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What are you teaching?

"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion.  People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love..."

Nelson Mandela

Teach people to love.
Learn to love.
Live to love.

Is anyone out there listening and caring?

In this crazy world, does anyone ever speak of responsibility anymore?
All I hear is rights and privileges, but no one mentions responsibility, especially to love.  We are more concerned with race, gender, or orientation than humanity.  There are talking heads, but no caring hearts.  We seem to only care about ourselves or right now, not others, nor future generations.  We have agendas without consideration of others.  Please don’t mistake my silence for approval.  We must return to the consideration of our responsibility to love others or our culture will not survive.  We will slay each other demanding our rights, instead of serving each other with our understanding of what love means and costs.

No Room

"Love so well that envy has no room to breathe."
-Chrystal Evans Hurst

And I would add, or discontent, or bitterness...need I keep naming?

Are you being negative?

"Negativity is a failure to love."  ~ James MacDonald

How do you find meaning?

"Love is what gives meaning to all that we do."  (p. 196, Stormie Omartian, Choosing Love)

Give & Receive

"Giving is not the only sign of love; so is receiving."  (p. 88, Stormie Omartian, Choosing Love)

Love is a vapor

"Love is like a vapor.
We can't see a vapor, but we can sometimes sense the effects of it."
(p. 85, Choosing Love,  Stormie Omartian)

What effects are you seeing?
What effects are you making?

What's more important than Love?

"Nothing is more important in our lives than love."

So says Stormie Omartian in Choosing Love, page 21

Is there anything more important to you?

For "Gooder" and "Gladdest"

Frederick Buechner writes, “Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is gooder than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.”

Thinking Vertically & Horizontally

What are the memories you are creating?

New quotes on love

Quotes as I listened to James MacDonald speak on love:

Love conquers selfishness.
Love is relational dynamite.
Love doesn't bail.
Love isn't skeptical.
Love is part of the solution.

Are you a perfect match or imperfect people matching up?

"Great love isn't two people finding the perfect match in each other.
Great love is two people making the choice to be a match."
page 180
The Best Yes
Lysa Terkeurst

Has love made you real yet?

"There is a direct correlation between realness and love."  ~ Steve Brown

While You Wait

"Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait..."  (Jude 21)

I don't know how you do this.  But, I know we need to do it.
Whatever we are waiting on...we need to KEEP OURSELVES in God's love while we wait.
What are you waiting on?

What are you extending, right now?

"Be an extension of God's love right now."

Lysa Terkeurst

The Best Yes

page 169

You can't give what you don't have

"We cannot love when we perceive ourselves as unloved.
We cannot offer to others what we don't possess."
~Beth Moore, page 21, Children of the Day

What burden are you carrying?

Sometimes we get confused

"We must not confuse the command to love with the disease to please."
~Lysa TerKeurst

Reach Out...

"The soul is seen when it reaches out in love."  ~ John Ortberg
Soul Keeping, page 153

How are you moving?

Love is an intentional movement toward another.
~ Gary Thomas

Move intentionally toward someone with love today!

What are you learning? What are you teaching?

"No one is born hating another person...People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love."  ~ Nelson Mandela

Love People, Not Pleasures or Things

Excerpt from Love People, Not Pleasure, by Arthur C. Brooks, on July 18, 2014, NY Times Op Ed:

"Love people, use things.

Easier said than done, I realize.  
It requires the courage to repudiate pride and the strength to love others - 
family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, God and even strangers and enemies.  
Only deny love to things that actually are objects.  The practice that achieves this is charity.
Few things are as liberating as giving away to others that which we hold dear."

Love & Fighting

"Love is doing the fighting for him [Christ]."

Walter Hilton
Toward a Perfect Love
page 150

What are you fighting for today?
How are you loving for Him today?

Irresistible

"Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."

~ Robert Frost

One Duty/One Purpose/One Mission

"I know of only one duty, and that is to love."
~ George Bernard Shaw

What are you wearing?

