Unbelievable... never before felt... emotion and CHOICE of the heart.

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? I mean, it's a great thing... but it makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and REALLY mess you up. You build up all these defenses as you go through life... Life experiences have caused you to build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you...no one can hurt you... then it happens, one person, to the untrained, unknown eye they are seemingly no different from any other person yet they simply wander into your life...

And oddly enough, inspite of all the walls you have built up around yourself, you give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like smile at you or hug you or show you that all those walls and defenses that you have built up your entire life are completely idiotic... And eventually that feeling of wanting more, and wanting another person in your life doesn't seem so bad, so you give your heart to them...piece by piece. Then your life and your heart isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It begins eating away at your insides so that eventually you are hollow and no longer completely yourself...

With some relationships however, it could leave you crying in the darkness. So simple a phrase as 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. That type of pain can cause one to truly hate love. But I sit and ponder why that is... Why is it that we allow ourselves to fall so madly for someone that even when things turn sour and that person is CLEARLY not for you, you can't help but still want them? Is it perhaps that we were created to love?!

I mean it is true that to love is to risk not being loved in return. And to hope is to risk pain. And to try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. But what if it were possible to jump into a true love relationship with the knowledge that you would NEVER get hurt? What if it were offered to us, "Let me show you what love REALLY is, then you will be able to show that love to others and in return, you will be able to be loved as well." What an offer! But that is an offer that is already on the table. I mean God is love. And before we offer our hearts to anyone else, God wants us to offer our hearts to Him.

He wants to be a TRUE love relationship with Him. And when we receive that offer, He comes in and shows us what love is. And as He begins to transform us into His mini-me's, He longs to see us BECOME love as well... 1 Corinthians 13 is known as the Love chapter in the Bible... but what if we take it a step further? What if everytime we see the word "love" in the passage in verses 4-8, we replace that with our names? After all, that's what God longs for...us to BECOME love.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Abbie is patient, Abbie is kind. Abbie does not envy, Abbie does not boast, Abbie is not proud. Abbie is not rude, Abbie is not self-seeking, Abbie is not easily angered, Abbie keeps no record of wrongs. Abbie does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Abbie always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Abbie's Love never fails.

Ok...I don't know about you...but that makes me feel like a liar... So where do we go from here?! I think we should recap our lives and ask ourselves DAILY in the famous song of Tina Turner "whats love got to do with it?!" I mean do we REALLY live each day as God's love?! Are you always patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not proud, etc?! Because I'm sure not...but that has become my prayer... GOD, DON'T JUST SHOW ME LOVE, MAKE ME LOVE...LIKE YOU ARE LOVE!