Our First True Love - Part 2

Many girls make the mistake of thinking that love is an emotion, something you feel in your heart. In a sense it is, but more Biblically, love is a choice, a decision to act upon a covenant, whether or not "the feeling" is there.

There is a broad difference between these two loves. The first is an unsteady leading. I know you have heard the phrase, "his head follows his heart". Worldly love leads us into unstable relationships where we are not looking with our heads, our conscience, our (excuse the phrase) gut feeling. We allow many, if not all cautions to be thrown out the window because we just want to be "in love." This even applies to those of us who go beyond the bounds to stay at home, and choose not to date or develop any type of relationship with guys. Yes, we may seem like we don't yield to love from the outside, but the Lord knows our hearts so well. He knows when we look at a young man with lustful admiration, and He knows when we "plan our wedding" and dream up tales about ourselves and that handsome, kind young man. This kind of love is dangerous. Little do we realize that, each time we yield to this secular sense of love, we pull ourselves further from the richest love on earth.

This kind of love is lasting and reaps much richer rewards than worldly love. Inner happiness, joy and contentment will always follow when we seek after this richest of all loves. Often worldly love is crushed when that "special person" marries someone else or rebels against the Lord. When will we learn that there is no fulfillment in any other love, save the love of Christ?

Our journey into that true love begins when we accept the Lord into our hearts. We enter into a relationship with Christ that knows no bounds. We can never be too intimate with Jesus!

In order to fully enter into that true love relationship, we must first of all decide if we really want it. "Of course I want it! Why wouldn't I?" we ask. Well, like all love, there is more than just joy and peace in the relationship, there are also times of pain and suffering involved (see Luke 14:25-33). Times when we have to give up hopes and dreams that are a great part of our lives in order to follow Christ's leading, times of being rejected while trying to walk in Jesus' steps, and times when God allows things to happen to us or loved ones in order to draw us closer to Him. All of these are painful, but through it all, the Lord brings us to a level faith, love, joy, and peace we have never known.

Once we begin to fully enter into that relationship, we will never look back. We will quickly realize that, though there are times of great pain and agony in this love, it is more than worth it. There is nothing that will be able separate us from the love of Christ. (See Romans 8:35-39)

Once we have made the decision to make Christ our true love, despite all costs, we must at once fully, completely surrender ourselves to Him. To surrender means to yield, to give up one's self into the power of another. This means to give up all our hopes, all our dreams, all our goals, all our desires to Him, and to surrender ourselves to what He wants for us. Jesus Christ must be foremost in our lives. We must also surrender to Christ our way of doing things. We must surrender to working in Christ's strength and not our own.

I always have liked being capable and doing things on my own - the way I wanted them done. The Lord has had to show me many times that His ways are different than mine. If He deals with me on being kind to my siblings, I don't need to just try to be kind to my siblings, I need to pray about it, surrender myself to Him and allow His strength to work through me, showing kindness in the way HE would have me to do so.

The Lord wants our all, and throughout our quest of making Christ our first True Love, we will find that the Lord is constantly bringing things before us that we need to surrender to Him. He requires nothing less than first place in our hearts. Making (and keeping) Christ as our First True Love is a long, difficult process that will take a life time. The sooner we learn to give ourselves wholly to Him and surrender to His plans and desires for our lives, the sooner we will enjoy the fulness and peace of living in His will.

In preparation for the next part of Our First True Love, please pray these next couple months for the Lord to:

1)Give us a desire to have Christ as our First True Love.

2)Show us what we need to surrender to Him. (and do it!)

3)Show us what three things are necessary in order to live in the fulness of Christ's love.

God bless each and every one of you as we strive together to have Jesus Christ as our First True Love!

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Posts from the Past

Every Wednesday I post something that I have written in the past. It may have been written a long time ago, or a very, very long tim ago! :-D So please forgive any mistakes!