Love & Truth

Mark Hall, from his book, Thrive, said:  

"Love earns the right to speak the truth.  And truth proves that we really love."  

What are you proving today?

What truth is coming out of you?

Duty & Love

"Duty is the handmaiden of love and honor."

Ravi Zacharias

A Warrior's Spirit

"You haven't yet opened your heart fully, to life, to each moment.
The peaceful warrior's way is not about invulnerability; but absolute vulnerability --
to the world, to life, and to the presence you felt.  All along I've shown you by example that a warrior's life is not about imagined perfection or victory; it is about love.
Love is a warrior's sword; wherever it cuts, it gives life, not death."

Dan Millman
Way of the Peaceful Warrior

"Don't wait until you die to learn the warrior's way.  Do it now, each night, before you drift off to sleep.  As you review your day, consider these 2 questions of courage and love.  Learn from each day, so that each day you can show a little more courage and a little more love."
Dan Millman
No Ordinary Moments

Maya Angelou describes Love

True Trinity Loving

"The Father's love is our source (I John 3:1).
Jesus is our model (John 15:13).
The Holy Spirit makes it real (Romans 5:5)."

Sylvia Gunter
page 11
For the Family

Today: It's all we have

Today.

What can you do to show someone love?

How can you help someone?

Is there a way you can serve, humbly?

Do you know anyone that needs something?

Can you be a blessing to someone, today?

Loving = Freedom/Freedom = Loving

In reading Eugene Peterson's classic, The Message, interpreting Galatians 5:13 and 14, he says:

"It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life.  Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom.  Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows.  For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence:  Love others as you love yourself.  That's an act of true freedom."

Where are your thoughts?

In reading Walter Hilton's classic book from the 14th Century, Toward a Perfect Love,  he says:

"Man, is naught else but his thoughts and his loves."

This thought is attributed to St. Augustine (from the 4th Century) teaching:  "If we want to know what a person is, we have simply to ask what it is he loves, and how he loves it."

The editor/translator applies this by saying:  "If you really want to know what it is you love, consider what it is you are most thinking about.  For where your love is, there your eye will be turned, your pleasure found, and your heart preoccupied."

(Introduction, p. xxv)

Wrap yourself in Love

"Love is the fabric that enfolds the body and provides warmth and comfort.  This blanket of love protects against the coldness of the world and insulates from the blustery winds of hate.  Its fabric is soft yet strong, and there is great beauty in its many colors and intricate patterns.  It is meant to be shared, for in the sharing it covers sin and envelops all who want to know the blessings that it alone can give.

This covering of love is large enough to include all who desire its consolation yet small enough to accommodate each one personally and abundantly.  To be enfolded in this blanket is to experience acceptance and healing.  It neither binds nor constricts, and amazingly permits those encompassed within its folds to move into freedom.

This blanket of love cannot be bought, but it is freely bestowed by the heavenly Weaver and its durability has stood the test of the ages.  It is the one and only blanket that is needed for life.  Without it the soul will grow cold and hard, and all that is accomplished will ultimately profit nothing.  With it the souls will experience the intensity and tenderness of God's love and will ultimately be filled with the fullness of God.  This love is the greatest of all virtues:  it is transforming; it is powerful; and it never fails."

page 99
Cynthia Heald
Becoming a Woman Who Loves

"Civilization of Love"

When I first saw the phrase, "civilization of love," I was struck:  What a great thought of community.
I discovered this phrase was first used by Pope Paul VI in 1970.  Pope John Paul II adopted this phrase and used it prolifically, in over 200 papal documents.

What we need is a culture of love, or more aptly put, a "civilization of love."  Perhaps if we had more love, we would be more civilized.  Or, maybe if we were more civilized, we would act with more love.  Either way is great by me.  

http://www.civilizationoflove.net/Papal_List.htm

Love & Forgiveness

"God cannot love us unless He forgives us and cannot forgive us without  a commitment to love us.
Love and forgiveness are equally bound together in all human relationships.
I cannot hope to ever love someone unless I am committed to forgive him.
I cannot hope to ever forgive him - that is, truly forgive him - unless I know the rich, incomprehensible joy of being forgiven."

