Too many Christians don’t understand the simple concept of “love.” We may primarily think of it as sexual. We may think that if someone loves us, they’ll want to control us, monopolize us, or be reliant on us. These misconceptions warp how we view God, each other, and do life.

And often times I don’t think we even realize we think these things. Our definition of love and how love feels is often shaped by experiences as early as infancy. Yet, if we struggle to feel loved by God or others, the problem may lie in our understanding of what love is.

For example, if we had a controlling parent, but then we marry someone who is not controlling (or not as controlling), we may mistakenly feel unloved by our spouse because we equate being controlled or manipulated or dominated with being loved.

I used to feel disconcerted by the fact that Jason doesn’t get jealous. I can go out with friends, have meetings with male colleagues, talk on the phone, etc. and he’s fine with it. That’s because my parent use to get jealous of anyone I had a relationship with besides them.

So jealously and monopolization had gotten ingrained in my definition of love. In order to feel loved by my husband I had to completely demolish, map out, and reconstruct my understanding of love based on the Bible.

So often in church we talk about “God’s love” ... but we forget to define such a basic, simple, and beautiful concept as love. It’s like building a house without defining the foundation. We’ve got to get into the nitty gritty details and glory in the beauty of intricacy.