Defining Love In 600 Words or Less

By Alan Mowbray –

1 Corinthians 13:13 (The Message)
“But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.”

When you stop to think about love, what comes to mind?

Affection—admiration—desire—need—attraction—overlooking the faults of others—forgiving—giving to the poor—helping others who are suffering—being a friend—going to battle for someone, etc.

Sophocles said, “Love frees us of all the weight and pain of life.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. called love, “…the master key that opens the gates of happiness.”

Playwright Karen Sunde pondered: “To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.”

Since the instant love touched the hearts of Adam and Eve, mankind has been trying to define exactly what love is. Everyone has their own definition of it. When you search the word love on the web, you get conflicting results:

“An emotion of strong affection and personal attachment.” Yet, is it not true that neither affection nor attachment is required to love people? There are many individuals I have shown love to over the years and I guarantee you that for some, I had no affection nor was I particularly attached to them.

“To have a strong liking for.” Hmmm, I would have to say again, that a requirement like that would preclude me from loving a lot of people I know.

“Passion or desire.” Okaaaaay. Now the field just got narrowed down to one. Uno—as in less than two. Yeah, you guessed it, my wife. I would say that using that criterion would exclude everyone else on the planet.

So, love remains an elusive definition, yet, everyone knows about it.

There are at least eighteen characteristics of love given in the New Testament. Together they help answer the question, “What is love?”

Love suffers.
Love is patient.
Love is kind.
Love is not jealous.
Love does not brag.
Love is not arrogant.
Love does not act unbecomingly.
Love does not seek its own.
Love is not provoked.
Love keeps no record of suffered wrongs.
Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness.
Love rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things.
Love believes all things.
Love hopes all things.
Love endures all things.
Love never fails.
Love does no harm.
Love covers a multitude of sins.

We know one thing for sure—the Word of God focuses on love, teaching us that our goal must be to put love first, and that any spiritual gifts He gives us must operate out of love. Love is a powerful, but not an impersonal force. It is not a vague mist or a dreamy concept. It is not an idea, but an actual entity.

But what is love, really?

1 John 4:16 (NKJV) tells us: “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.”

God is love.

There you go. It doesn’t say God has love, but that He is love. Don’t mix up the order. Love is not God. God is Love.

Let me show you the difference—it’s huge.

My dog is a girl.

My girl is a dog.

Do you see the difference? Don’t get ‘em mixed up.

There’ll be a war.

God is love.

These three words say so much yet only scratch the surface. Sigh, if only I had another 9000 words—

The God Hole

By Lori Freeland –

Barring basic physical needs, what one thing can people not live without? The answer is love.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope, love. And the greatest of these is love” (I Corinthians 13:13 NIV). We come into the world craving love, spend our lives chasing after love, and die wanting more love.

Love pushes me through prickly patches in my marriage. Love prompts me to put my arms around my kids when my frustration peaks and all I want to do is walk away. Love paves the way to forgiveness when my anger rides high.

I find love at the center of every close relationship I have. Why?

My humanity. God’s humanity. “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27 NIV). God fashioned us in His image to love and to be loved. He gave Eve to Adam for this very reason. Out of His deep love for us, He sent His only Son to pay the price for our insufficiency.

God fashioned us with a giant-sized “God Hole” in our hearts—an abyss He put there for Himself. Everyone has a God Hole. Not everyone knows how to define that space—especially if they lack an intimate relationship with Him. This empty cavern goes by many different names. I call that place restlessness, emptiness, longing, rawness, sadness, frustration, depression, neediness. What do you call it?

When that space remains vacant, it hurts. So why am I surprised then when I ignore the cavern, the emptiness screams to be filled? The vacuum turns into a great restless pit of need. Why haven’t I learned that I can’t just shove any old thing in that hole to ease the ache?

God owns that space and He’s not renting it out to anyone else. It’s set apart. For Him and Him alone. “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23 NIV).

When will I learn that once He fills my heart, my restlessness will melt away and the ache will fade?

Do you have a hollow space? Like me are you trying to fill it with family, friends, food, jobs, multiple non-stop activities? Do you think if you do more, be more, want more, the restless ache will disappear? I’ve learned the hard way over the years that it won’t. God made that hole for Himself. And He’s a jealous God. “Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14 NIV).

See if I’m right. Let Him fill the space. What have you got to lose?

Not by the Sweat of our Brow

By Jennifer Slattery –

We’re a “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” type of people. We take great pride in a job well done, an obstacle conquered, and a goal reached. Self-help books frequent the best-seller’s lists with titles like, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Act like a Woman, Think Like a Man, and The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work, and yet, society as whole, has not changed.

Not to say that there hasn’t been progress. Better health practices, iPhones, and wireless Internet has made life easier. But morally, for the most part, we’re the same. At least from where I’m sitting. Some say we’re worse. I’m not sure if that’s the case, but I don’t see the euphoria that all those self-help books and documentaries should have created if they worked.

As a writer, I spend a great deal of time studying others, and once I make it past the outward smile or the teeth-gritting stick-to-it-ness, I begin to see some very dark and lonely hearts. And although I am limited to the study of those with whom I am in contact with, from where I sit, it seems like those who frequent the self-help section the most are often some of the most miserable.

