I love pizza, I love my dog, I love my new shoes, but do I really?

The word love is so overused in society today you hear it about everything and say it to anyone. I’m curious as to how a word that is supposed to hold so much value has lost its meaning. When I was in high school I thought I "loved" all these guys that I had barely known, but the truth is I didn’t. I remember starting a new relationship with someone that I really liked and six months went by and I knew. I knew I loved him but there was no way I was saying it first. He’s the type of person that respects the word love to such an extent that he doesn’t typically use it in his everyday life unless he means it. A whole year went by before he finally told me he loved me and while some of you think that is absolutely crazy. I don’t think so. I knew that for him to say that he loved me he meant it and that held so much more meaning than if he had said it in the first few weeks of our relationship. Today I see so many young people in relationships using the word love when they’ve only known each other for a matter of days or weeks. How can you be sure at that time in your relationship? What even is love?

Love in a relationship is the small things. It's letting your partner has the last bite of your ice cream (you know where all the good stuff hangs out at the end). It's ordering extra food even when they say they aren’t hungry because you know they’ll mooch. Love is not getting upset about the small things and realizing that in the long run, that fight isn’t worth it. It's being able to tell them absolutely anything and never feel judged or rejected. Love is knowing that you have someone always in your corner rooting for you. When you can’t imagine a life without that person in it that’s when you know you’re in love. I hope that you throw the L word in a relationship at people that deserve it.

Now let's make a switch to loving people like Jesus would and what that means from a biblical prescriptive.

Love from a biblical standpoint is a simple verse that many of us hear all of the time. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 says “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 with wrongdoing, but rejoices with truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” (now go back and re-read that because I know you skimming since you hear it so much) To me this says it all we are called to love others as Christ loves us and have grace, compassion, and forgiveness towards people. I know you’re thinking of someone that you find it impossible to love, but remember that love is the things listed above. You don’t have to hang out with that person 24/7 or give them the last bite of your ice cream cone but you do have to treat them like a person and love them as a neighbor. If you connect the love in a relationship with the love of Christ I can promise you that love will last (and you’ll probably have a bomb relationship) because love isn’t just a feeling its an action that we strive for daily.

Jesus calls us to love everyone no matter their race, religion, ethnicity, or sin. A company has started making bracelets responding to WWJD (what would Jesus do). They say HWLF standing for (he would love first). This is an amazing response and is what we are called to do daily.

Check out those cool bracelets at hewouldlovefirst.com