Dan Allender
Bold Love
page 42

What do we know about God and love?

"From God's other known attributes we may learn much about His love.
We can know, for instance, that
because God is self-existent, His love had no beginning;
because He is eternal, His love can have no end;
because He is infinite, it has no limits;
because He is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity;
because He is immense, His love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea before which we kneel in joyful silence and from which the loftiest eloquence retreat confused and abashed."

A. W. Tozer
The Knowledge of the Holy
p. 105

Where does Love come from?

"The springs of love are in God, not in us.  It is absurd to look for the love of God in our hearts naturally; it is only there when it has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit."
Oswald Chambers

Who or What is in Control?

"Loving means losing control of our schedule, our money, and our time.  When we love we cease to be the master and become the servant."
Paul Miller
Love Walked Among Us
p. 34

Agapè, Anyone?

The Greek word, agapè, is defined as "a love that is based on the deliberate choice of the one who loves rather than the worthiness of the one who is loved."*  

What does that teach us about ourselves and what does that reveal to us about God?

Christianity.about.com defines it as "selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love, the highest form of love…"

Thomas Jay Oord defined it as "an intentional response to promote well-being when responding to that which has generated ill-being."**

However we define it, it is above us and beyond us.  It requires more than we can give.  It commands a spark of divinity imparted into us to extend to another.  It entails the Father of Love breathing and working through us.  I can see no other way.  We are not good enough, smart enough, clever enough, giving enough.  We are inadequate for the task, for the role.  We need help.  We have to submit to it's Author and let Him write the words and the script.

*The Nelson Study Bible:  The New King James Version (1997)
**Oord, Thomas Jay (2010). Defining Love: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press.ISBN 1-58743-257-9.

What do you give yourself to first?

"…give yourself first to love."

Henry Drummon
The Greatest Thing in the World
page 29

Who is your greatest teacher?

"Love is the greatest of teachers, for there is no authority more compelling, no power more hypnotically transfixing, no counsel more wise, no message we are more longing to hear, no other master for whom it is easier to give up absolutely everything in order to follow and obey."  Mike Mason
(as quoted in p. 5 of Becoming a Woman Who Loves, by Cynthia Heald)

What is the state of your soul?

"Love is the most God-like state of the soul…
Love is the life of the soul."

David Thomas
(p. 1, quoted in Becoming a Woman Who Loves, Cynthia Heald)

Raising the Bar

Cynthia Heald in her book, Becoming a Woman Who Loves, prefaces the book with reading Jesus' words in John 13, where He ramps up the Old Testament command.

Old Testament Command -Love your neighbor as yourself:  I am the Lord.  (Lev 19:18)
New Testament Command - Love as I have loved you.  (Jesus said) (John 13:34,35)

Jesus always did that, raising the bar.  It's not just murder, don't hate in your heart (Matt 5:21,22).  It's not just don't commit adultery, don't look and lust (Matt 5:27,28).  Here He does it again:  Don't just love others as yourself, love them the way I have loved you.  Now, that's another thing altogether.  As Mrs. Heald points it, it's a lot easier to love others as I love myself, but can I even comprehend loving others as Jesus did, as Jesus would.

10 Ways to Love, perhaps you can think of more...

Love Conquers All Things

#1:AMOR VINCIT OMNIA

Over the centuries, certain Latin phrases have been used widely enough in English to get included in the dictionary. This list contains some of our favorites. What It Means: "love conquers all things" Where It Comes From: Shortly before the start of the first millennium, the Roman poet Virgil wrote "love conquers all things; let us too surrender to Love." The phrase and the concept (in Latin and in English) caught on: a character in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, written in the late 1300s, wore a brooch engraved "Amor Vincit Omnia"; Caravaggio used the phrase as the title of his painting of Cupid in the early seventeenth century; the twentieth century poet Edgar Bowers reinterpreted the phrase all over again in the poem with that title.

