I’ve come to the realization recently that the world often cheapens this thing we call love.
I was once told by a good friend that love is not a feeling – that it’s a choice. We choose to love? What is love anyway? I believe that we all love differently and I’ve found that over the years, the way that I chose to love has failed me. Maybe because my motives to love were just too “skinny”…
In the past I chose to love in half measure depending on what the person had to offer me, instead of offering that person the exact measure in which I had come to know love. I was afraid that if I did love from the very core of who I am, that this desolated world would just reject me, and instead of running to love I ran away from it.
In desperate despair, I realized that what I had to offer the world, needed to look and feel different than what the world had to offer. I found myself asking questions that I knew wouldn’t have simple answers, but in the end I chose to love. Not a skinny love, but a wide-open-space love that was filled with endless possibilities.
In choosing to love, I was faced with many challenges, but also many truths that have changed my whole perspective on how to love (including my perspective on what love really is).
Love without limits
The Bible says it like this:
“Love from the centre of who you are – don’t fake it!” (Romans 12)
The very first truth that I learnt was that trying to love anyone in my world the way I’ve been loved would just not work. I had to love from the very centre of who I was – not in the imperfect, often superficial way sometimes modeled to me in past experiences.
Not only did I have to centre myself around love, but I had to be vulnerable and willing to love. Nobody ever mentions the cost to love, but there is great freedom in loving when we choose to love without any restrictions and out of a place of honesty and purity, even when it hurts.
Taking second place
“Be good friends that love deeply, practice playing second fiddle”
Nobody ever wants to be second best! Me neither! But I found that by elevating people and encouraging people, God never put me second. My sphere of friends kept growing; and the love I had for those around me grew, as they taught me things just by being themselves around me. It’s hard putting yourself second, but then I think of how Jesus willingly did that by dying on the cross for us.
If you want to model this spacious and free love, you have to experience it yourself first. If you want that, all you have to do is ask – because that’s how God loves you!