Love
In just a few days, we will be celebrating Valentine’s Day, or St. Valentine’s Day.
A made up Holiday by the candy, flower, and greeting card industry designed to make husbands and boyfriends feel guilty and penniless.
From what I see every Valentine’s Day, the restaurant and jewelry industries are in on it too.
Just exactly what do we celebrate on Valentine’s Day? Ask any female over the age of 13 and they will probably tell you Love.
Ask any guy over the age of 15 and he will probably tell you it’s about separating him from his money.
All kidding aside, I do believe the ladies get the better end of the deal. If she forgets Valentine’s Day, the guy would probably be doing the happy dance, if he forgets Valentine’s Day, she will be dancing on his head.
I will say this, and I hope most of you men agree, I don’t need some made up holiday to show my love for my wife. A good husband should do that every day.
So, I got to thinking about love, how we define it, how we experience it, and what it really means. All of us have different lives, different experiences, so I looked back over my life and thought about my experiences with love.
When I say love in the context of my life, I am not referring to the over trivialization of the term, like: I love pizza, or I love football, or I love airplanes… well, perhaps I do love airplanes, but that is a one sided affair.
So when I speak of love in a serious manner, I do so with regard to relationships.
1. My very first relationship that was built on love would have to be my mother. I can still remember her tucking me into bed when I was a little boy.
I still remember her taking care of me when I was sick, I still remember her baking me birthday cakes, and I still remember her loving me even when I wasn’t very lovable.
A mother’s love, as I experienced it, was one of caring, compassion, and forgiveness.
Then there was the love of my father. That love took many forms. From my daddy I learned that there were expectations on my behavior, not that his love was contingent on my actions, but that his love compelled me to behave certain ways.
He loved me enough to teach me responsibility, accountability, and a proper work ethic. His love also taught me the meaning of discipline and the consequences of my bad behavior.
Together, my parents, and grandparents, demonstrated all of the attributes of God’s love.
Jesus tells us about his relationship with His Father in John 5:19, “the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son does in like manner.”
If a parent is doing their job, then the love they demonstrate for their children should be a prototype or a reflection of God’s love for us.
That’s why the job we do in parenting our children is so important. As parents, we are to model the love of God to our children.
2. As I remember it, my second experience in love would be from my brother. When we were kids, we did everything together. Tim was my “big brother” and we had all sorts of adventures together.
Sure we fought and had disagreements, but at the end of the day, momma tucked us into bed together and we were friends again. As a child, I don’t ever remember going to bed mad at him.
Now, that all changed when he became a teenager and seemingly overnight, he forgot I existed. That attitude persisted until one night while I was stationed in Pensacola; he called me and asked me to be his best man at his wedding.
My first response we, who is this and what have you done with my brother? Even though we never showed it though our teenage years, the bond we shared as children was never broken. He was also the best man at my wedding.
Hebrews 13;1 says, “let brotherly love continue.” True brotherly love will always continue, even when we fight, even when we have disagreements. Why, because we are brothers, or sisters.
3. My next life experience with what would be considered love would be what we commonly refer to as puppy love.
All of us, and probably most of the teenagers and pre-teens here have experienced “puppy love,” our first “boyfriend/girlfriend” relationship. We are so smitten and what we think will last forever usually burns out in two to four weeks.
That usually or always leads to our first unpleasant experience with the emotion associated with love. Whether we are the one doing the dumping or the one getting dumped, it is a very unpleasant first experience with something associated with the feeling of love.
I remember the first time I got dumped. I was completely taken by surprise, I was the typical guy, completely clueless, and then to see her holding hands with another guy the next day was almost more than I could bear (I was thirteen at the time).
So, puppy love is not usually a good experience for most of us. I almost always results in our first negative experience with the emotions associated with love.
4. However, even though we don’t realize it at the time, our first experiences with puppy love are just a dress rehearsal for the real thing. Those first awkward relationships help us learn how to have a meaningful relationship with the opposite sex.
