Episode 3 What is Love?

In this Episode I talk about what True Love is. GOD. 1 John 4:8 says "God is Love." I read to you the attributes of Love, of God from 1 Corinthians chapter 13. God, his love is far superior to the human love we chase after. God's love is unconditional. It is a sacrificial Love that only God himself is truly capable of. This is what Love is, and it is what we all long for.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello. Welcome to the Never Nothing, Never Nobody Podcast. This is a place for those who have felt unloved, felt like they were nothing and nobody. To learn the truth about who they really are and who God created them to be. This is a place to find hope for healing, to end your search for significance, and to find the truth that you are never nothing and never nobody. What is love? Tell us what love is. I'm going to read to you out of two different versions of the Bible. One the NKJV, the other is the ESV. They sound similar, but they are a little different. The NKJV reads like this Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, love does not parade itself, it is not puffed up. It does not behave rudely, it does not seek its own. Love is not provoked. It thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. The SV says Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoings, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, endures all things, and love never ends. There's another version of the Bible that says that love holds no record of wrongs. I imagine that's where it says it does not rejoice in wrongdoing. That's a key note that I'll get back to later. This passage not only refers to the love of God, but to God Himself. In first John chapter four verse eight, it says that God Himself is love. It's agape love, which is an unconditional love, and it is the purest of all loves. It is a sacrificial love, and it transcends the limits of our human ability to love. For those of you who do not know, John was one of Jesus' disciples. John understood the love of God, the love of Jesus, like no one else did. John on more than one occasion referred to himself as John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. Jesus and John were very close, so close in fact, that when Jesus hung on the cross he told John that Mary, Jesus' birth mother, was now to be considered John's mother, and that he was to look after her and take care of her as though he were her very own son. John knew what it was to be loved by God Himself, because John had lived with Jesus. He had traveled with Jesus, spreading the good news, teaching about the kingdom of God, listening and watching and learning from God Himself. For three years John got to experience the love of God in the flesh, in person. John actually knows what it was like to be hugged by God. I've always imagined what it would be like to get a hug from Jesus. You know, hugs are powerful in themselves. When they're given by someone we love or we know loves us, hugs can melt away stress, anxiety, fear, worry, and heartache. Can you imagine a Jesus hug? I cannot wait for my Jesus hug when I finally get to heaven and see him face to face. Jesus is gonna have to pick me up off the ground before I get my hug, 'cause I know I'll be falling at his feet crying, speechless, yet so thankful to be there face to face with him, but I know that with that one hug all the cares and worries and hurts from my life and in this world will all be melted away, never to return after getting that Jesus hug. Jesus had his twelve disciples, and then he had three that were the closest to him, Peter, James, and John. John is the one who declared so confidently that he was the disciple whom Jesus loved. He lived it, experienced it, and he embraced the love Jesus had for him. He didn't downplay it or take it for granted. God wants each of us to embrace the love he has for us the way John did. He wants us to say I am and then you say your name whom Jesus loves. So in my case, I am Jana, whom Jesus loves. The intimate knowledge of God's love is how John could so confidently write about the love of God and what love truly is, who God truly is. Love is patient. Some versions of the Bible use the phrase long suffering. I once heard patience or long suffering explained like this. Picture holding a child that's having a temper tantrum. They're kicking you, hitting you, wailing and carrying on. Yet the response to the child is not to spank them or give consequences. The response is to hold the child while they get it all out, while you remain calm and gentle, absorbing every blow, not getting angry or defensive, but taking it, holding on to the child with love and tenderness. This is a perfect picture of how God is with us. When we come to Him with our temper tantrums, God can handle our expressions of anger, hurt, injustice. He can handle our honesty about how we really feel, about what's really going on inside of us. He can even handle it when we're angry. We're angry at a loss of a loved one that should not have died. God can handle us pitching a fit over something being unfair, cruel, unacceptable, not right. Life is filled with these things that stir us up. God can take it. God can handle it because he loves us. God can even handle it when you're angry at him. When you see him as the one who could have prevented a thing or healed a thing, and he didn't do it, or he didn't do it the way you were expecting him to? How could he just possibly sit back and watch children being hurt by those who were supposed to protect them and take care of them? How could he allow someone to murder one of his own children? What kind of God would allow that? The kind that was fully capable of loving us, loving the person that was hurt, and even loving the perpetrator, the one who did the unjust thing, the wrong thing. God knows what happened in their lives