Stop Pretending Start Loving

I read a story about a man who had just gotten a job at a zoo. On the second day of work the only gorilla the zoo owned died. He didn’t know what to do because he knew his boss would be angry if he told him. He decided to bury the gorilla, and put on a gorilla suit himself. He decided that he could act like a gorilla for two hours a day when his boss came to feed the animals.

He would climb the trees and swing from the rope attempting to look like the gorilla that used to be in that cage. One day he didn’t have enough strength to hold onto the rope, he crashed down into a different cage. All of a sudden he saw a lion. He started to yell “Somebody help me I’m not really a gorilla I’m a man.” The lion said “Shutup you idiot your gonna get us all fired.”

How often do we go around telling ourselves and the people around us lies. We pretend we are something we are not: for better or worse. We are all imperfect and we all have things we would like to hide. But when we stop lying to ourselves and to God, He can truly heal is. I believe that Love is a great healer of all things. God doesn’t love us because of who we are or what we have done. He loves us for reasons we don’t understand. He created us because He loves us and He made us to love.

When you begin to see things as the way you are, you can experience true, accepting love. You can realize that you, no matter what you look like or how you act, will always be a Princess in God’s eyes because you are His daughter. Seeing yourself through God’s eyes is the first step to seeing others in God’s eyes. As Brandon Heath sings “Give me your eyes for just one second give me your eyes so I can see everything that I keep missing give me your love for humanity”. I don’t know about you, but I want to see myself for who I truly am: Imperfect but in Christ’s hands being made perfect, scarred and bruised but in the Physicians hospital for healing, sinful and selfish but in the operation for a heart transplant. When we realize how much God really and truly does love us, we will be transformed forever. It is so beautiful, so joyful, and so indescribable. His love is so crazy and it makes me want to shout for a joy, jump off a mountain, and sing at the top of my lungs.

His love has came into my heart in such abundance and recently I have had the privilege of seeing His love in some pretty amazing people around me, like in my Sabbath school class: a true answer to prayer. These are just two examples of what I believe is Christ love..

My Sabbath school teacher is a nurse and works in the prenatal department.  After each baby is born, she holds them and sneaks to another room where she hugs the baby, prays for the baby, and tells each baby that they are loved.

My friend in the Sabbath school class has recently recovered from breast cancer, and has just received a job as a breast cancer counselor for young woman that have just been diagnosed.

How amazing. Love is contagious. I hope you are inspired to love more and realize you are loved. My dad always tells me that love is a choice. It’s not an emotion. There will be days where you don’t feel like loving. There will be times when people don’t deserve love, but true love is about giving, it’s about sacrifice. If you want to learn how to love, you have to understand what love is. Here are 3 simple definitions:  God is love (1 John 4:8) , Love is doing the best thing for someone, and love is sacrifice.

There are 3 different kinds of love in the Bible. 

1."Agapao" This word is a verb used to describe God's divine love. The noun is "apape." Example is John 3:16. This is the action of totally being committed to the well being of others without regard for their worthiness even unto death. That love was demonstrated by Jesus when He suffered and died for our sins. We, as Christians, are show that unselfish love to others.

This is the kind of love that we must realize Christ has for us. It will never change regardless of what we do, and we will never be able to comprehend it. My Sabbath school teacher told me every morning and every night to wake up and tell myself ten times with my hands crossed around my heart “Jesus loves me”. By simply doing this, we are giving Christ power in our hearts and over our minds. I challenge you for the next week to do the same. Satan hates this lie!

2. "Phileo" This word translated "love" refers to fervent love for another person. Jesus when challenging Peter in John 21:15-17 asked do you agape me more than the other disciples. Peter replied, "Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love (phileo) thee" This was his response four times to Jesus' questions. Peter never used the word "agapeo" in response to Jesus' questions.

3. "Eros" This is a noun and refers to sexual love.

These loves are not what I think about when I think of love. We, sinful humans, often think selfishly when we consider love. Many people in the world earn love by making someone else feel good.  It is the commitment of the will that holds true biblical love steadfast and unchanging.

Matt 22:37-40  says to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul and to love your neighbor as yourself. LOVE is what we must be all about. We are connected to God because of Jesus through Love. We come to know God by accepting His love and choosing to love Him. Then we show Jesus by loving others.

Truths about the word love:

1. Biblical love is defined by God in His Grace. Grace is "unmerited favor."

2. It is further defined in the word "agape" that is translated in to the English word "love." The word expresses the highest form of love which is the love of God for mankind. This love is one that is freely given because one wills to give it. It is not based on any merit of the individual.

3. True biblical love can only be known by the actions that it prompts. It is not the love of complacency or affection, that is not drawn out by any excellency in it objects .

 

“If you ask most any church member or profession Christian if they loved the Lord, they would say....certainly! Yet, the faithfulness and obedience of the individual to the Lord shows if their love for God truly exists or is simply rhetoric. “ We show love by actions, thus our love for God can be seen by if we keep His commandments.

4. Perfect love is seen the Lord Jesus Christ. In the Garden of Gethsemane Christ agonized over what he would be enduring within hours as He suffered for the sins of all the world. Yet, he said "Not my will, but thine be done."  Only a pure love could suffer for the world, fully knowing that most of the world would reject Christ's sacrifice for them.  Love produces action...and if love is present it will be seen.

5. True love will produce sacrifice for the one who is loved. That is why today, some many live uncommitted lives. They are hot one minute and ice cold the next. True biblical love produces stability in one's life.

1 Corinthians 13 talks about love and what love involves.

In 1 Corinthians 13: 11-12. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face. Now as I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

“Paul admonishes us—by instructing us "to put away childish things" (verse 11), as well as his reference to a mirror (verse 12)—that love is something we grow in. It must be perfected. What we have now is partial. Therefore, God does not give it to us in one huge portion to be used until we run out of it. In that sense, we must always see ourselves as immature. But a time is coming when love will be perfected, and we will have it in abundance like God. In the meantime, while we are in the flesh, we are to pursue love (I Corinthians 14:1).”

“This indicates that the biblical love is not something we have innately. True, some forms of this quality we call love come unbidden; that is, they arise by nature. But this is not so with the love of God. It comes through the action of God through His Spirit, something supernatural”

 

It's gonna take some guts to love in this day and age. To love CRAZY, to love passionately, and best of all to love purely. If you have never read the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan, I really suggest you read it. We are incapable of understanding how much Christ loves us.

You are worth more than Gold, loved and made with a purpose. Wake up every morning and tell yourself Jesus loves ME.  Smile and learn to be bold in your love. You see the beautiful girl in the second picture, this is a tragedy. You see love isn't easy it's a risk, sometimes love hurts. I don't want to be the girl that is afraid of love. Sometimes people close to me like my mom and my bests friends have asked me what are you afraid of? I used to get scared when guys wanted to get too close to me. It was cool when I liked them, but when they liked me back I would freak out and be like "is this right?"

I woke up this morning with a smile in my face and I did it- I did what my Sabbath school teacher told me do- I told myself Jesus loved me 10 times! And it just made me smile, I feel like I could jump up and down with all the joy inside of me. Christ loves ME so much! Yesterday he let my grandparents come to see me, and today he is letting me see Natalie and Emily, some of my bestest friends. It's just amazing how He works all things out in His time because it is like a dream come true that I get to see them! God loves you. I pray you bask in His love today.