Loving People

Loving people is doing what is best FOR THEM, whatever the cost. It can involve feelings/emotions but is first a decision to act in their best interest. Love effects the emotions since it's hard to be kind and patient (see 1Cor 13) with people without emotion. But it is not strictly, nor primarily an emotion. Love is laying down one's life (and self interests) for someone else (see Rom 5:8).

It's just so crazy how many people think that love is only an emotion. People fall in and out of love because they have an incomplete and therefore, faulty view of love. The result is one revolving door relationship after another. Since our emotions are so fickle, they come and go. When someone quits feeling a certain way about someone else, they mistake it for a lack of love, when it could be that love was never present in the first place...at least, not anything other than love of self.

Father, help us to truly love others as you've commanded. Give us a keen awareness of the joy and cost of such a love that was displayed for us in Your Son. Find us faithful to enjoy the experience of giving our lives for others so that Christ can be formed in us.