Learning to tie your shoes when you are young seems hard, but once you get the hang of it you tie them without thinking (or get those Velcro things!). Learning to love others can be a little more complicated. Choosing to love others doesn't always come naturally!! The final part of our recent series of posts is to find a better way of loving - not just in a marriage relationship - but in all of our relationships with our friends, family, and maybe those who we don't call friends...
When we know how to love, we can grow and it will come naturally to us. Often times we think we know how to love, but we are doing it our way, not God's way.
Here are three types of love....
Eros - where we get our word for erotic. It is a sensual love, which focuses on what I can get out of this...
Phileos - brotherly love - Philadelphia the city of brotherly love - what can we get out of this...
Agapae - unconditional love -what can I do for you? what can I give to you?
The extraordinary thing about the word agape is there is no English word that translates into agape , it stands alone!!
Eros loves when we like things.
Phileos loves because of something.
Agape loves in spite of what is done or not done
In the movie Fireproof, Caleb's relationship with his wife changes when he chooses to love his wife in spite of all the things that have transpired between them in their marriage. Without his wife's knowledge, he pays for medical supplies that his mother in law needed with money he had been saving for a boat. That is when the change starts to happen in their relationship...
Jesus shows us a way of loving better in Luke chapter 5....
1. Better love thinks about others more then self.
2he saw at the water's edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. 3He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.
In verse 2 Jesus is teaching and He decides to sit in a boat floating in the water to let the people hear Him better.
Think about how different our world would be today if more people put others first.
2. Better loves makes the first move. Jesus didn't heal and forgive sins of others after they had done something for Him.
12While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy.[c] When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean."
13Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" And immediately the leprosy left him.
13Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" And immediately the leprosy left him.
Jesus reached out to the sick man and touched him, when most others would have been afraid to . If we reached out in love to our enemies, what a difference it would make.
3. Better love takes risks.
18Some men came carrying a paralytic on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. 19When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.
The man's friends in verse 18 were willing to take the risk of lowering their friend into the room with Jesus and He responded not only by healing the man physically, but forgiving his sins as well, taking care of the whole person!!
4. Better love goes the last 10%.
Even when it might be hard , true love presses on and doesn't give up.
A baseball team can't say they won a game if they were leading for the first 8 innings, they have to take it all the way to the end for victory!
Not love when,
not love because,
but love regardless of
This week, try to make loving others as automatic as tying your shoes!
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