Love

First of all, I lied. Its more like 5 days before I'm blogging again. I've been terribly busy doing all kinds of fun things!


For God so LOVED the world that he gave his only begotten son...


I don't even know where to begin with this blog. It will definitely be a long one. I have learned some incredible things this past week about love. My love and divine love, unfortunately two totally different things. About 2-3 years ago I had been given a revelation about God's love and our response to it. My best friend sydney ( http://sydney-drain.blogspot.com/ ) might remember the night that all this stuff started pouring out of me about the lack of God's love expressed towards each other in the youth group at the time and how I was just now really seeing how this divine love works. It was important to me at the time, but ever since the idea has been lost in the back of my head, and I have made no progress on my ability to understand and to exercise this love. I'm talking about agape. This is probably a familiar word to all or most of you reading this. Agape is a unique greek word for love. It's not the kind of love you have for pizza, for shopping, or for your cat. Agape is entirely unique and rather hard to understand. Let me try to explain myself.

I'm currently going through an amazing study called "Living Beyond Yourself: exploring the fruit of the spirit" by the lovely Beth Moore and, man, did week three hit me hard in the face. I had sort of thought myself rather good at loving and caring for people, when I wanted to be good at it of course, and had even been told this by a mentor in the past. I was lying to myself when I would consider this a skill needing little or no work. Moore talked about eros, the love between a man and a woman, but a grasping love. She talked about Philos which is friend love, and I thought, "Oh good I think I am loving well!" Then she went on to say that we aren't supposed to love like that. God calls us to agape love, for everyone. Now you've probably read 1 Corinthians 13, the passage all about what love is and isn't but I'm going to say what moore said before assigning this passage "Do not let the bug of familiarity bite you" on this one. I want you to see what I saw when I prayerfully went through this passage with the knowledge that I was given by the study.

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails.

I'll go through the characteristics of this incredible divine love (agape, the word used in this passage) just as the study did and share my thoughts on each

1. Agape is PATIENT
greek word:makrothumia
meaning: able to avenge oneself yet refrains from doing so
see also: Romans 12:17-21, Proverbs 25:21-22 for same word or idea

Agape is patient. Agape is essentially forgiving. Paul wants us to understand that being patient is much more than quietly standing in a long line at the post office or waiting without groaning for someone to be ready to leave because you are already late. exercising patience in agape is extreme. Think about the last time that someone really hurt you. Did they say something behind your back? Did you go ahead and say something equally nasty behind theirs? This could be anything, mundane or not.

2. Agape is KIND
greek word: chresteuomai
meaning: to show oneself as useful

How many of you, like myself, thought being kind was smiling at the 'weird kid' in the hallway? I would even allow myself to get away with bitterly praying for people and calling it kindness. And to be honest, being kind was about me. I was going to be that nice girl so that people would remember me and say good things about me. Kindness was vainness, but when Paul says that agape is kind, agape means making yourself useful to others, and there is no way that truly being kind could be about me when I am responding to the needs of others. "Agape volunteers to help" in the words of beth moore.

3. Agape does NOT ENVY
greek word: zeelo
meaning: zealous, in a sense of passionate jealousy
see also: Acts 7:9 for same word choice

This one seems pretty obvious. If you love someone with agape then you could not be jealous of them. Even if you allowed yourself to be loved, agape'd, by God then you could not be envious of anything. God has given everything to us who fear and love Him, what more could we possibly need that our Father would not provide for us?

4. Agape does NOT BOAST
greek word: perpereuomai
meaning: braggart, which is a person who boasts about achievements or possessions
see also: 1 Corinthians 1:27-29, 31

5. Agape is NOT PROUD
for examples of pride see also: 2 Chronicles 26:16, Psalm 10:4, Proverbs 11:2, Daniel 5:20, Obadiah 3, Jeremiah 13:17, and 2 Chronicles 32:26

I shouldn't even be proud of my loving skills for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose (Phillipians 2:!3). It is evident throughout God's word of the results of pride in mankind. God humbles the proud, as he has done me this past week, and He lifts up the lowly.

6. Agape is NOT RUDE
greek word: aschemoneo
meaning: to behave in an ugly, indecent, unseemly or unbecoming manner. to be obscene

I'll just ask of myself, how conditioned am I to obscenity? How often do I behave rudely towards those I say I love dearest?

7. Agape is NOT SELF-SEEKING
see also: 2 Timothy 3:2

this can be expressed by the greek word philautos meaning lover of or friend of self. Is my primary concern to make life ultimately easier for myself?

8. Agape is NOT QUICK TO ANGER
see also: Psalm 145:8, Proverbs 15:1 & 18, Proverbs 16:32, proverbs 19:11, Proverbs 21:19, Proverbs 22:24 -25

9: Agape keeps NO RECORD OF WRONGS
see also: Psalm 103:10-14, Hebrews 10:16-18

Thank GOD He loves is in this way! Can you imagine how different life would be if there were never such things as grudges and unforgiving hearts like our own? Not only does agape keep no record of wrongs, but agape is praying good things for those who wrong you and treating them as if they are the greatest friend. Imagine.

10. Agape does NOT DELIGHT IN EVIL but REJOICES WITH TRUTH
see also: Psalm 119:29-32

11. Agape always PROTECTS
greek word: stego
meaning: to cover over in silence
see also: 1 Peter 4:8

You know what this means? No matter what we know about someone or how well we know someone, we don't expose their faults to others. If we love them with an agape love, we protect their reputations, and seek to not even emphasize their faults to ourselves

12. Agape always TRUSTS
greek word: pisteuo
meaning: to have faith in someone

Do we believe and encourage others?

13. Agape always HOPES
greek word: elpizo
meaning: to expect with desire
see also: 2 Corinthians 8:22-24

14. Agape always PERSEVERES
greek word: hupomeno
meaning: to remain under

If we really love someone with divine love we continue no matter what the struggle

15. Agape NEVER FAILS
greek word: ekpipto
meaning: to be without effect, to be in vain

No matter how hard it is to love someone with this kind of love, if you truly express it God promises that it will never be in vain. How encouraging is that? Maybe you will never see the effect, but God knows and sees and will reward




However! Is Agape love even possible? We are INCAPABLE! Completely! So what the heck are we supposed to do with all of that information? What good is that entire passage in 1 Corinthians? I will tell you this, the only origin of such love is GOD'S HEART. For us love is a feeling, some kind of personal necessity, but as much as we'd like to deny it, our love is conditional. But God does ask of us to love him and eachother with AGAPE. This is a RESPONSE, not a feeling. When we admit to God that we are incapable of what he asks of us, we can then prayerfully consider what he would do and ask God to enable and strengthen us. We act in obedience, RESPONDING to the spirits conviction in us. Ultimately, it is an entirely spiritual thing. it is God who pours agape through us, but a crucial transplant must be made:
We must first desperately and unceasingly pray that our hearts be removed and replaced with the Lord's. It is only then, when he creates in us a clean heart, His own, that we can begin to change lives with Agape, including our own.

What a challenge!