What's Love got to do with it???

Article #3: the Importanve of Love in Our Christian Lifes

“What’s Love Got To Do With It”                                                                  You must understand that the touch of your hand makes my pulse react, that it’s only the thrill of boy meeting girl, opposites attract its physical, only logical. You must try to ignore, that it means more than that. Oh what’s love got to do, got to do with it? What’s love but a second hand emotion? What’s love got to do, got to do with it? Who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken! It may seem to you that I’m acting confused when you’re close to me, if I tend to look dazed, I’ve read it someplace, I’ve got cause to be. There’s a name for it. There’s a phrase that fits. But whatever the reason you do it for me I’ve been taking on a new direction. But I have to say I’ve been thinking about my own protection. It scares me to feel this way. What’s love got to do, got to do with it? What’s love but a sweet old fashioned notion? What’s love got to do, got to do with it? Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?                 -Tina Turner

Paparazzi                                                                                                I’m your biggest fan, I’ll follow you until you love me, Papa-paparazzi. Baby, there’s no other superstar, you know that I’ll be your Papa-paparazzi. Promise I’ll be kind, but I won’t stop until that boy is mine. Baby you’ll be famous, chase you down until you love me Papa-paparazzi.I’ll be your girl backstage at your show, It don’t have a price, loving you is cherry pie. ‘Cause you know that baby, I. I’m your biggest fan, I’ll follow you until you love me, Papa-paparazzi. Baby there’s no other superstar, you know that I’ll be your Papa-paparazzi. Promise I’ll be kind, but I won’t stop until that boy is mine. Baby you’ll be famous, chase you down until you love mePapa-paparazzi.-Lady Gaga

So what does what’s love got to do with it anyways? Well according to these songs and society not very much. You either believe love is a “second emotion” which you can completely avoid or use to abuse the ones that love you. Or you believe love is being a stalker (Thank you very much Lady Gaga). Is that what society bases their beliefs on love on? That it no longer exist? That it’s nothing “but a sweet old fashion notion?” Or is it that we see it as nothing but this crazed “love” that we have for someone we barely know?

Ok, wow, can I get an Amen? Lol jk jk, but ok let me step down from my soapbox for a second and explain briefly what God’s love means to Christians, considering I’ve used it over and over. To explain God’s love there is one verse that I always refer to, it is John 15:13 which says: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” That is a love that no love can match, that your God would come down to earth in the form of a man, to be living sacrifice. A pure and holy sacrifice. (John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”) And best of all this love will never change, so Jeremiah writes: “The Lord God says to every Christian believer, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, with loving-kindness have I drawn you’” (Jeremiah 31:3).

 Either way this has me disgusted in our society, and it’s not just the latest generation. This goes back to AT LEAST to the 1990’s (I say that because that’s as far as I go back) but we all know that this “modern” picture of love has been going on for much longer than that. I wouldn’t say that there is anyone generation to blame, because in truth this goes back as far as there has been disloyalty to your spouse, but if there is one generation that has affected the MODERN view of love, that would be the 1960’s. The free love movement as they called it would change this nation and the world’s point of view on love forever.

 Luckily for the world the free love movement did not last long (mainly due to the fact that at the same time a new disease known as AIDS became a widespread pandemic) but the heart of this new generation did not fade. Out of this generation the world now saw love, not as a patient, kind, rebuking envy, modest, but as Romantic. Some of you may be asking yourself “what wrong with that??” And that’s ok to wonder! That’s what the majority of this nation has been taught for the past 50 yrs! The problem with basing your love on romance is that in time those feeling will fade. Even though you feel like this “new married couple” feelings (that’s what I’ve been told its called lol) will never fade sooner or later you start bickering at each other, and everything bugs you to death to the point you literally can’t live with each other. So you have two options get a divorce (which everyone is doing) or work it out. Of course most people go the “easy” route and get a divorce, because that’s what EVERYONE does!

 Does that really sound like the Everlasting love that God promised us in Jeremiah 31:3? And since John said: “Whoever claims to live in him, must walk as Jesus did” 1 John 2:6. I’ll let you figure that one out. But I’ll leave the subject of marriage with this, Matthew said: “They are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

 But the modern view on love hasn’t just affected the relationships among our spouses, but also the relationships we have among our fellow Christians. Jesus said through John: “A new command I give you: Love one another, as I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35) Today we hear every other month about a church that is dividing itself or is planning to divide itself. The stigma that has affected most of the world with the matter of divorce and disloyalty to each other’s spouse has slowly crept into the walls of our churches. I’ll say the same thing to a church that is splitting, to that of a couple getting a divorce, “Have you exhausted every resource to keep this bond together?” for Matthew told us “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” (Matt. 18:15-17). We are to hold our brothers UP!! For Jesus calls us to love one another! Not be at each other’s throat all the time! There is a reason that so many people see Christians hypocrites!! Jesus tells us “so you must love one another, by this everyone will know that you are my disciples.” Come on guys! This is simple, the world is rejecting us because we are rejecting each other!