If love is a verb, then they are basically saying: "I'm choosing not to love you."
Mward and I used to say that we didn't believe in love. This of course is silly, because if love weren't real than most peoples lives would be a little less complicated. But the more I think about love as a verb, the more I think that Mward and I were onto something... "Love" as a noun is certainly alive and well... but perhaps love as a verb really is dead. Nonexistant. Only Jesus ever truly lived love as a verb and look at what happened to Him: the people He loved betrayed, denied and killed him.
Yeah.
So I'm left wondering what hope there is at all. When we live for ourselves and treat love as if it were something that comes along now and again...a simple emotion.. what a joke. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jer.17:9)" That means you can't rely on anything you think or feel.. in the end it comes down to the choices you make, and the actions you take. Otherwise, why not have an affair when you meet someone who connects with you better than your spouse does? Why not abandon your marriage when it becomes too hard and you no longer feel adequate and your wife/husband has turned into a total bitch? Why not ignore that lonely friend of yours that just can't seem to leave you alone?
God calls people to love with the verb form of love. To choose to love. To love at all times, and in all circumstances. It wasn't a request either....Does anyone else realize the enormity of what this means? This means we can't just walk away from people who rub us the wrong way... we can't ignore our friends when they piss us off.. and .. well, just look at the divorce rate.. good gracious, if love is really a verb, and God really meant for it to be that way, then we can't just go around breaking our commitments to love because we've started feeling differently about the situation... are you kidding me? I don't think God's strolling around telling people to end their marriages because maybe they really shouldn't have gotten married in the first place, or, maybe there's something more exciting out there, or, maybe it's just not going as planned.
When loving doesn't come easy, it becomes easier to see where our hearts lie. Do I act in my own interest, or in that of others? Do I abandon the situation? Do I pursue those who are difficult to love, or do I blow them off? If you are like me, and most people, then you probably act out of selfishness when the rubber really meets the road. We are such selfish creatures. At the end of the day, we really only love ourselves. And yet God demands that we love. That we choose love... He must have known that love, whether romantic or otherwise, wouldn't always be stars and fireflies otherwise why the emphasis on really choosing to love others?
Ultimately, love is never gonna do it for you. You'll fail. You'll be failed. Your marriage will come up short. You'll screw over your friends. Your loved ones will hurt you more than your enemies ever could. You'll manage to return the favor. You'll love poorly. You'll refuse to love. You'll choose to be selfish. You'll fall victim to anothers apathy. And then what do you do?
I dunno... I would figure you repent. You hold on, you keep your commitments, you trust, and you keep on loving. You remember that it's God who completes you. Not your spouse, and not your friends, so you can let them off the hook and stop expecting so much in return. You remember that it's God who makes you feel alive so you no longer have to go searching for excitement and newness when times get mundane because surely the God who created the universe will bring change when it's time. You remember that receiving love is as important as giving it, so you let yourself be loved, and you vow to continue loving despite what the unknown future may bring. You choose not to wallow in sin or self-pity. You refuse to be bound by pride. You humble yourself and prepare to get dirty because you remember that love is work, and it wasn't God's recommendation, but God's command.
In summation: Love is a verb, and this makes love harder than we thought, so expect turbulence. Don't expect your friends, loved ones or significant others to be for you what God is supposed to be for you... they will never succeed because they were never meant to.. be thankful that they (and you) fall short, if we didn't, what would we need Jesus for?
I'll be honest: when I think about how cavalier humans are with love and relationships... it really scares the crap out of me. People are so fickle... we are easily swayed and easily satisfied. Personally, I don't do relationships. I honestly believe I would be divorced if I ever got married, but suppose that weren't true and I felt differently: Even then how could I be sure that my husband wouldn't get bored or tired and leave me to wake up one day and find him gone? There are no garauntees... who's to say I wouldn't marry a godly man who loves me but will one day unexpectedly leave me for someone else who has something to offer that I don't? Or someone who is less work than I am? I'm just one woman... I can't possibly be all things at all times. I'm only human, and I'm not so hot at that half the time as it is.
I would have to hope that my spouse found their worth and full satisfaction in Jesus, so that I wouldn't have to fear being left because I was too difficult, or because we fought, or because I wasn't as exciting and fulfilling as they may have expected to the point where a life without me seemed more fulfilling. I'd have to pray that I would marry a man with a strong faith who trusted God daily with our future so that our financial troubles, unforseen obstacles or other typical difficulties wouldn't be seen as reasons to leave. I'd have to believe that he would be in tune enough with God to refuse to doubt the truth when times got dark.
But even then... people change. We all do. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Oftentimes you don't even see it coming. There is no such thing as "sure." why else would so many marriages fail after years of commitment? No one has a garuntee that their spouse won't wake up one day and just decide they'd rather be alone, choosing to throw them, their relationship, their collective past and their collective future away. So people should pray for increased faith and trust in God... and that's harder than it sounds. After all, who's to say God hasn't planned a divorce for certain people? It's important to pray for faith either way, so that even if your loving christian spouse leaves you for other things (themselves, someone else, a career, etc), your faith in Jesus will be strong enough to pull you through it and give you rest. Granted, I've yet to hear of anyone feeling that way after being left, but I think it's still something to hope for.
A friend of mine once said it best, I'll leave you with his words:
Yes it is true that we are not "made complete" through our girlfriends, or our wives. True completeness only comes through Christ when we will finally be unified with Him as His bride. And this story about the man in the moon and venus is a powerful one because so many people, it seems, do believe that we can simply fall in and out of love. They don't realize that love is a choice, and the passion we feel is a gift. A gift that God does not always allow us to enjoy, so that it will be made plain to us who we really love by the choices we make when we do not feel this passion.
However, with this in mind, the woman that God does have for you, should "complete" you in certain ways that no other human relationship can. Meaning that if she was to leave, you would feel incomplete in certain ways that your friends would not be able to fulfill. We were made for relationship, mainly relationship with God, however, since that cannot happen in all perfectness while we are here on Earth, God allowed for us to be able to experience a lesser form of that intimacy with our significant others so as to gain a taste of God's amazing love.
In other words, it is your job to let yourself be loved by your spouse as they try and imitate God's love for you, and at the same time (and more importantly) it is your job to be the best portrayal of Christ to them as you choose to love them everyday by being willing to sacrifice your life in whatever way neccessary so that they will know that you love them with a love that will not fade, whether the passion is there or not. I am not trying to diminish the importance of not dating to those that have decided not to date (that is between you and God), however, if you are waiting until you know you are ready, then you never will be because the love you have to give is being compared to the love God has already given, and you will never match up.
You will hurt her (or him), you will screw up, you will face temptation that you can never really prepare yourself for. And that is why it is so important for us to fully rely on God in our relationships because the strongest relationships are not the ones in which the two people really prepared themselves for beforehand (although, there is some truth to that as well), but the strongest relationships are the ones in which everyday both the man and the woman recognize that they must choose to love, apart from their feelings, apart from their passions and apart from the expectations that are not met by the other person. It is these relationships that are able to face the rockiest of times and not only survive, but come out even stronger on the other end.
The Man in the Moon and Venus didn't make it because their relationship was based on the expectations that come from selfish love (which really is not love at all if you ask me), and that is true of too many relationships. However, this is not because they didn't wait long enough before getting together, or because God had someone better out there for them, or because they just weren't compatible. No, this was simply because their love was built on an extremely weak foundation of conditions rather than on the perfect foundation of Christ. And that would have made all the difference.
Let's hope we can all believe and act accordingly.... Lord knows most days I can't.
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