Those early mistakes, like dropping your date off at her house and not walking her to the door, help you learn how to treat each other and respect each other.
So that when you do finally meet “the one” you are capable of conducting yourself in a manner that causes him, or her, to want to get to know you better…
…and eventually leading to the most important relationship in your life that isn’t pre-determined by birth.
God’s word has a lot to say about marriage. That is to be expected, since marriage was created and instituted by God. The truth of the matter is that God Himself was the first match maker; He arranged the first blind date.
And then He gave us specific instructions on how to have a successful marriage. Col 3:19 has great family advice, “Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them.”
Eph 5:25, “husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church… 28 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself… 33..let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”
Husbands, if you haven’t been getting respect from the wife, then perhaps you haven’t been showing her that you lover her as Christ loved the Church.
And wives, if he has shown you this kind of love and you haven’t given him the respect that the Word calls for, the shame on you.
God desires our marriages to be a happy loving experience. Indeed, the first thing that God said “wasn’t good” was for man to be alone.
So, if there is trouble in your marriage, look to the advice given in God’s Word with respect to how you treat each other and I am certain things will improve.
Of course, that is contingent on our humility and willingness to be submissive to God’s will for our lives.
5. As our love within our own marriage grows, usually that leads to having children of our own, and the circle is complete.
My first experience with unconditional love from my parents became my responsibility to demonstrate to my own children.
I Tim 5:8 says, “but if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he had denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” KJV says Infidel
Our responsibility as parents is to demonstrate the unconditional love of God to our children.
We do this by caring for them, protecting them, teaching them the right way they should go, and providing for their needs, (not necessarily their wants).
Families are the building block of civilization. If the family fails, civilization will collapse into chaos.
When you look back over all the ills of our society over the last 50 years, it can all be traced to the collapse of the family.
That’s why God’s Word has placed such a heavy emphasis on the importance of the family and the responsibility of the parent to demonstrate His love to the children.
6. In order for a parent to properly model God’s love, it is necessary for them to have experienced His love.
Most families in America today can be described as “dysfunctional.”
And I would submit to you that most, if not all, of the dysfunction can be traced back to a lack of Godly influence in the home, or too much influence of the world in the home. They are two sides of the same coin.
So, in order to demonstrate His love, I must know what it looks like.
It is most easily seen in Jn 3:16, “for God SO loved the world, mankind, us, that He GAVE His only begotten Son, that whosoever, any of us, BELIEVE in Him, should not parish, but have , received, eternal life.”
As parents, husbands, wives, siblings, friends, we are to have a standard for love, that standard comes from God. Without God’s standard for love, we would not be able to quantify what love is or even what it looks like.
Love, as demonstrated by God, is complete and unconditional, He SO loves us.
And love is giving to the point that it causes us pain or loss, God SO loved that he GAVE what was most precious to Him, His only Son.
But He did not give without a purpose. He gave in order to accomplish a greater good, to save that which was lost.
His purpose for giving His Son can be identified all the way back in Isaiah 1:18, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they are ride like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
God’s purpose and reason for giving was our redemption and life. He gave because He loved.
In all of our life experiences with what we call love, none can be greater than that which is demonstrated by God’s Son. Jn 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friend.”
And yet Paul says that God went even further in Ro 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
This morning, I don’t know what you think love looks like, but this is it.
Perhaps your family life didn’t demonstrate God’s love, maybe your love life hasn’t been on par with what God had designed it be, maybe your marriage is struggling because it lacks the proper foundation.
Maybe you have never understood love because you have never seen the universal standard set forth by God Himself.
I want to invite you to experience real love today, the unconditional love of God that can bring healing and peace to your life, to your family, or even to your marriage.
When we have love, it is easy to give love. I Cor 13:4-8 says, 4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails.
If you have never experienced or given this type of love, than make that right today. Answer the call of the Holy Spirit on your soul today and experience the peace that surpasses all understanding.
Let us pray.