They’ll make progress for a while. They’ll read books, post notes to their mirrors, doorframes and cupboards, but over time, their best efforts fizzle, sometimes even leaving them worse than they were before. Where is the progress the five steps promise? Ah, but we’ve found the solution. We’ll just try another book, and then another, and then another. And if we try harder, and commit, next time will be different. We’ll find the perfect relationship, lose those pesky twenty pounds, eradicate our insecurities, and suddenly gain the confidence to feel comfortable in our skin. And so the never-ending cycle continues. Our drive for perfection, fueled by our momentary successes, until our lives are enslaved by goal sheets, to do lists, and frequently chanted affirmations.

Others seem to float through life on a perpetual cloud of peace. While some marriages fail, theirs deepens. While bitterness consumes others, they are filled with joy, peace, and increasing love. Not a love of convenient reciprocation, but a genuine love that bubbles from within, coloring all they see and do. And so, we raise them up onto our “self-help” pedestal and make an analysis of what they do, focusing on their outward behaviors instead of what drives them. We run for another rag and spruce up the outside of our cup, leaving the inside, our inner selves, untouched. Because stick-to-it-ness can only take us so far, and its effects will last but a moment. Life changes, real life changes, the kind only the Father can provide, last forever.

In Matthew 11:28 Jesus calls us to surrender our burdens so we can relax in His arms. “Come to Me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yours souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Jesus calls us to stop striving, grasping, reaching, and performing. He bids us to come to Him so that we may rest. And as we grow in Him, He takes care of all the rest.

Signs of the End Times? Mass and Vast Communications

By Dianne E. Butts –

In January, we started looking at Biblical prophecies God predicted as the End Times approach—prophecies that might come true right before our very eyes. The first prophecy we looked at was Israel is back in the Promised Land—just since 1948, and some people from that generation are still living today.

Other prophecies seem to imply that mass communication—visual, not just audio—will need to exist for them to be fulfilled. Today we have radio, television, and the internet. These things did not exist much more than a century ago.

Here are two examples of prophecies that might show world-wide visual communications are needed in End Times prophecy, visual communication that only became available in recent decades:

Revelation 11:7-10: “Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them. Their bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. For three and a half days men from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.”

Revelation 17:8: “The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to his destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because he once was, now is not, and yet will come.”

It’s true these events might be shown on the evening news or carried “Live” as breaking news. But did you know that you can watch events in Israel live right now?

Currently live web cams broadcasting 24/7/365 overlook the Wailing Wall, also known as the Western Wall, in Jerusalem. You can also view live footage from other areas around the Temple Mount, such as Wilson’s Arch. You can find the link on the internet if you do a search for kotel cam.

Kotel is the Hebrew word for the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, which is a part of, or all of, the western wall of the ancient Jewish temple that was destroyed by the Roman, Titus, in 70 AD.

Isn’t it fascinating that today, through computers, laptops, tablets, and even smart phones, we can watch live in real time, at any time we want to, what is happening at the foot of the mount of the very Temple in Jerusalem we’ve read about in our Bibles?! Will we, or those who are alive at the time, gaze upon the two dead bodies of those prophets via internet? Will unbelievers see the Beast on their smart phones?

What do you think? Is this prophecy in preparation to be fulfilled right before our very eyes?

Endurance Training

By Jennifer Slattery –

A few years ago, I underwent intense training in order to compete in a triathlon. Having a defined goal to shoot for encouraged me to push past laziness, run through drizzle, and fight against my self-justifying tendencies. I had a two part-goal: To develop endurance and to train muscle memory. Muscle memory is when your body responds as if by instinct, allowing your body to work more effectively.

Endurance comes through repetition and consistently pushing your body one step, one hill, one mile farther. They call this “brick-workouts” and like the cement blocks that hold a house aright, these long training sessions carry the athlete through the bulk of their race. They in turn have a two-part function: to develop an “I can” mind-set and reduce the amount of fatigue an athlete experiences during a race.

In our spiritual lives, trials and disappointments often serve the same purpose. They take the sting out of many of life’s events, enabling us to press through without giving up. The first trial might leave us sore and trembling, like a first work-out does, but over time, it gets easier. In fact, we develop “spiritual memory.” Our actions, like responding in love when we’ve been wronged or biting our tongue in a tense situation, become more natural, and soon turn into habit.

And like with running, the mental component here is equally important. Everything is more manageable when we face it with the right mindset. If we have other “brick-workouts” to look back on, suddenly our current training session doesn’t appear so daunting. In fact, we know we can make it through because we’ve done it before.

But like with any training, the minute we take our eyes off the goal—the minute we quit moving forward, we start slipping backward. This leads to unsightly flab. It’s easy to spot the physical flab. It encircles our mid-section, widens our backsides, and creates less than appealing jiggles in diverse areas. Spiritual flab is often equally apparent—quick tempers, apathy, selfishness. To truly battle the “bulge,” we need to take our training seriously. Otherwise we give in to comfort more often than not, and choose the path of least resistance.

My current exercise schedule is a perfect example. Now that I’m not training, I find it increasingly difficult to stay on task. My rest days grow more frequent and I don’t approach my work-outs with the same intensity. Break a sweat? I’d rather not. Feel the burn? Maybe tomorrow. Or Friday. Better yet, next week. The result? A little more cushion around my middle and less endurance to carry me through the day.

I think our spirituality is a lot like that. Without goals and intentionality, we’ll muddle through, never quite breaking a sweat, and thus, lingering near immaturity. But God has called us to more. He’s called us to excellence—to run after Him with everything we’ve got. Why?

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