Today is Valentine’s Day, a day when couples and friends alike prove their “love” for one another by purchasing a dozen red roses or a heart-shaped box of chocolates.
Sadly, in this fallen world not every relationship lasts. Couples split up. Marriages end in divorce. Adult children abandon faith and become estranged from their parents. Friendships shatter over betrayal.
Yet through all the darkness, the One who loves you the most will never leave or forsake you – internalizing this truth, and what true love really means, is crucial on a commercialized day of “love” like today.
You see, the world portrays love as an intense feeling of romance – an intangible that can blow-in suddenly, then blow-out just as quickly.
Famous actors are quick to show-off their latest “relationships” and boast about their “loves” …
…yet months or even weeks later, they move on to their next “catch.”
Love by the world’s standards is nothing more than a disposable feeling that comes and goes.
Also, there’s the worldly idolization of relationships and marriage above all else.
Society makes people believe that none are complete until paired with a “soulmate” – thus, people spend energy and time desperately seeking “the one.”
They need to learn the truth: the only ONE who can ever satisfy the deepest longings of the heart is God.
No one else in the entire world can love you or satisfy you more than Jesus, no matter how godly they are.
We can love others, only because God loved us so much that He sent Jesus to pay the price on the cross for our sins – a debt we can never repay.
For God, love is more than an action because He IS love.
“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love, does not know God, because God is love.
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
– 1 John 4: 7:12
When our relationship is right with God, placing Him first as our true love – this love overflows from us unto others.
Sometimes we mistakenly think we can’t survive if another person leaves us – or if a relationship ends.
But the truth is – the one we truly need is God. He is “the one” we cannot survive without.
When we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength – we will be full of His presence – and truly experience a love like no other.
Love isn’t something meant to be shown only on February 14th.
Let us live every day, loving God and placing Him first, so we can experience the comfort and peace of His love – and let that love overflow to others in our lives.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” – John 3:16-17
(h/t Christian Life Daily)