love is a choice not a feeling...

the bible also says that love is a choice.

we choose to love, and we choose to not love. it’s a choice. the bible says in 1 corinthians 14.1 in the message paraphrase, go after a life of love as if your life depended on it because it does. go after means make a choice. decide. choose. we choose to love or to not love.

that destroys another myth that we have about love. we think love is uncontrollable. as if one day i'm just walking along and i'm instantly in love – no control over it. even the terminology we use is kind of accidental – i fell into love. like it’s a big ditch or something. i fell in love. “help! i’ve fallen in love, and i can’t get up!” as if i have no control over my choice to love or not love.

i can’t tell you how many times i’ve had men or women say to me, trying to justify a separation or divorce: i just don’t love him/her anymore. as if that's totally out of your control and now because you don’t love her that gives you the right to divorce her or leave her.

let’s be honest about this. love is a choice. you need to rephrase that: “i'm choosing not to love him any more.” because it is a choice, and you could choose to keep on loving even if they didn’t love you. that’s your choice. in fact, the truth is, acting in love when you don’t feel like it is actually a higher level of love than when you do feel like it.

it’s one thing to love when the flowers are in bloom and you’re on a honeymoon and things are going your way and you’ve got a lot of money to spend and things are going great. but the real test of love is when things are not going great in your life, when you’re out of money and when you’re sick and don’t feel good, the pressure is on and you’ve lost your job. you choose to love in spite of how you feel. that’s a higher level of love. loving in spite of your feelings. loving in spite of your emotions.

have any of you gotten up in the middle of the night with a kid that was sick? that’s love. have any of you ever been kind and patient with your mate when they were grumpy and grouchy? one guy was asked, “do you wake up grumpy in the morning?” he said, “no, i usually let her sleep.”

love is giving a person what they need, not what they deserve. that’s what GOD does. that’s how GOD loves you. GOD doesn’t give you what you deserve. if i got what i deserved from GOD, i wouldn’t even be here, and you wouldn’t even be alive either.

but GOD doesn’t give us what we deserve; HE gives us what we need. that’s called grace. that’s called love. love is giving to another person without any guarantee of getting anything back. if you’re doing it to get something back, that’s not love. love is committing to the well being of another person without any guarantees that they’re going to give back to you. that’s love. it’s a command, and it’s a choice. it is not a feeling.

just a thought from the front porch…