Top Ten Lists - Merriam-Webster Online
Read more at http://www.merriam-webster.com/top-ten-lists/top-10-latin-words-to-live-by/amor-vincit-omnia.html#DF4zuUhcJQejLF7s.99

What do others see?

Love is seen in what it does.
Gladys Aylward

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

Love is Happy! Happy Day 2014

Love is Not Just an Idea

"Love is not an idea for Paul (Apostle), not even a "motivating factor" for behavior.  It is behavior.  To love is to act; anything short of action is not love at all."

p. 628

"It is as though Paul were saying, "You must have love; without it you are simply not behaving as Christians.  And what is love?  It is to behave in ways opposite to yourselves!" (commenting on I Corinthians 13:4b-5)

p. 637

Gordon D. Fee
The New International Commentary on the New Testament - The First Epistle to the Corinthians

Pouring Out = Experiencing Yourself

"I've discovered the more love and joy I pour into others, the more I experience in my own life."
~Lysa Terkeurst, UNGLUED, page 148

How Responsible are you? Love makes you responsible

"Love divorced from a feeling of responsibility for the person is a negation of itself, is always and necessarily egoism.  The great the feeling of responsibility for the person the more true love there is…love wants to give, to create a good, to bring happiness."
(page 266, NIV Stewardship Study Bible)

How are you doing in your job?

"Our job is to extend the grace of God to others, whoever they may be.  We love them, not because they are lovable, but because we are Christians."  (page 99, T. W. Hunt, The Mind of Christ)

What's Your Job?

Are you measuring or loving?

Can you tell the difference? Can you be the difference?

"Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people can't tell the difference."
~David Augsburger

Love is Healing

"Love is the most healing of our resources."
Charles Whitfield
Healing the Child Within
ebook, p. 2131

"Love is what we …use to heal ourselves."
p. 2143, ibid

Who Knows You, and still loves you?

"To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial.  To be known and not loved is our greatest fear.  But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.   It is what we need more than anything."

page 101
The Meaning of Marriage
Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller

Love = Give Yourself For Them

As I was reading Ephesians 5:25, it hit me:  Love equals giving myself for the other.

Here is what it says:

"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her."

Love is not ~ "what's in it for me."  Love is ~ what's in it for you.

What do you give yourself over for?  We show what we love by giving ourselves to it, for it.

I would think a lot of people would answer that question with their work.  But do you love your work?
Probably not.  You probably do it for your family, to provide for your family, who you do love.
If you are not giving of yourself to another or to a cause, you are probably not loving well, if at all.

Give yourself:  Love another.

Who Really Deserves It?

“People need loving the most when they deserve it the least.”

~ Louise Hay ~

Is love panting in your heart?

"Let love not visit you as a transient guest, but be the constant ruling temper of your soul.  See that your heart be filled at all times and on all occasions with real, undissembled benevolence; not to those only that love you, but to every soul of man.  Let it pant in your heart; let it sparkle in your eyes, let it shine on all your actions.  Whenever you open your lips, let it be with love…"
John Wesley (1703-1791)

Begin with Listening

The first service one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love of God begins in listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that He not only gives us His Word but lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

What is the result of your thinking?

I found it interesting to see how the editors of The NIV Stewardship Study Bible described love:

…is not a feeling…so not let their emotions control them
…is an act of the will
…to act on behalf of our neighbor's good
…is unconditional…given regardless of the response of the recipient
…is sacrificial
…is the result of hard moral thinking

They quote John H. Westerhoff in his church's aim "to share an authentic love that draws humanity and God together."

(page 425)

Which is it?

In reading Carolyn Moor's encouragement for the new year, through her work at Modern Widows Club, I was encouraged that more need to hear this than widows:

"To be brave and open to being loved in this world, we must first become love itself. It is the difference between saying 'I want to be loved' vs. 'I want to be love'."  (http://modernwidowsclub.com)

Be encouraged to be love yourself.  First give love.  Love finds love.