What Love Is, And What It Is Not

What Love Is, And What It Is Not                                                       Kelly Durant   2-11-18

1 John 3:16  (NKJV)

16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

2. When my daughter Renee was little, we would play a little game of words. She started this when she was about 3 years old. I would say to her, “I love you!” And then she would reply, “I love you more!” Then I would say, “No, I love you more!” To the which she would reply, “No, I love you more!”  And we would say this back and forth for 5 minutes!

Who wants to be loved? Have you ever thought about it, God gave us the natural hunger to want to be loved, right? When someone loves you, you feel in the clouds, you feel life has a purpose and you only want goodness and love for everyone else! Jesus gave us love as no other and we must explore the depth of this great love. God is love! (See 1 Jn. 4) Specifically, God Yahweh, Jesus’ Father, the great “I am”, is the creator of all things lovely and beautiful.

But love exists in many different manifestations. How many of you studied this in school? What is the love for a friend or the church brethren in Greek? Philia. What is the crazy love for your soul mate? Eros. What is the love for God and everyone, the giving love?  Agape. There are others, but the idea is we must learn to distinguish between what love is and what it is not. Some people might say they love ice cream, but we understand that is just an expression of what you crave, but real love is something to value and we must understand it, and share it.

3. What concerns me about today’s culture is that we have lost the original meaning(s) of what love is. Some love ballads in the past decades seemed to have an ability to inspire a love for a man or woman, and that love is powerful, we all want that heart need satisfied as it brings joy. Everyone I know wants someone to love and someone to love them back to make them happy. And a puppy dog or pet is often the only source of love for many lonely souls! What is wrong with people today, losing their love for others? We have moved away from Biblical truths!

But in this most recent decade love has been redefined into something foreign and grotesque and we must return to the roots of what love actually is according to the Word of God. Love is all inclusive, but love does not include loving those who destroy and harm. Stop and pray for common sense! Nature and God’s creation reveals natural love.

There has been a concerted effort in the past decade(s) to destroy love, to destroy people who love, to stop playing the music of love, and mock those who do acts of kindness!  Christians, in a majority are real lovers of the hurting, doing acts of love.  Jesus said in the ‘end-times’ “the love of many would turn cold”. This persecution against loving people comes from Satan himself who hates love. Satan and his demons, in positions of power and influence, hate our Jehovah God of love, and most of all he and his roaming demons hate Jesus because Jesus is the most powerful Loving One. He is the embodiment of absolute sacrifice and love for all humanity! Jesus’ love fills your spirit with happiness it saves your soul for eternity, and for Satan that means you are one that got away. You escaped his deceptions, so you are escaping his enslavement, bitterness, and hell and he hates you for it! You escape by God’s love, He first loved you, but then you must love Him back!

4. God wants us to love our enemies. Why? Because haters want to convert you into being a hater as well? Satan’s unhappy condemned followers want to infect you with their unloving disease of hate, but be wise to their game, don’t fall into their trap. Reflect on it, it is not easy at all to keep on loving when you are suffering the damages of hate. But we can only win by love!

Because Jesus commanded it, we will obey it! Matthew 5:43-47

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. ...The idea is to do your part and try to convert these haters over to your side, to the side of love!

Having love, and forgiving others, does not mean you allow any person to continue to enslave, torture, and destroy you! As Christians we must be wise. To forgive evil and then think we need to let it keep happening is insanity; love means you expose evil so that the shame and punishment takes it far away from you. Love is not illogically loving those who are unrepentant and perverted wanting to keep you as their victim! These abusers want to equate lust as love and convert you into being a child of hell as they are! Many Hollow-wood people seem to adapt the same liberal politics as their abusers, which is insanity, you would think they would consider them repugnant and be the opposite! What is love? It is healing, the opposite of pain, shame, and justifiable punishment!

5. Matthew 22: 37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Here is a curious detail.

You are to love your neighbor as you love yourself. What does it mean to love yourself? Do you love yourself? But when does loving yourself go too far? How many of you love to eat? How about going out and having fun at a movie or a concert? I think most people spend most all of the money they make from week to week on their selves, right? Maintaining and loving the body God gave you is important, but it must be kept in a balance, not being excessive in consumption. Love is not doing dozens of surgeries, abusing your body, for an elusive beauty!

If you love another as yourself then you will feed them, do nice things for them, and even do things for those unfortunate ones you may not even like. Parents love their children. A parent’s love will even give up new clothes for their selves in order to buy new clothes for their kids. Love is manifested in being kind to yourself and others, being altruistic, sacrificial, giving, and affectionate. Let’s review what the Bible says about love; many of you know these things, but are they practiced authentically? Do you love God? Then practice these things:

1 Corinthians 13: 4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 (a) Love never fails.

6. So, take note how love has gotten off track in today’s culture, not meaning what it use too. We must always remember that our current culture is one where “good is bad and bad is good”. Satan’ design, through social engineers and demonic influences in politics, through governments, through entertainment, and through music dominate with perversions over what love was intended to be. Love today means lust, the embracement of sin, and perversions.

