What’s love got to do…got to do with it?  Ok, if we have an idea of what love really is…if you have a basic understanding of what it means, how do you apply it to religion?  Because Christians are always talking about love.  “Jesus loves you” and “I just love God so much” and “Christianity is a love relationship,” what does all that mean?  How does it apply to real life?  Because that’s what really matters.  Isn’t it?  I mean, people can talk about love all the time, but if it doesn’t make a difference in their behavior or how they treat people, then it’s not really love.  Right?

In the last talk I kind of hit on how love can be expressed in different degrees that build onto each other.  We can have friendships and a bond of kinship with people, and we can add commitment to basic friendships, and stick by somebody’s side through whatever.  Then, when we’re ready to make the ultimate commitment and put someone else’s needs above our own, we get married and love just continues to multiply as commitment and intimacy grow together.  Like adding fuel to a fire, our compassion and passion combine and a man and woman come together in the kind of relationship that begins to reveal the depth of what God feels toward us.  When we are willing to sacrifice and commit everything to benefit another person, we get a glimpse of what God feels and does for us.

And like any relationship, it takes work.  You can’t even have a good friendship unless you are willing to contribute to the health of your relationship.  But the really cool thing is how we benefit from giving our love to other people and back to God.  It’s mind blowing to see how our love grows even n the midst of sacrifice.  The people who really understand love, who have really figured it out, find the secret that giving in a relationship is the only way to get the real benefits of love.  And when we discover that secret we find out what we were made for.  If God made us in his image, and if God is love, then it just makes sense that we were built to give and receive love.

Ever wonder what the secret of life is?  It’s loving.  That’s just the way God designed us.

PS. In the very beginning of this talk I spend a minute talking about making it though hard times and how God is with us through the trials we face, and how God  even takes advantage of the tough things we go through to help us become better people.  Sometimes love means just being around for comfort.  And sometimes it means helping a person get up and keep walking, even if it means pushing outside of our comfort zones so we can grow.

My wife and I lost a child through a miscarriage, and it was one of the most difficult experiences I have ever felt.  But God really showed me his peace through the whole ordeal.  And God has used our tragedy to help us be able to comfort others who have suffered similar loss and to encourage people going through infertility and we have even grown closer to each other in the midst of that painful trial.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:27 — 13.0MB)

Baby don’t hurt me…

No, this isn’t about 80’s music.  But I think it does deal with the questions that Haddaway brought up in his lyrics and the questions that a lot of people have about love.  Did you ever wonder why so many marriages fail?  Did you ever wonder why God said that sexual immorality hurts people more than anything else?  Maybe you remember when Jesus used the connection of a husband and wife as an example of the connection that God wants to share with all of us.  Did you ever wonder what that means?

True love does have a mysterious quality to it because of how powerful it is and how deeply it affects us.  But it’s also something that is meant to be understood.  In fact, I don’t think anybody can really experience love to it’s full, powerful potential unless they understand it on a basic level.  Too many people ruin love by replacing it with selfishness and greed and hunger and lust and things that have nothing to do with real love.  And I think so much of the confusion and pain that people deal with in relationships and romance and marriage come when we lose the meaning of what it means to love.

What do you think?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:44 — 14.1MB)