A quick thread about #love: (1/13)

When I first learned what love truly is, a few things happened.

1- I couldn't reject it once I knew about it.
2- Once I received it, I couldn't help but give it.

(2) It was such a paradigm shift that as I looked back, I realized I had never really loved anyone, including my wife.

Then, as I looked around, I realized that almost every one of my friends and family had never loved me in this way either, including my wife.

-Is 49:15

(3) But I didn't go around cancelling all my relationships, precisely because of what I now knew love to be.

And like I said,
1- I couldn't reject it once I knew about it.
2- Once I received it, I couldn't help but give it.

-Luke 7:47

(4) And here is what it is:

Love is so patient that even if you never show up, it keeps waiting for you.

-Luke 15:20; 1 Cor 13:7

(5) Love is so kind that it pays your hospital bills after you just cussed it out in the drive-thru line at McDonalds.

-Rom 2:4

(6) Love is more loyal than the dog Hachiko: Hachiko would meet his owner at the train station every day at the exact same time. When his owner died, he continued showing up every single day for 9 years.

-Lam 3:22-23

(7) Love is so truthful that it will never empower a lie by sympathizing with your brokenness.

-Matt 16:23

(8) Love is so slow to anger that you can slap it in the face without reason and it won't retaliate.

In fact it will seek to illuminate and liberate you from the source of your anger instead.

-John 18:22-23

(9) Love is so honoring that you could frame it for murder, call it a whore, kidnap its kids...

and it would still call you "Beloved".

-Hos 2:16-23

(10) Love is so humble that it could be wealthier and more powerful than a king and it would still scrub the dirt out of a homeless person's toenails.

-Phil 2:6-8

(11) Love is so self-satisfied & enduring that it would never stop loving you because you weren't speaking it's love languages..

precisely because it never needed you to in the first place.

-Luke 6:30-36; Ps 37:26

(12) Love is so undefeated that death even went a round with it...

and lost.

-Heb 2:14

Now go back and replace "Love" with "Jesus".

Once you know the real Him, you'd be a fool to reject Him.
Once you receive Him, you will naturally love like Him.

-1 John 3-4