolen love from the child. It’s the same for a marriage relationship. The focus and energy have been taken off the object of love to something or someone else. And so, the theft has been perpetrated and the crime is complete. If this happens at key times in a child's life, or multiple times, it can be devasting to the child.
Love that is killed looks something like this: A parent is taken away for a time and exposed to something so devastating as war, or tragedy, or personal harm, emotional harm or mental harm and the love that the child needed has been killed. Love dies when that parent shuts down or shuts out their loved ones. Never to be revived again. When something like PTSD happens, love could die.
A love that has been destroyed has the power to take as many lives with it as possible. An example of this is a father coming home from the horrors of war. He has taken those gaping open wounds into his own soul and internally screams that if he can’t have love to heal his wounds, then no one else around him will have love either. And it drives him to cause irreparable damage to anyone he is supposed to love. That destruction has rippling effects to anyone close enough to get tossed in its wake. And this can span across time and down through generations if not stopped by true love.
So what is love? It is an innate emotion that is reciprocal. It is meant to be shared. It is the most basic need of any human being. It drives us into relationship with other humans that will eventually hurt us yet is designed to bring healing and growth to the same relationship. It is the foundational emotion which all other emotions play off of. It is safe to say we cannot live without love. Yes, there are people who exist without it. Usually, these people choose to do so because of some great hurt experienced in them where they were not met with love at a time when they needed it most. They exist without it, but they do not LIVE without it.
God is love. God made us. God is love because He is three persons in One and has been since before time began. He is relationship; Father, Son and Holy Ghost. A triune relationship that is so close and so trusting because of love, that One could ask the Other to become a created man, live on earth and die for the rest of creation (created human beings), paying the price of sin, knowing His mission on earth is to save the world. The driving force for Him to do this is LOVE. He loves the Father, The Father loves the Son, The Father loves His creatures (mankind), and the Holy Spirit moves within this love to help us find this same love in the Father and the Son.
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth notknoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. 1 John 4:7-11
What is love? This is my commandment, “That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Quote from Jesus in the Gospel of John 15:12-13 Jesus died for us because He and the Father love us. Love is a force so strong that one would give up his own life for another person. Love is a catalyst that can change minds, ideologies, nations and the world but for one thing: Sin, and an enemy that comes to steal, kill, and destroy.
And what is the one thing that can stop sin and this thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy? It is love. Love is the power to overcome sin and death. Love is the one thing that can cause a family destiny to change direction from desolation to flourishing.
There are all kinds of counterfeits to love. They sure look like love and even feel like love but when tested with time and the storms of life are revealed to be fake. Love is a commitment. Not like a contract that can be broken by one or both parties, but a covenant before God with the person of affection. Whether this be a friend, a marriage partner or child/children, the covenant is with God first. It has to be. Because either of these roles, friend, spouse or parent, requires extraordinary focus and energy. Besides the fact that all of these relationships need to not be taken lightly. It is a full-time, full-attention, almost all-encompassing pass-time. It requires the ability to stay humble, asking forgiveness and pouring out much of the same. It is evident that a superhuman amount of grace and mercy is necessary. And once again we need God, Who is love, to help us give this kind of love. Without fully understanding The Father’s sacrifice of giving His own Son for each of us, we cannot fully understand the true meaning of real, authentic love. Jesus willingly gave His life to save us from our sins. That is LOVE. This is why the enemy wants to steal, kill and destroy love.
What is Love?
by Monica DuBois
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