What Is Love? Series

Hadaway Asked what it was, Tina Turner wanted to know what it had to do with it, Mickey Gilly was looking for it in all the wrong places, and Aerosmith found it in an elevator.

In cased you haven't got it yet we are talking about love.

Love, there are songs about it, poems about it, and even a holiday set aside just for love. Florist and candy makers will soon see their busiest day of the year, Valentine’s Day. But what is love? What’s it all about.

Let’s get into our text today and see what is so important about “This Crazy Little Thing Called Love”

(Read text)

I think what we see in the text today is the Apostle Paul telling us about a better way, a most excellent way. A life of Love.

So why is it so important to get this Love thing right? Well it’s obvious what Paul thought about its importance right here in the first few verses. (Read 1-3).

Basically you can be cooler than the flip side of a pillow, you can be the best thing since sliced bread, you can be as good as Dudley Do Right but if you don’t have love you don’t have “nuthin.” Love is important to our well-being and the vitality of our spirit. Love is necessary for our Christian life.

1st John 4:16 says this about love “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them? If we are to have Christ dwelling in us we must have Love.

So to figure out what love is let’s first look at what it’s not.

1. It has nothing to do with sex

2. Not envious

3. Not boastful

4. Not prideful

5. Not rude

6. Irritable

7. Resentful

8. Doesn’t want its own way

9. Not involved in wrongdoing

Love has nothing, not one iota to do with pleasing ourselves. Love is not a selfish thing we do in order to get personal satisfaction; it’s something we do to allow others to have satisfaction. Love isn’t about ME it’s about everybody else.

Love isn’t just a feeling; it’s not something we just fall in and out of. Our world today will tell you that love is all about sex, or a feeling that magically appears and disappears based on the other persons actions. I think a lot of times we confuse love with lust, Love wants more for the other person, and Lust is wanting something that will gratify ourselves.

Love is not selfish in any way.

But Love is important without it we would all be lost

The text tells us that Love is:

Patient & Kind

Does not insist on its own way

Rejoices in truth

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things and love never ends. In other words love is the whole enchilada. Its not just a feeling or an emotion.

Love is action, love is something we do. Love is sitting with the elderly and sick even if we have better things to do. Love is standing by a child when they are desperate and need encouragement even if they have done something wrong.

Love is wanting more for your spouse than you want for yourself.

It isn’t about how we feel or an emotional roller coaster. Love is all about our attitude it’s all about living a selfless life and doing all we can for the benefit of someone else.

Heres a story that puts love in perspective.

"Dr. E. V. hill, was a great African American pastor, he was serving a church in the Watts area of Los Angeles way back in the 60's when the riots broke out. You remember them, the burnings and the lootings and the shootings. But Hill was a courageous man, and from his own pulpit he denounced his neighbors who were destroying the property and stealing from the merchants. And this brought all kinds of threats against him as a person.

"One night the phone rang. It was late, and there was something about the way Hill held the receiver that told his wife that something was wrong. When he hung up, she wanted to know who had called and what they wanted, but Hill wouldn't let her know. She kept persisting and persisting, almost demanding that he tell her. And so finally he did. "I don't know who it was," he said, "but they've threatened to blow up my car with me in it." Well, throughout the night, Hill was very restless and uneasy. He couldn't get to sleep for the longest time, worrying about that threat to his life. But finally his drowsiness caught up with him and he did fall asleep.