Love

Love.

The more I feel like I know Christ, the more I realize how desperately wicked my heart really is. (Jer 17:9) I can say that I love, but honestly, when I study the original language on 1 Corinthians 13 about love I realize how far away I am from loving the way I should, and in return it shows me my need for dependency on the one who really does know and give love without reserve.

I want to dissect the verses in 1 Corinthians 13 but I can't start without first looking at the word LOVE. I felt like I knew what Love meant. If you grew up in church you know that our word love is divided into many different words with different meanings in the original language including epithumia, eros, storge, phileo, and agape' and my mind starts to go , "blah, blah, blah." Wrong attitude, I know, but you know your like me, when you have heard something over and over again it just doesn't have the same pazaz, not that is the right attitude, but it is true.

I prayed this morning as I was having a hard time loving, I prayed, God change my outlook on this word love. Help me to love, and boy did He change my outlook. In the love chapter, Paul writes about agape love. In Greek, agape means so much more than I ever knew and so much of what I have been praying for myself. I feel like that happens a lot where I get an inkling to pray for something and then find it in the bible! Anyway, agape' is brotherly love, affection, goodwill, benevolence. Well, being the scholar I am, (ha!) I wasn't sure on the definition of benevolence so I looked at the definition from Webster and it is disposition to do good. I then searched for the definition of disposition and found that it is the inclination or tendency, the inherent qualities of the mind or character. Wow! This is what I want for my life! I want for my inclination, my first gut reaction, and the ingrained qualities of my mind and character to love. to love my husband, my children, my friends, my church, and my enemies.

 I can't continue this now because I have other responsibilities in life :) but I want to finish writing this out sometime because you see, this is only the beginning. To know I need to love and that it needs to be my gut reaction is one thing, but what about the whole chapter of 1 Corinthians explaining exactly what love is......

In the meantime,  I am asking God to search my heart, test me, see if there is any anxious way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23) I am asking that He show me and forgive my hidden faults (Psalm 19:12) and teach me how to love as He does. (John 15:13) May Christ be in the forefront of my mind today! (Colossians 3:1-4)