Today’s devotion is based on Week 1 of “Tough Love”: Sets boundaries! (WATCH HERE)
Love is tough.
It’s just hard to love. It is.
For many different reasons.
- It’s not always easy to know what love looks like.
- I am naturally more selfish than loving.
- Definitions and messages of love from our culture are confusing.
- Love gets defined by movies and Hollywood.
- Love sometimes means saying “no” to someone or something.
Love is tough. It just is.
With Valentine’s Day at the center of the month of February, our message and devotion series is going to explore different aspects of love what makes it tough as well as what tough love looks like when we properly apply it.
But let’s start where love starts: In the heart of God.
Love can only and must be defined by God…no one else. Only when we embrace and embody the love of God can we properly love others. Culture skews love. Human love is flawed because of sin and a perfect example can’t be found.
Except in God’s love.
Here are three Scriptures that help define what love is…from God’s perspective and application.
- Love is sacrificial, defined by the sacrifice Jesus made for us…even though we didn’t earn or deserve it.
1 John 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
- Love is selfless, not selfish.
1 Corinthians 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
- Love models the love Christ has shown to us.
Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
This is the only love that can fill us and enable us to love others even when it’s tough. When we see Jesus loving us when we make it difficult, or giving us guidance and boundaries even when we don’t want them, we understand that love is tough and we need tough love.
The ability to do both in our lives rests firmly in the love that God has shown to us.
Apply: What makes love tough for you?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for loving me, even when it’s tough and for showing tough love when I need it most. Both are a gift from you to bless me and enable me to be a blessing to others. AMEN.