What Is Love?

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.

Psalms 103:8

Hello friends and welcome to Abounding In Love! Though this is the first official part, I have a blog discussing what to expect in this series, so if you missed it, feel free to check it out. If you did catch it, you know we are starting with definitions. That's right, it's time to define words we already know!

We will start with one of two words that are apparent in this series, love. Then, in the next blog, we will define the other, abounding, which is the volume of love that God has for us and that we should try to have. And as always, no matter where the definitions are from, I am going to point them all back to God. Make sure to keep an eye out for the key words in bold as we go, these will come in handy later.

Let's start with the Bible. That's right, one of our definitions comes straight from the Holy book! This upcoming verse answers the question that everyone has asked and that was a hit single by the musician Haddaway in the '90s: "What is LOVE?"

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

1 John 3:16

Although this isn't your typical definition, I would say this fits and I will reveal more reasons why when we dive deeper into this series. Christ dying on the cross was the purest and truest display of love. This is type of love that we can look at when trying to love others. I say 'trying' because, it's sometimes hard to love others. We are a selfish culture who gets angry at the first person who cuts us off in traffic, so love doesn't always come second nature to us. My hope for this series is that we can grasp God's love for us in some small way and rekindle our love for everyone, including our enemies and those who refuse to abide by the traffic laws.

The next definitions come from Google:

• intense feeling of deep affection for someone

• a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person

• a warm personal attachment

• deeply committed and connected to someone or something

All of these things point to God because He loves us so much. He has a profoundly tender, passionate, deep affection for us. He has a warm personal attachment to us that didn't come about because of anything we did. This personal attachment came when He sculpted us, created us - He labored over our creation.

He is so committed that He found a way to be connected to us - though Jesus dying on the cross. Jesus was the way across, bridge, the key.. Some of you might know where this statement is going, but it's not time to unroll such a big ball of yarn yet. It's something that we are going to unroll slowly throughout this series. It is worth savoring little by little.

You would think a word as deep as love would have more definitions, but maybe love isn't as complex as we make it out to be. Maybe love just is. Love is like air, it's all around us. We feel it everyday, pursue it everyday, say it everyday, and show it everyday. This is why I believe we, united as tech filled generations, are so obsessed with likes and little love hearts on social media. Just feeling liked or loved makes us feel fulfilled and if we have God's love, we are fulfilled.

I mentioned in my introductory blog, about this series, the presence of threes that have been popping up. I want to add another set of three today. I believe these three things:

1. I believe humanity was created because of love. God made us in His image knowing that we would fall into sin.

2. Because of that sin, I believe we were saved with love. Jesus died for us.

3. I believe that we have the Holy Spirit because of love. God wanted us to have a guide.

God knew exactly what was going to unfold when He made the first man, but because of His great love, His abounding love, He made us regardless. He looked at everything that was going to happen, all the good, the bad, and the ugly and decided we were worth it. YOU WERE WORTH IT! You, me, that person who cut us off in traffic - Worth it... Next time someone tries to tear you down, you remember this: God's love for you is abounding...

Abounding.. we will define that next time. Until then, smile because you are so unfathomably loved!