Today marks the first day of a five part journey through a lot of what God is teaching me.
Since I can remember I've had this natural bent towards love. The word. The idea. The out workings of it in relationships. I didn't get it when I was a kid but I was certainly shown it. My parents were awesome. I am among the very few men in the world who can say that I grew up with a mom and a DAD who told me that they loved me on a consistent basis. My siblings were the same.
In college I told a girl "I love you" before I should have only to get my heart crushed and then put back together by my wife, Kerra, whom I love more than anybody else in this world. A day never goes by that I don't tell her.
I've always been the guy who told his friends that he loved them. I do love them after all, so I tell them. I'm not afraid, and I don't think its girly to say it.
For a while I told everybody that I loved them because I was afraid I would die, or they would, so I didn't want to leave anything undone. That probably wasn't love as much as selfishness, but I'm past that now. Weird. I know.
Most of the songs I write are about love.
When it comes to Jesus, the thing I love most about him was the way he loved and loves.
I'm often relieved when I read that in I Corinthians "the greatest of these is love."
Love. God is teaching me so much about it and convicting my heart to express it more often, in better, more intentional and tangible ways. He's shown me through marriage that love is so much different than you'd think.
That its tough.
That you work for it.
That some things we call love are actually not love and vise versa.
That we often take love for granted and that we often aren't being changed by Christ's love in the ways that we should be.
That Christianity as a whole isn't characterized by this attribute Jesus called the greatest.
That we don't hold one another accountable to act lovingly, but we do to read the bible, pray and not drink alcohol.
We have to get this right, or at least give everything we have trying to.
God has me praying this prayer all the time lately. Maybe you can pick up and make it a prayer mantra with me. Its simple.
[God, increase my capacity to love. Amen]
More to come tomorrow.
Live Love.