The most searched phrase on Google in 2012 was “What is love?” People have spent millions of hours and dollars researching, interviewing, discussing, rationalizing, and debating the answer to this three word question whose answer has eluded and marginalized most of our contemporary culture. The problem with love is that we define love based on how we have personally experienced love (or lack of) from people. Love is too big to be limited by our experience with people or simply our perspective, it can only be truly understood by knowing the source and giver of love. The reality about love is that we were created by it (Read Genesis 1, not that moment your parents had), all have experienced at least part of it, and all of us have a longing for a more complete experience of it.
Read I Corinthians 13. For those of you familiar with this chapter, you may need to read it again with new eyes and a fresh heart. To shift loving our enemies from something we are supposed to do to a full experience of love we must dive deeper into the Truth that answers the question, “What is love?” God lays out an authentic, aggressive, and comprehensive definition of love that when practiced leads to healing, freedom, and advancing impact. Love in action will redefine us and how we perceive, respond, and act towards friends and enemies. The Bible tells us that love is selfless, caring, forgiving, and proactive. Love is not a response to how people treat us, love is an action that transforms people.
For Today: Are you struggling to know what love is? Are you afraid of what the true definition of love might require of you? Today make a list of how you have experienced or defined love in your life. Then read I Corinthians 13 and circle the things on the list that are affirmed in the passage as love and draw a line through the things that are shown to be false definitions of love. Take time to wrestle with the drawn through items and give God permission to redefine love in and through you. At the end of the day write up your new definition of love that you are going to live by.