Real love includes you and me loving sinners (we all are saved and redeemed sinners), but as Christians we must hate sin, why? Because it destroys and God’s Word commands it.  You cannot love Satan and his children and God and his children at the same time! Psalm 15:4 In whose (ours) eyes a vile person is despised, But he honors those who fear the Lord. Proverbs 8:13 The fear of the Lord is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way, and the perverse mouth I hate. (There are certainly millions of perverse mouths on the news channels and the internet!) People today talk all about what they hate, but when do they proclaim love?

Do not let Satan trick you into thinking you are a hypocrite if you do not “love” his shameful sins and his repugnant, evil, destructive people! Never let anyone shame you into thinking you should love and accept horrible people who manipulate with intimidation, lies, deceptions, perversions, and abuses. Satanism is sadly increasing. Much evidence proves human sacrifice is still taking place as it did in the days of the O.T. as it was with the Satanic idol of Moloch. We are on the side of those who denounce and abhor the works of evil, the practices of evil dignitaries who murder, oppress, and exploit. Do not, never let the world tell you who to hate as many mindless uniformed people go with the flow of hating Christians and good people. ‘For wide is the gate to destruction’, and how we see the flow of the masses degrading down to the gates of hell! Listen to me, and to the people of God telling you to love all people and pray for everyone near you! Jesus is the winner and He is God’s love for all who receive Him!

7. As a general rule what the world loves and says is “good” is actually “bad” and even Christians choose the wrong side many times because, they are not close to God! Hosea 4:6

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.  God warns us all not to “love the world” nor be ignorant.

There is a sever judgment coming for those who “love” and prefer the evil trends of the world over God’s love. 2 Kings 17:17 “And they caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire, practiced witchcraft and soothsaying, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger.” Loving what’s in the world, such as idolizing politicians, musicians, actors, or any person, implies that you may be aligning yourself with people who are outright Satanic worshippers! Some Christians are so deceived they think they will go to heaven while they never proclaim a “love” for God, telling others of Jesus, or doing anything to prove they are different from anyone else in the world. Love is verb; what action do you do to prove you love as God commanded?

The perversion of love today is nothing new. The people of God, the Israelites several thousands of years ago, having a God of purity to guide and provide, degraded their selves to worship Satan’s idols, even giving their own infant children to be burned up horrifically in a huge bronze idol, the idol of Moloch. Imagine being so dead to love you kill your own?! The opposite of love will lead to a degradation into horrific evil! Evil must be conquered by practicing a supernatural love from Jesus that fights for the innocent, the abused, the enslaved, the broken, the hurting, the impoverished, and the corrupted soul! 

8. So how will you be able to give and receive real love in our degraded, perverted, abusive world of today? Only by being led by God’s Holy Spirit! It means you must love God above all things and get on your knees and beg Him to give you a loving heart for everyone, everyday!

I have to do it, God has to refill me daily with love and His Divine Word to keep on going despite how much evil there is. The temptation to hate and to stop trying to love is great, but only by love is how we can win and conquer the world for God! Pray for God to send loving people as friends in your lives! God’s love is still out there and it is powerful, but you must search for it.

And loving everyone includes, in particular, those in your own house, those in your family, those in your church Corps, and those in this community. I know you keep yourself alive and cared for so, “Love your neighbor as yourself!” Love everyone, even your enemies. Love is laying down your life for the brothers and sisters!

9. Have you heard the quote, ‘It’s not enough to love the flowers, you must also hate the weeds?’ This is how love works, it nourishes the lovely, it loves and is loved back, but love also protects the lovely and weak from the aggressive evil that comes in to destroy. God is love, but He also protects His own children and He is also a burning fire which purifies and burns away evil that gets close to His presence destroying those who would destroy.

So for all aspects of life, ask God for wisdom on who to love and who to resist! Young people be careful not to fall in love with just anyone, as love is blind, and you may be investing heavily in someone who will never change to be loving as you are as a Christian. In the end, a one-way street love will dry your spirit and make you disillusioned, cold, and void of love for God and others unless you repent and heal and start over. Ask God to bring people who are true and loving in your life, otherwise you are a victim to random unloving people.

What a tragedy that so many people start off life loving everyone (but loving the wrong kind as well, loving what the world tells you to love) and end up getting severely burned and made bitter to the point they become haters and join other hater groups to just spout hate, hate, and hate daily over any little thing. What a sad, trapped, condemned life Satan offers when you leave God’s side. Will you repent today and learn to love what God loves? It’s clearly in His Word, do you read it? Will you hate evil and defend the things of God instead of the things of the world?

Chose today, will you stand with God’s faithful lovers, the proclaimers and obeyers of Jesus’ love, message, and salvation? Or will you slide all the way down by hate and bitterness to the level of the degradation of the Satanic hater abusers? The world glorifies hate and perverseness as love, but we denounce it as deception and evil. Daily we see in the news the unloving Satanic ones of the world are falling quickly into their deserved condemnation, shame, and ugliness (and jail). The final judgment will condemn them to an eternal hell! You and I must love as many as we can out of their hell while they still have life, but they must choose love, as God taught us, to be restored. This is our mission, to love! Jesus loves you and I do too!