Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, a day for all to celebrate the wonderful characteristic of love.  I started to say, the emotion of love but love is so much more than just an emotion.  Of course, the scriptures tell us that God is love.  What is love to you?  My mind quickly goes to the love chapter in I Corinthians 13.  A modern day re-writing of that chapter would sound something like the following.  Love is exotic.  Love is chemistry.  Love is attraction.  Love is you making me happy.  Love is something that just hits you out of the blue with the right person.

As a young girl I absolutely believed the things I just wrote.  I sat on my bed daydreaming that Prince Charming would come into my life and sweep me off of my feet and we would live happily ever after.   A hopeless romantic would be the best way to describe me as a teenager and young adult.  Tim loves to interject here, “And he did!”  But if you know our story, you know that was not my opinion of our beginnings.

We learned over the years that love truly is a choice.  Emotions are fickle and they can come and go at the drop of a hat.  We also have an enemy that loves destroying relationships and families.  And we live in a world that says it’s perfectly fine to move from one partner to the next.  If you aren’t happy, find someone else that will make you happy.  The problem that we have seen over and over is that when a relationship ends, many times, they end up in another relationship with the same problems.  But commitment is the most powerful type of love.  Commitment is a choice also and the only thing that will get you through the hard times and trust me, there will be hard times in any relationship.

We enjoyed putting our post on social media of our flowers and romantic events we attended last night.  It would be fun to put a few pictures this morning of a knock down drag out fight.  Because you know what?  That is reality!  Relationships are hard and they can get messy.  But they are so worth it when we stick it out through the hard seasons.  When we share our story in our marriage conferences people have commented more than once that they love our transparency.  Many Christian couples never share the bad times.  But we know it’s important to paint a “real” picture of marriage.  And with God’s empowering, we made it through some very tough times.  And you will too as you relay on Christ in you to be the husband or wife through you.

But love is about a whole lot more than marriage.  We love our family.  We love our friends.  We love our animals.   We need to love ourselves!  We can’t love other’s if we struggle loving ourselves.  And most certainly we need to love God.  I remember when I was in 10th grade telling God,  “I’m sorry but I don’t love you.  Help me to love you.”  First of all we have to know someone to love them.  And we have to see a correct picture of who they really are.  And my concept of God was horribly distorted.  As I asked him to reveal the real God to me, I began to naturally fall in love with my creator.  Do you love Him?  Do you know Him?  If not, ask him to show you who he is and how to be in relationship with him.  He loves you more than you can even imagine.  Don’t waste your life missing out on enjoying that vital relationship.  I honestly don’t know how people get through life without him.