Love

Over the last seven-ish months, since joining my young adult house church, I have been living in the abundant blessings of answered prayer regarding friendship and community. For the first time since moving to Nashville, I feel like I’ve found my people, the ones I can surround myself with and be myself with. I am so, so grateful for these people, and I am blown away by how much I am learning from every single friendship. I feel like I am sitting here as God’s student, eagerly soaking up life lessons, both directly from my own experiences and from listening to the experiences of my friends. The topic that has come up more than anything else is, of course, love. Sure, I’ve learned a thing or two about romantic love, but more than that, I’ve gotten to experience a deep familial love that stems from genuine friendships.

To mirror the structure of 1 Corinthians 13, here are seven things I’ve learned about Love in the last seven months:

1. Love is easy.

Love comes from the overflow of the heart. It is a deep admiration and respect for another person. It is the effortless joy that bubbles to the surface when you see their face or hear their name or receive a text from them. Love is as natural as breathing. It is a reflex. It is colorful. It is the unquenchable eagerness not just to share about your life, but to share life itself with someone else. 

2. Love demands quantity time AND quality time.

There will always be time to catch up on sleep, and I can function just as well on six hours of sleep as I can on eight. It is a worthy sacrifice of my comfort for the sake of late nights watching movies and blasting music in the car with friends. These are the moments that make life rich with joy, with an abundance of love and laughter! (But also, your friends will love you even when you need to take time to rest.)

As far as quality time, don’t waste time avoiding what matters, but talk about the meat and potatoes of life. I don’t always know what my friends’ day-to-day lives look like, but I know what they’re learning about themselves, God, and others. This is where we get to dig deep and push each other to grow in our understanding of ourselves and others. This is where iron sharpens iron!

3. Love assumes the best about other people.

Swallow offenses. Lead with grace. Address concerns, and move on. 

Remember the parable with the guy who was forgiven a massive debt, and then turned around and imprisoned someone over twenty bucks? Don’t be that guy. Jesus has forgiven us the greatest debt of all, the sum of all of our sin. It is on us to forgive those around us, especially our friends, when things come out the wrong way. 

Sometimes friends hurt us. Sometimes friends hurt us over and over again. Nobody is perfect, and everybody is going to let you down at some point. That’s human nature. Don’t tolerate abuse or toxic behavior patterns, but wherever possible, reconcile with those who’ve hurt you, and if you realize you’ve hurt someone else, reconciling with that person should take first priority. 

4. Love first. Always.

Do not wait for others to approach you. Do not wait for others to choose you. Choose them, invest in them, spend time with them, and your needs will be cared for by the Father of Lights, the same God who cares for the ravens who neither sow nor reap. If everyone waited for everyone else to initiate, no one would connect. Find the people you admire and care about and really pour into them! Pouring into others is probably the most fulfilling thing you can do.

5. Love is an action.

To “love” someone is not just to feel a certain way about them, but the actions that stem from the overflow of the heart will demonstrate your love for that person. When you love someone, you text them to make sure they got home safe. You keep their favorite drinks in your fridge for when they come over. You check in on them when you haven’t heard from them in a while. You sit with them in their grief. You dance with them in their rejoicing.

Since love is an action, you can love people whom you do not feel affection for. Jesus calls us to love our enemies, not just tolerate them. We are called to be imitators of Christ, and that means washing the feet of those who betray us. Picking them up from the airport. Extending hospitality. Helping out in times of need. Etc. These are actions that do not stem from the overflow of our hearts, but from God’s, and He makes us able to do what feels impossible by lending us His strength. 

6. Love is a choice.

Try as you might, you cannot control how others respond to you. You might have all the love in the world for another person, but you cannot force them to feel the same about you. The harder you try to hold onto someone else, the more likely they are to slip away from you. You can’t love a person the way you love a prized possession, keeping it locked away where no one else can see it. Love is more like two birds choosing to alight on the same branch. They can come and go, but it’s up to each of them how often they want to return.

7. There is no amount of external love that can make up for a lack of internal love.

This has been the hardest one to learn. No amount of late-night drives or encouraging texts will quiet the deafening silence when you’re alone. When there’s no one around to express that love, what pours in? What does the voice in your head sound like, and how do you respond to it? Is your internal monologue’s natural inclination towards kindness or criticism? Is it God’s voice, or the Enemy’s?

It’s incredibly difficult work to retrain your brain out of the subconscious thought patterns built up over decades of time. It is so draining, and it takes so long. But it is a process that must be seized by the middle and taken on entirely if there is going to be progress in the right direction. And, it is a process that cannot take place without the love and grace of Jesus. Allowing Him to work in your heart and mind. Replacing lies from the enemy with Scriptural truths and a solid foundation of belief.

One thing I’ve found especially helpful in this is to pray, “Lord, give me your eyes. Show me how you see me, what you think about me.” And not to just pray it once, but to pray it again and again, day in and day out, to submit yourself to the shaping process.

There are so many different kinds of love. To center your focus solely around romantic love is to limit yourself, to miss out on the beautiful friendships that can make life so rich and full. The Bible makes it clear that we need people in our lives, since “It is not good for man to be alone,” and “two are better than one,” and “a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” The people around us guide us and shape us. People, made in God’s image, are the closest thing we have on this Earth to glimpsing the Father himself. Don’t take the people around you for granted. Let them lean on you, and allow yourself to lean on them in turn. We have community for a reason! 

Love is a good and perfect gift! Praise God!

A few references:

1 Corinthians 13

Luke 12:24

James 1:17

Ephesians 4:26

Matthew 5:24

Genesis 2:18

Ecclesiastes 4:9

Ecclesiastes 4:12