Love Notes

For a while, I’ve meant to write this discourse. Someone recently asked me about my love for them. Really, about every second in life, someone is searching for the next answer to that question. So many struggle with loving themselves, loving God, being secure in love from God, and the two way relationship of loving with others. It many times is a fathering issue.

Men just don’t seem to carry an effective way of affirming, encouraging, and stimulating the right love relationship in their children. That passes down as less than blessed into the generations. Women don’t love their husbands the way the husband needs to be loved. Men don’t love their wives the way they need loved. Singles don't get how to be a loving person without a sexual component.

Hose the word dysfunctional by the way. We use it for anything less than our personal definition of best. That is not dysfunctional. It might be unsatisfying, but it is not dysfunctional. Dysfunctional is a mental and emotional dis-ease. Dysfunctional is not being able to relate in any positive manner at all. Dysfunctional is being 90% destructive in relationships. So free yourself from that horrid term and accept you are a normal, functioning human with a few quirks you would like to fix with God’s help.

So, do I love you?

Love as a Human
Love starts as accepting another person as a valid member of humanity. Anyone connected with Christ should be able to do that. Anyone connected with the Creator should be able to do that. Even a heathen can do that. It is imbedded in our native creation as an express impression of our Father. It does have to be nurtured. There are some really sick folk that move away from this in response to abusive treatment. Our television dwells on the sickness of the sociopath.

Love as a God-Enabled Human
Okay, there is another love in this realm that is important. This one takes an active relationship with the Father in Christ. This love accepts others as valid in my humanity and my world. Now this one is a struggle. Wars and apartheid are made of not living this love. Not having this love is pointed out by John in his letters as a separation point between Christian and others. A friend just facebooked how awkward he felt in a white church today. Hmm? Why do we have white, black, Mexican, Honduran, Korean, Vietnamese, middle class, blue collar churches? There must be a shortage of expression of this type of love in the kingdom. It is not about affirming someone’s right to be a human in their manner. It is about affirming, accepting, and actively seeking relationship side by side on the most friendly basis without sense of difference. It is the understanding there is neither male nor female nor black nor white nor Methodist nor Baptist nor Latino nor moneyed in God’s eyes. This is God’s Eyes love. Sure hope heaven is not as exclusive and lonely and poor in culture as our congregations. My God spun all cultures from Noah down from a single thread of genes. We all got a little Noah DNA in us and should remember that well. He had to reset the counters once after Adam. Glad he committed to not doing it again. Let’s don’t tempt Him with our lack of love. Do you love me with God’s Eyes or am I white to you?

Love with no requirements
Here is another level of God love. Love someone with no requirements of behavior towards you and others. This is definitely a God-enabled love. When I hurt you, do you forgive me? Do you still love me? When I steal from you emotionally, physically, or mentally do you love me? Do you offer me a hand up and out of my place? Do you offer me the acceptance of Christ even as He accepted you? I’m not going to quote chapter and verse. Read Paul’s letter to the Romans all the way to the end. Will you go out of your normal path to find me and offer me the love of Christ? That is thIs love.

Love as a friend
Now, God never told me to love you as a friend. It is good when I do, but we all have limits to how many friends we can make. Each person has a different capacity for the number of friends and the level of intimacy with each of those. Some friends stick closer than a brother. Closer. Get that. I have friends to whom I am much closer than my blood brothers. I hope they do too. We have not walked the same path since we left our parents’ home. A husband and wife that are close and intimate are the best of friends. Okay, read Proverbs. The whole book. Zero in on the verses that talk about covering sin, bringing good news, loving correction, gossip and slander, and the power of words. Friends learn these tight relational secrets and live by them with each other. Solomon talks about a complaining wife and how the husband is better off living on a corner of the roof top if he has one. That friendship is kaput!
A friendship love includes encouragement, affirmation, comfort, listening, enjoying doing things together, sharing pains and joys, and always speaking well. It allows the other to be who they are and love them for it. It allows you to be who you are and be loved for it. Friends don’t sit around thinking how to change their friends.

