LOVE

Today in America we celebrate Valentines Day.  It is a great American Holiday, where a husband can oogle women all year long, neglect his wife, and be a total jerk, but should he forget to buy a card and flowers on this day, he is a horrible husband.

Showing our appreciation and affection to our wives is a good thing.  Feeling the pressures of the card and chocolate industry is another.  The size of your bouquet and the cost of your card is in direct proportion to your love for your wife according to their calculations.

What is love anyway?  Is it 2 teenagers who can't take their eyes off each other or is it a Grandfather going to the nursing home every day and spending the afternoon with his wife who's mind is slowly losing it's ability to function.  I heard we get our idea of love more from the Love Boat, than the Love Book, and that is our major problem.  We don't even know what love is, yet we are constantly in search of it.  Love is not a feeling, it is a choice.

And love for God is where love must start.  Only if you have the true love of God, which is the natural by product to experiencing the forgiveness of God at salvation, can you truly love Him and truly love others.

Love Jesus said is obedience to his word and his commandments. If I love God, I will naturally love my wife.  I will love my neighbor.  But if my neighbor is lost in a false religion, and on his way to hell, today's Christianity says it is unloving to offend him.  That is like not wanting to wake up a neighbor at 3 am if his house is on fire because you don't want to upset him.  True love is hatred of sin, and lover of truth, and hatred of error.  If you truly love somethings, you will hate what will destroy that love and what will destroy men from experiencing true love.

You can't give what you don't have.  When you have the truth, it is not unloving to give it out.  Most reject it because they can't handle it or they love their sin more than they want to love God.  It is not unloving to tell a homosexual that they are on their way to hell unless they repent of that lifestyle.  Most think that is hating them and cruel, but that is what God says.  They are damned, and so is everyone who is not saved.  It is loving to risk being ridiculed, and risk being misunderstood, and risk being misjudged.  My motives are questioned, people don't get it, and people want to stay in their sin.  But if they only could spend a minute in hell, they would snap out of it and be willing to throw their sin as far away as they could.  But it will be too late to wait for hell.  Warn we must, because we love. 

Jesus said except ye repent ye shall likewise perish.  Jesus is love, but his love is not the mushy gushy love hollywood says it is.  Jesus may not send you a Valentine, but he loves you so much that he does not want to have to send you to hell.

And He died so you don't have to go there.

God commended his great love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.