Love Is

Love is friendship matured and shared. Love is being tied together with someone else through strong bonds that unite in a common purpose instead of individual wills at war with each other. Love is patient and kind because we value and weigh the other person’s opinion just as we do our own. Love is not prideful or boastful because the focus is no longer on self,  but on this new unity in a bond that is not meant to be broken.  Love doesn’t seek to win arguments, it hopes to find truth and agreement. Love does not end,  it endures.

Love is not lust.
Love is not sexual pleasure.
Love is not living together.
Love is not a state marriage license.
Love is not birthing babies together.
Love is not raising a family.
Love is not putting someone on a pedestal.
Love is not letting them have their way.
Love is not keeping score.
Love is not giving up on them.

Love IS walking together in unity, with Christ as the strong bond that ties us together, demonstrating patience,  kindness,  gentleness,  love,  compassion,  encouragement, and the type of love and mercy and forgiveness towards others that Christ has shown us.

Oh,  how I need to love more in my life.

I love you,  friend. Even if I don’t show it enough, please know that it is true.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 ESV
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 ESV
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.