that turned them into the person that would be capable of such a thing. We don't like that. We don't like the idea that God could or would love a murderer or a rapist or a child abuser. People who rob women and children of their innocence. God alone is capable of that kind of love. God Himself died for that person too. I have a side note for you concerning the children that are hurt. I want you to know that God has a plan and a purpose for those little ones, and as part of that purpose, God has a plan to restore, heal, and make right the wrongs done to them. My testimony is proof of that. I will share that on a later episode. God Himself will avenge, God Himself will make it right, and God Himself will heal. Love is kind. Some versions say love is gentle. In Romans chapter two verse four, we're told that it is God's kindness that draws us to Him and leads people to repent or turn away from their sins and wrongdoing. God is not a taskmaster, God is not harsh. Like any parent, when they have to correct a child, it doesn't feel good, but it's not being done under meanness or anger. It's done with gentleness, kindness, and love. God is merciful in dealing with us. Mercy means not getting what we deserve. We deserve to be dealt with harshly for our wrongdoing, but God granted us mercy. He can do that because He loves us so. In the Old Testament there's a book called Lamentations. In chapter two, verse twenty two and twenty three it says The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Love does not envy or boast, it is not proud, arrogant, or rude. Human love, on the other hand, is filled with envy, jealousy, arrogance, and pride, and sorely lack the ability in ourselves to truly love one another, especially when we're at our worst. We set limitations on what we will put up with and what we won't. We give conditions under which others must perform in order to earn our love. God set Himself down low all the way to our human level. He experienced the inferior human love, and he knew he had a far superior love to offer us. We desperately need God's kind of love. That loves us even when we're acting ugly, mean, cruel or hateful, a love that covers our sins and makes way for us to be loved by the Creator of the universe. God knows we need the love that He has to give, which is why He came, lived a human life in the fully God, fully man Jesus. Love is not self seeking or insist on its own way. God gave us free will. We can choose him or we can reject him. We can love him and be loved by him, or we can say no thank you and walk away. God hopes that we'll choose him, yet he knows that many won't, and it breaks his heart. He literally sacrificed himself in the hopes that one day you would love him too. God does not hold any resentment towards us. Jesus paid our debts for the sin. Because of Jesus, our slate is wiped clean. There is nothing for God to hold against us anymore. God Himself is the embodiment of true love. Love holds no record of wrongs. Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing. Isn't it nice that God doesn't hold the things against us that we've done? He doesn't hold against us the things we've said, the ways we've failed when we've hurt other people. God doesn't have a list of all the times we messed up, or how many times we've struggled and fought the same battles again and again, or fell for the same temptation again and again, or sinned again and again. God doesn't hold a record of that. When we ask for our forgiveness, he literally wipes the slate clean and he can do that because of what he did in the embodiment of Jesus, the embodiment of love that paid our debt, our sin debt, which was due to us to die. God bears all things. To bear something means to endure something, especially unpleasant. God can carry heavy loads, take on our burdens, handle our mess. He can put up with our mistakes or our intentional bad choices. He can do this because God is love. Love believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. God believes in us. He hopes we'll choose him and do what is right and good. He believes we can. He made our part easy. All we have to do is believe and confess that belief with our mouth. This allows God's spirit to come live inside of us, to help us to continue to choose to do right and to be in relationship with Him, even when it's hard. God's love will never fail. God's love will never end. To embrace and receive this unconditional, all encompassing true love, all we need to do is believe in our hearts that Jesus is who the Bible says he is. He did what it says he did, and he did it for us. Jesus defeated death, hell, and the grave so that one day you and I may be in fellowship with him. To be in fellowship means to be in relationship with. God's love can help you in the here and the now. It's not just a hope for heaven. It is God doing life with you, walking through life with you, strengthening you, making sure you get up when you feel like giving up and go back out there again. His love can sustain us, uphold us, come what may in our lives. Jesus, I pray that you spoke to the hearts and minds of those listening, draw them to you with this love that comes only from you, the only true love, unconditional love. Heal their hurts, strengthen their weary hearts and souls, help them to do what is right, even when it hurts or feels unfair. Help them in their everyday lives. In your name I pray. Amen. For those of you who believe or just confess to belief, I recommend getting the UVersion Bible app for your phone, tablet, or electronic device. It is a free app. You can find a version of the Bible that speaks to your heart and is easiest for you to understand. Then go find a Bible based church that teaches from the Word of God, or a small group, or a Bible study. Get connected with other believers. We need Jesus most of all, but we need each other too.