I Believe in Love

I believe in Love. Not only the awesome power of God’s love, but also love between people. I believe that it can exist; and can exist in a fulfilling way. Today’s world does not seem to believe much in love. Rather, it seems to discourage it. The way a relationship on television seems to be portrayed is a fairy tale ending but with none of the work. These on again, off again relationships, disloyalty, lies, and love games are somehow supposed to merit a love that lasts forever? Excuse me, but I don’t buy it. Love takes work, responsibility, relationship, forgiveness, honesty, trust, and patience; that is the kind of love that lasts; that is the kind of love that I believe in.

I didn’t always believe in Love, I didn’t always believe in Jesus. I know now that the reason I didn’t believe was because I didn’t understand this kind of love; I didn’t understand each of the elements that make love work. For that reason I was not able to enter the relationship I wanted until I had established the relationship that I needed: and that was a relationship with Christ. I had to learn what perfect love was before I could give and accept love in an earthly relationship. For the first time in my life I was absorbing God’s Word and I was feeling His presence in everything I read, the music I heard, and the people I met here at Youth Group.

But love, even when better understood, is still not an easy thing. The necessary work and attention never ceases or diminishes. People now seem to be under the impression that a fairy-tale relationship is easy, but it is not. A great, meaningful and lasting relationship requires work; hard work. You get what you give in a relationship, and this includes faith, trust, love, forgiveness, everything. So many people have the idea of a perfect relationship in their heads but yet continually fail to be patient enough to wait for the right person or they do not put in the necessary work to make it a worthwhile relationship. A relationship like that is not going to just jump up out of nowhere and work like clockwork.

But by putting in the effort, two people can become one just as the church is meant to become one humanity through its “marriage” with Christ. Marriage is a practice of our marriage with Christ and vice versa. Ephesians says that a woman is to love her husband as she loves Christ and a man is supposed to love his wife sacrificially as Christ loves us. Our earthly relationships are tangible; we can literally feel the effects of love, so use it to better understand Christ’s love for you and your love for Him. Similarly, use your love for Christ and His love for you as an example for your earthly relationships. In this way, idolatry of another over Christ is diminished, and, instead, one keeps God in the center of their relationship; something that will give glory to God and something that will aid the survival of said relationship.

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—30 for we are members of his body.31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." Ephesians 5:22-31