Love… a word so overused and abused in today’s society. Anymore, there’s so much confusion on what it means to love and be loved. Especially with regards to relationships… teens talk about loving each other after a couple weeks of dating. It’s a word that, in many ways, has lost its meaning in the lies of society.
We all thirst to be loved. It’s no shocker really. If you think about it, your deepest desire as a human is to be loved throughout life, whether it’s from your parents, your friends, your coworkers, your teammates (if you play sports), or your dating relationships. Love is such an intricate part of life, and yet it’s one of the biggest areas that people neglect to learn about.
I use to think loving people is purely emotional based, but that’s not the case at all. Love is a decision and a choice. Yes, it can be emotional based, but lasting love is a decision. For instance, in a dating relationship, the first couple years is a honeymoon kind of love where it’s so incredibly easy to love the other person because you’re so enthralled by them. To you, they are absolutely perfect for those two years, and they are shockingly flawless. However, when that honeymoon stage wears off, all the sudden you realize you’re actually going to have fights with this person, and you’re actually going to find quarks that frustrate the living daylights out of you. At this point, love is a decision. That emotional love wears off, and you are faced with a decision… are you going to sacrificially love this person like Jesus sacrificially loves you or are you going to blow them off because loving them is no longer “easy”. Now this is a typical example in a relationship setting, but this same example can be applied to all areas of life. When loving someone begins to get hard, are you going to chose to sacrificially love them or are you going to let your sinful desires of hatred and anger take root within you.
Recently I’ve been reading a book by Gary Chapman called The Five Love Languages (Singles Edition). It’s pretty well known so you may have heard of it before. This book has challenged me to build stronger relationships in nearly every area of my life, and along with that it has also taught me a GREAT deal about myself. It has challenged me to learn to love my coworkers better, my family members, my friends, my kids in bible study at church. It opened my eyes to an all new side of love that I wasn’t initially aware of.
Learning to love means learning the primary way in which each person involved in your life feels loved. Some feel loved through physical touch, others through giving gifts, acts of service, words of affirmation, or even quality time. Once you make a concerted effort to learn to love people in the way they primarily receive love you will find every relationship throughout life being enormously enriched. It’s not easy by any means, but it’s a challenge worth taking.
I’d say it’s a perfect time for me to start learning about love. Why? because I’m leaving for an 11 month trip where loving people will certainly be a struggle at times, but the ones that are hardest to love are the ones that need it the most. I want to learn how each person I encounter on my journey primarily feels loved. The orphan children, the widows, the women caught in the sex trade, and the lost and broken families. Even the government officials who prohibit us from sharing the gospel, the people who shout out in hatred for what we are doing, and the men who sexually abuse the women caught in the sex trade are all deserving of love. Lastly, I want to learn each and every one of my squad mates primary love language. These are the people I will be living with for 11 months, the ones I will be sharing some of the greatest memories with, and I want to learn how each one of them receives love the best. Every single person that I encounter will desire to be loved, and they all will have a primary love language. My prayer is that God will give me patience, and an open and vulnerable heart to continuously love these people who so desperately need it.
My challenge to myself and you is to learn how to love in the same way Jesus loves us. Sacrificially. It doesn’t come naturally. It’ll be a daily struggle, but it’ll be incredibly fulfilling when people begin to react to a little bit of genuine love in their lives.
