What Does Love Really Look Like:
What Does Love Really Look Like:
Recognizing Genuine Love in a Superficial World
By Joyce Meyer
Love is more than just patting each other on the back in church and saying ‘I love you with the love of the Lord.’ Those are nice words but what do they really mean?
Love is visible when someone is there for me, when I need them. It’s being treated right when I make a mistake or need mercy or understanding.
Love is something that can be seen. It is seen in the fruit of the Spirit working in our lives, in our behavior and how we treat people. Love has many facets, or different ways we can see it. For example when a diamond ring is held up to the light, it can sparkle in various ways depending upon which way it turned to the light. I believe love also sparkles in different ways depending on how we look at it. WE can turn love one way and see one thing. It we turn it another way, we see something different. First Corinthians 13:4-7 gives us examples of what love looks like because love is not theory. It’s not just talk or a sermon we preach. It’s not even just a word we use.
Mannerisms of Love
First Corinthians 13:4 says Love endures long… it has the ability to put up with stuff for a long time. It also says that love is patient and kind. One translation says love suffereth long (KJV). Long-suffering is a word we need to understand because it means we will suffer long. It’s just like it sounds L-O-N-G suffering!
The verse continues with love never is envious, meaning love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. It also doesn’t boil over with jealousy meaning love isn’t resentful of what other people have. Instead love is genuinely happy with someone else is blessed.
Love is not boastful or vainglorious which simply means it doesn’t call attention to itself. It does not think it’s better than other people or have an exaggerated opinion of it’s own importance. Love doesn’t think its opinion is always the right one while everyone else’s is wrong.
Love does not display itself haughtily because love acts right.It’s also Not conceited (arrogant or inflated with pride) (v.5). Love is not rude which I love because there are so many rude Christians. If we can’t do anything else the least we can do is try to practice some good manners such as “please… thank you…. Excuse me… I’m sorry” and “No, you go first.”
I wonder what would happen in our marriages if we practice better manners. It’s amazing how nice we’ll act with someone we want to impress or want to do us a favor, such as a boss who could give us a good raise, compared to the way we treat our spouse behind closed doors.
To our boss we might say “can I get you a glass of water? I’d be happy to serve you.” But to our spouse who asks “honey would you get me a glass of water” we are likely to say “Get your own water! What do you think I am, your slave?”
Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful…(v.5.). This is a real favorite of mine because it’s just really uncomfortable to be around touchy people. I don’t enjoy relationships where I feel like I have to walk on eggshells all the time because every other thing I say is going to make them mad or hurt their feelings or be misunderstood.
I think all of us have been touchy at times in our life. But we can decide not to be hard to get along with and be the kind of person other people like spending time with. We don’t have to be the type of person other’s dread being around.
Love takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]. Love doesn’t keep records of wrongs, which I think is one of our biggest problems. If someone does one little wrong, we store it up and add all the other little wrongs to it. We develop a “you owe me” type mentality, and each time we feel like we’ve been mistreated we think, You owe me. You owe me. Now you REALLY owe me.
But God’s mercy is new every day. His way is to start every day with a clean slate. We need to ask ourselves if we have slates we need to wipe clean. When we do, it not only blesses the people we’re in a relationship with, but it also takes unbelievable pressure off is. Storing wrongs, keeping a record, and holding things against people probably causes people to be sick in their bodies and emotions.
Love takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong].
It doesn’t not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail (v. 5,6). Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening] (v.7). In other words, love puts up with anything and never gives up.
Identifying Love
How do I know my husband Dave loves me? I know because he didn’t give up on my in the rough years. Love is seen in our actions and our attitudes, meaning it doesn’t pout and make faces when it doesn’t get its own way. Now it doesn’t mean we never stand firm to get some things we’d like to have, it also doesn’t mean we always have to be the one to give in, but we do need to learn to give to other people. One of the ways we can give to other people is by letting them do what they like instead of always insisting everyone does what we like to do.
Love prefers other people. We can do this by allowing other people to go first or have the last or best of something, like the last sale item in the store or the last piece of candy in the box.
Choosing Love
If we want to know what love looks like we have to look at God because 1 John 4:8 says God is love. We then need to look at Jesus as ut example because He is a perfect representation of God. Jesus said in John 14:9 …. Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father… to see what love looks like, we need to look at how Jesus lived, how He handled Himself in situations with people, how He acted when people came against Him, and how He behaved during trials. To imitate God we need to look at Jesus.
We’re not doing things to be thanked or appreciated by people, but rather because it’s God’s principle. It’s important for us to remember that our reward comes from God. We need to keep in the forefront of our thinking, God I’m living for You. We don’t love just when we feel like it, because love is not a feeling. Love is a decision we make. It’s seen when we treat people the way God has instructed us to treat them, whether we feel like it or not. There’s no doubt it’s easier to love when we feel like it, but even when we don’t we’re not relieved of our responsibility.
Colossians 3:12 encourages us to clothe yourselves therefore as God’s chosen ones (His own picked out representatives} and verse 14 instructs to… [put on] love… like clothing we put on love. Love is a behavior we choose to operate in because God has told us to do it. And when we do it we are honoring and glorifying Him.
Meyer, Joyce. "What Does Love Really Look Like." Enjoying Everyday Life (2009): 4-7.
[Any typographical errors you may find are not a representation of Joyce Meyer or Joyce Meyer Ministries, as this was hand typed by me from an article in her Enjoying Everyday Life magazine.]
xposted!