What is love? What do we really understand about love? If you read my previous post you probably know where this is all coming from. Did you take the time to read 1 John 4? Stop what you are doing and read it. Yes, now. Take the time soak it into your brain.

     Does that not just rock your world?? Just the smallest glimmer of what love is.  Our culture has allowed us to romanticize love, to overuse love and to forget about what it really means, or just maybe we never actually thought about what love is.

     Did you ever realize we use the same word to express our feelings about ice cream to express our love for God, the Most Holy God, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and we use the same word when talking about ice cream!? Is it just me or is that completely insane!? Are you seeing the problem here?

    Some of us even throw around this word love and let it mean more when talking about ice cream or a puppy than our Creator! Are we so crazy to believe that one little word can consume the whole entire definition of what love is!? A word that we cannot even fully understand what it means.

God is love.

     Can we understand this? Can we understand that love is not just a feeling; it’s not an emotion it is part of WHO God is?

     There is a chapter in the book ‘Praying for your Future Husband’ that really just stuck out to me while thinking about love. The Hawaiian language has over 70 words for wind! Wind! And we have only 1 for love!  One of these 70 words is used to describe a wind that is a ‘canoe-eating’ wind. Now can you imagine if we had 70 different words to describe love, and each of them still described part of who God is!

     Our view of love has become so narrow. So scewed by the media and influences around us, we throw around the word love like it is nothing. We talk about some day ‘falling in love.’  The problem with falling is that falling is something I do on accident (a lot) I never mean to fall, and if you can fall into love doesn’t that mean you can also fall out of love?

     I don’t want my love for my Savior, my love for the God of the Universe, for my Creator to be an accident. I want to have an intentional love.  A love that crys out to God every second, that yearns for His presence! I want to love God with a ‘passionate canoe-eating’ kind of love! I want to chase after God with all that I am, with every fiber of my being!

     I want to understand what it means to love the way Jesus loves.

-Elle

“ I love the way You hold me, by my side You’ll always be You take each and every day, make it special in some way” - Jamie Grace, Hold Me

     I have never been in love, but someday I want to be. I know that someday it will happen, but as I sit here and think about it, what do I really know about what love means/is?

     I want to be in love. Real love. The love that cannot be broken, that no matter what happens it will always sustain. A love so deep no one else can come close to touching it.

    Want to know a secret?

     I already know who my first and true love is. He knows too.
     My first and always-will-be love is also my Savior. My King. My Jesus.

     The truth is that I do not understand the type of love that Jesus talks about, the type of love He lived. I want to undertstand and have and live this love deep-down in my core. I want people that have never met me to look at me and see the love of Jesus. I do not want my friends to look at me and see Elle, I want them to see the light of Christ shining through me at every moment.

     What is love?

  

    “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved  us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.”

                                                                   -1 John 4:7-12 (Emphasis mine)

(Read 1 John 4. Take your time. Breath it in. This is a lot, but it is worth it!)

Did you catch that?

God is love.

God is love, so for us to understand love, we must know God.

     You know that feeling when you have a crush on someone? That time when you cannot stop thinking about him, cannot wait to see and talk to him, make excuses to bump into and hang out with him?

     That’s what I want and I never want to get over it. I want to have a never ending crush on Jesus, only instead of just being a crush I want it to build into an incredible relationship! I want to see Jesus and think about Him, and talk to Him all the time! I want to yearn and long to be in His presence!      

     I want Jesus to have my heart. Fully and completely. 

     Jesus I give you my heart.

     I understand that sometimes my heart will be bruised, broken and hurting but sometimes it is all I have to give.

     And the best part?

     Jesus takes it anyway.

    Jesus YOU have my heart.


-Elle