Love as a Family Member
Culturally, we don’t share this in the same way. Tribal love many times brings in extended family from the whole community. Congregational love in small congregations can get to this level with a good enabling pastor/father figure. Really, fathers make this happen more than anyone in my observation. It can be matriarchal also. Do I love you as family? Do your birthday, anniversary, and special moments and achievements bring me joy?
I have a big family. My wife and I, our natural children and their families, children of my heart that call me dad and their families, close friends that have moved really close in relationship and affection in this manner, and people I have crossed in the kingdom and connected. They are family. It keeps getting bigger. Sometimes the blood family is not the ones that receive this love. It isn’t just there because you have blood line. It takes work and focus. Not all of those I call family call each other family. That is okay. Hope the tight folks are open enough to allow you to be bigger and you them. Else wise, they are the poorer.
Brotherly love is a big part of this. None of us seems big enough to bring everyone into their sphere of brotherly love. You just need to keep expanding. That is kingdom call. Read Paul’s letter to the Ephesians about 150 times. Get it?

Compassion
Take a run through Isaiah on this one. It will take some study. Read the Psalmists when they focus on the goodness of God, slow to anger, and of great compassion. Look into a mother’s eyes when her son is struggling to succeed in business. Compassion takes empathy and sympathy and emotes from deep in the belly of a human. Compassion in truest form means action. Jesus moved with compassion taught, did miracles, fed people, and dispatched leadership into the field. Try the gospel of Luke, also. Compassion streams out of one of the loves when touched deeply.

Worry is not compassion. Worry is sin. Worry is a lack of faith in God. It may spark from compassion that does not see how to act, but it is not love in any form. It is destructive and God encourages us to get away from it. In fact, worry will cause relationship to separate. Many a parent is lonely in old age due to worrying so much their children stayed away.

Love Levels
No, I have not gotten to entertainment’s number one subject of love, yet. It is coming. Right now, it is time for a word from our sponsor.

Love is experienced at four levels. It is mental (includes reason, will, and emotion), physical (hugs and kisses and warm feelings and sometimes sexual), spiritual (only for those in Christ with an enlivened spirit by His Holy Spirit), and relational (interactive and connected). We are quad partite. Love in every area includes experience in every area to be fully received and expressed. Read any gospel. Shake off that mind, body, spirit thing. We are social beings as much as mind, body, spirit. You do not exist to have sex with yourself. You do not exist to kiss yourself or hug yourself. You do not exist to talk to yourself. You do not exist alone. Get it?

Betterment Love
Okay, this is dysfunctional. Many believe, “I love you so much I want to change you into something better.” That is called control or manipulation. There is no love in that. Love always wants the best for the other person not for me. Love does not want to control. Self love wants to control. Other love wants to enable. Parents, rear your children according to their natural bend and gifts. Don’t make them do it your way. Spouses, get connected with the destiny of your spouse and encourage and enable it. Stop trying to change your mate.

Erotic Love
Love that arouses is many times confused with being love by itself. This is an expression of either lust or another love rising in the sensual realm. It is not love at all. When we are intimate our senses get into the game. Sexual expression should come from full mixture of all the other loves in a one-one, man to woman relationship. Friendship at the most intimate level, family at the most intimate level, inclusion at the most intimate level, kingdom connection at the most intimate level, and God enabled love at the most intimate level releases erotic sensual expression at the most intimate level.

When we skip the spiritual and relational components of our created intent, we focus on the mental and emotional and physical components of love and end up in shallow relationships that might have physical expression at fulfilling levels, but don’t last.

When we skip the mental and emotional and physical components of love and focus on the spiritual and relational components, we end up with an unfulfilled relationship.

Many 50 year marriages of the past looked like this. They kept celebrating sustaining the relationship only to be sad excuses for a marriage all along the path. Intimacy at some level is abandoned and fulfillment became staying locked into societal duty and obligation. What a tragedy. Our generation is cursed because of misunderstandings in this area. Divorce is rampant not because it is a dis-ease. Divorce is rampant because we think it is okay to be selfish and self centered and demand relationship due to our needs and desires and societal rules. “I can’t have sex without changing diapers together.” “I won’t listen to you in the morning until after my coffee.” “Here is my list of ways I like to be loved.” You have to stay married to me even when I hate you. Books and books and books are written about it and nothing significantly changes in our culture. Eventually one or both get tired of the game and look for fulfillment in the abandoned area. We are a wounded culture that needs God equipping release in every area.

Love and Respect
Is there a difference? If you love, you respect and defer and allow the gifts of others to excel. You encourage it. If you do not love, you disrespect and restrict and disallow the gifts of the other to excel. You criticize and resist. Get it? Respect is an expression of love. Love expresses respect. Real respect does not exist without one of the areas of love. Real love for the other does not exist without respect. If there is no respect, we simply love ourselves and not the other person and call it love.

End of present discourse... thoughts?