Estell Lyn Owen

I have studied love many many times in my life. I have journals upon journals of notes and scriptures on love. I have grown up believing…….knowing I was just unloveable; there was just something about me that was good for a while but then bored people and they moved on. Since I was a child no one really ever loved me enough to stay or that is how I grew up seeing it. Now as an adult and a daughter of the King, I see things differently it has taken time and some pretty amazing people God has placed in my life but my outlook and definition of love is now very different.

Love is a big deal not only in our human, fleshly lives here in this world but also in the spiritual realms we seek to one day understand by the grace of God. In 1 Corinthians 13:8 it reads, “Love Never Fails”, my whole life I wanted that love. The kind that didn’t change its mind, didn’t walk away, that kind that wasn’t looking for something better, I longed for that kind of love. The thing was, I was looking for that love in all the wrong places. You see there are two kinds of love, the worldly love based on emotions and feelings and the Biblical, Godly love based on commitment. You take verse 8 and look at it in these two spectrums and you can see the difference is vast. The enemy knows this too, that’s why he attacks us where the destruction will be the greatest and will form the most scars, hardening our hearts to the truth. If he can distort our perception of love, he can lie to us forever crippling our walk with God.

The worlds version of love is all about feeling, its selfish. It is based solely on getting something from someone else, something you need or desire. In return, you show love back, its a give and take system. If you do not meet my needs then I have no love for you, type of thing. This love that most of us seek, including myself for a long time, must be earned by making someone else feel good or meeting some need they had at that moment. Im not saying the feelings and emotions that accompany love are wrong, not true or unimportant but only that they aren’t everything. There is MORE! Strong…….STRONG emotions will always accompany love, real love especially, but it will always be COMMITMENT that holds true love strong, steadfast and unchanging through all seasons of life. Just like the commitment God made to His people long ago, the sacrifice of his Son, the love He has poured out to us over and over again. We are all sinners no matter how much we try, and while this is heartbreaking, gut wrenching, and gives God every reason to walk away, move on to someone else for better results, give up and turn away……He doesn’t……because His Love, Real Love is more than just emotion, more that what you can give Him and how it makes Him feel, it’s a COVENANT! A covenant that when modeled in our lives, means understanding when you don’t, its’s believing when you can’t see the truth, it’s trusting when your uneasy, it’s giving when it’s not deserved, it’s patients during chaos, and kindness amongst anger………Love Never Fails!

I believe that now, its took and long time to for those walls to come down and the chains be broken, to be able to see through the enemies lies. 1 Corinthians 13:7 says, Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things….because Love, Real Love isn’t based on fickle emotions and selfish ambitions, it is born from a Good Good Father who has shown us time and time again through His commitment to us, as we fail Him daily, He will never leave us nor forsake us. WE ARE HIS! So for me personally if I say I Love You; it is not out of habit, it is not an emotion or feeling in the moment but a commitment to stand by you, pick you up, to bear all things with you, believe all things, to hope all things, to endure no matter the storm….because Love Never Fails!

To me Love is much more than an emotion, I know Love only because He first Loved me!

We love because He first LOVED us. 1 John 4:19 So now faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is LOVE.