What’s Love Got to Do with It?
My apologies to the legendary Tina Turner, but I have to respectfully disagree with her. Contrary to her lyrics and today’s popular thought, love is not a secondary emotion. The weeping prophet, Jeremiah, reminds God’s people of how God appeared once and said, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.” (Jeremiah 31:3) Therefore, in fact, love has everything to do with it. Love cannot be compromised to appease secular standards that reduce it to mere fleeting emotions. God’s love is perfect and unfailing because God is love. He is the GOAT, without rival or equal. Whatever “it” is in any given predicament, love or its absence can be found at the core. Love or hate drives us, whether or not we can admit it. It was because of love’s compulsion to compassion that Jesus abandoned heavenly comfort to suffer the penalty for our sin, so that through him God would sign our adoption papers as His newly minted children.
We are naturally drawn to pursue fleshly wants. However, often enough those aims or the thinking that under-girds and propels them oppose the heart and mind of God. Treating feelings as guaranteed facts can spark a hurricane of disobedience. It is easy to begin saying and doing what will only hurt us and others. It is easy to begin finding yourself in locations that you have no business at with people who prefer seeing you hurt over healed. Again, Jeremiah is helpful. He said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) Below are a few common situations that illustrate this:
“The man I am in a relationship with is not a Christian, but I love him, and he is a good person, so what is the big deal?”
“She lied on me and slandered my name; God understands that I cannot forgive her.”
“I didn’t tell the truth because I did not want to hurt her feelings.”
Jeremiah 17:9 hits home for me in a special way because I am highly emotional, at times reacting according to limited vision and understanding in ways that do not prioritize truth according to the Word of God. As elusive and volatile as they can be, feelings are persistent if nothing else and worshiping them is not out of the question without enforcing solid safeguards. It is critical that Christians choose a posture of regularly measuring how we think, live, and feel against what God has said. This does not mean negating our emotions, just that we keep them in check to where they do not necessarily get the final say. In inviting the Holy Spirit to search our heart, God will begin to de-tangle the cynical attitudes and harmful ideas that hinder us from returning to God a heart of devotion, earnestly striving to give Him our full selves. Love and truth cannot be divided. Love absent truth is a deceit and not truth at all—it is hate. In ditching love, we gaslight ourselves into being seduced by lust, caught-up with missionary dating projects or confusing loyalty for codependency.
Whether you are into celebrating Valentine’s Day and all its sappy commercialization or you avoid it altogether, I pray you will run to God’s absolute love by examining the state of your own heart when held up to the demands of Scripture. It is only then that you can unearth the painful roots of your sin. In recognizing our disorders, we can start the journey toward becoming more like the Lord today than we were yesterday. It is a process that starts with you and I being real with God, ourselves, and trustworthy fellow believers about our deepest struggles. To treasure God’s love and love others well requires surrender. “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.” (Proverbs 14:12)