February: The Month of Real Love?

It is Valentine’s Day again. For most of us this means thoughtful gifts like a romantic date night, delicious chocolate, or a dozen roses.  We may pause to think about the blessing of love in our lives.  We may check the day off our calendar after mailing greeting cards.

If you are like me, you hear about love all the time.  “I love these new shoes,” my girlfriend exclaims.  “I love that restaurant,” another adds.  “I just love how my husband always remembers my birthday,” a neighbor says.  We claim to love a lot of things! We think of love as mushy and exciting and yet ordinary. The word has been hijacked by modern culture and redefined to include all sorts of feelings, relationships, and actions.

Real love, the kind Jesus demonstrated, is more action than feeling, and the priority for this love is other people.  Putting love into action means thinking of others instead of ourselves.  It means sacrificing for and encouraging and being inconvenienced for others-family, neighbors, strangers and even our enemies. It means being honest, refusing to participate in hurting someone else, and forgiving quickly. It means working for the good of your family, community and nation. Love is not lazy or selfish or focused on feeling good at the expense of others the way it is often portrayed in films and books.  It is certainly not ordinary!

Real love is tough to consistently put into practice. Try sacrificially loving someone when you are really hungry or have a splitting headache or were just insulted.  This type of love requires as much devotion as discipline and total Holy Spirit help.

This Valentine’s Day, what if we practiced real love along with the romantic date night and dozen roses?  What if, during the rest of the year, we analyzed our loving behavior each week?  Would we find real love in action? Do we love at home, at work and in traffic? Do we really love people who seem different from us? Are we willing to sacrifice to help our nation family? What if we asked Jesus to lead us into real love and away from the world’s superficial, self-focused version of love?  Imagine the transformation in our lives, our families, and our nation.

It could be argued that if Christians practiced real love, America would be a different nation in the year 2025. Jesus expects us to love the way he did, and one way you can put love into action is to intercede for your nation family this Valentine's Day.

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Best,

Denise