Choose Love

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day! It’s a day in which we celebrate Love. It’s a day that for many people is the only time of the year that they convey their love to another. It’s a day that will mainly be celebrated between two people, two sweethearts.

I often wonder why so many of us are shy and closed off to sharing our Love to others throughout the rest of the year?

I see Valentine’s Day in a different light. I see it as a chance to share God’s Word of how we are to share our Love with others.

Col. 3:12-14 “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”

It’s hard to misunderstand how God feels about Love. Our understanding is not the problem. Our problem is the performance of the scriptures. We do not always love people deeply. How’s your love life? That is, how well do you love people? How well do you demonstrate love to people?

Do you demonstrate love when you feel wronged? This is something that we all need to do because our Lord Jesus did the same thing.

In our Scripture reading this morning we read that as believers, we need to clothe ourselves with some virtues don’t we? Compassion, Kindness, Humility, Gentleness and Patience are listed. We also see here that we are not to hold onto grievances, (that is grudges), we are to forgive one another just as Jesus forgives. Yes these things are very important but we are told at the ending the scripture something that trumps all of these virtues:

“…And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”

We read that if we clothe ourselves with love, this will bind all the above virtues into PERFECT UNITY!

Isn’t that really what we are striving for? Perfect Unity! I don’t believe that we like dis-unity in our relationships. I believe each of us enjoy peace and harmony in our lives. Many of us may have people in our lives that we feel loves drama and seems to always be stirring the pot in all areas. But I think in general we are all looking for peace and God tells us that we will only find that if we put on love.

So, how do we clothe ourselves with Love? How can we incorporate love in such an evil fleshly world? How can we clothe ourselves with love when people make us so mad?

I want to share with you this morning a couple of thoughts on how we can clothe ourselves with Love. I believe it is a matter of choice. First of all, I truly believe that we control our actions.

I.We choose how to act towards others.

Proverb 25:28 like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control.

A.Loving people master their moods. They do not live by their emotions. They do the right thing, even when they don’t feel like it.

Illustration: Isn’t this something that we are all taught? Our parents began teaching this as far back as we all can remember. I know I have told each of my children when they were small that they had to learn how to control their selves. That they couldn’t just throw their selves down on the floor kicking and screaming each time they didn’t get their way.

As a parent, one of my responsibilities is to help my children learn how to act.

1.Isn’t that an odd thing to say? That we need to LEARN how to act. Children are really emotional time bombs aren’t they? If something goes wrong what do most children do? Cry, temper tantrums, yell, throw themselves down on the ground and all sorts of wacky things that we as parents are responsible in teach our children not to do.

2.We all were small children once and we all had to learn how to act accordingly. Some of you may have been horrible with sharing your toys, some of you may have had a bad habit with name calling, or perhaps some of you had horrendous table manners.

3.Yes, it was our parent’s responsibility to teach us how to act because they loved us.

4.Isn’t this why God gave us the commandments? The commandments instruct us how to live. God gave these to us that we may learn how to act, how to treat other people, how to live a life of love.

B.Isn’t this really what all of the Scripture are about? Instructions from our Father on how to live a life of Love.