In counselling I was given the homework one day to write a list of minimum 40 things of what i believed or thought about relationships, now at first it was easy till i got to about 20, and then i really had to ponder, I thought of past relationships, i thought of my own relationships, my friends and families relationships, romantic ones, friendships, and I was able to come up with more than 40. But the interesting thing was that in my list I had a lot of contradictions, where I would say relationships bring out your true self, and then the next line I wrote relationships are fake. Almost everything I wrote about what I believed about relationships, had the exact opposite thing written. It made me wonder why everything i believed about relationships had the polar opposite, and then the thought is how does that affect me? What do I really believe? Do I believe both things all the time?
When it comes to love we can have the same issue. We can see love as freeing and in the same breath say that it makes us a slave. So which is it? And which is true? Our beliefs and understandings aren't just based on what we may know to be true, that's called head knowledge, where we learn about it, and we know the truth, but then we have heart knowledge which is more controlled by our emotions and the part of our brain trying to protect us. Our heart knowledge is based on what we've experienced. In my relationship list I would write a truth about relationships, and then the fears and things i've learnt from past bad relationships manifested and would say it's truth. Both are accurate, both are things we know to exist but when it comes to love, that is different. Because there isn't good love or bad love. There can be good relationships and bad relationships, there can be healthy and toxic relationships, but love. Love can never be bad. Love can never be toxic. If someone's love for you is being toxic, then it isn't love. It's something else disguising itself as love. One of our missions is life is to understand love, is to truly figure out what love is, and the only way we can love better, and love fully is by seeking God more. Scripture tells us God is love. So it is literally impossible to have toxic love, because God can’t be toxic, therefore love can only actually be love, or be something else. How do we know what love is? Thankfully God didn't want to leave us questioning and searching for answers in all the wrong places so he gave us his word. SCRIPTURE the most underrated guidance manual to go through life. Within scripture you find guidance on friendships, depression, on relationships, we learn who God is, and how to talk to him, we learn how to love him, how to make decisions, what to focus on, what to spend our time doing, how to be kind and humble. It literally tells us all these things but so often we get stuck in reading the same things in scripture. The gospels are beautiful but if you’ve gone to mass, or to a catholic school, you hear the gospels all the time, and you probably know all the stories so it can feel almost daunting to read the bible because you think there is only the same stories you know all the answers to. So I recommend reading the letters from paul. His letters are written to the people of varying areas struggling with living the faith. Sound familiar? Even though it's from hundreds of years ago, the lessons, the struggles are still the same. You know why? Cause we are just as human as they were. ….so back to love. If you’ve ever gone to a wedding you’ve probably heard this bible verse read. Its in 1 Corinthians 13. If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly,[b] but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. There are so many beautiful parts in this scripture that we can deeply dive into. I won't go into everything, but I genuinely recommend praying and meditating on the parts of scripture. When it starts with saying if i speak as of mortals you can think okay whatever not a big deal, but then it says angels, If i speak in tongues of angels, throughout scripture when an angel spoke it was a direct message from God, when an angel spoke like in the book of tobit, they brought wisdom and guidance and assurance. There is so much truth from the words of Angels because they cannot disobey God, they are fully obedient and as such are fully united to God’s will. If they speak without love, their words are noisy gong, or clanging cymbals. Without love, their voices are not only unpleasant, but their message is lost. This first part is setting the tone of how important love is. Without love our message is lost, without love our words mean nothing, and not only that but i would go so far to say our words cause fear, anxiety, chaos. Like when you hear words that are lovely, when you hear music, when you hear truth, it brings peace, it brings clarity, it brings rest. The opposite of that would be chaos, disturbance, stress, anxiety, fear, and doubt. It then goes to say that we can have all the faith, to REMOVE MOUNTAINS. The story of the mustard seed we know that if we have faith to that degree we can move mountains...this is saying if we have faith TO REMOVE A MOUNTAIN. Not move it over, not shift it but REMOVE IT, that's some next level faith. If we have that level of faith but no love I am nothing. Our faithfulness doesn't define us, it doesn't make us someone special, Jesus does. And without love what are we having faith in? We can have faith and that's nice but we have faith in what? In power? In prestige? In wealth? We can have faith in many things that aren't God. So even if we have faith in all these things when we don't have love, our faith is empty, because God is love. For us to better understand this, we have to dive into the reality of God being loved. That love isn't a what, but a who. In 1st John 4: it says 7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. In order to know love, we have to know God. They go hand in hand, and are not separated. Because GOD IS LOVE, so when we love we are expressing God whether we are aware of it or not. When we pray, when we grow closer to God, we are growing closer to love, and in such we are able to love more, we’ll see love, and we’ll know it. When something is familiar we can sense it, we have peace. When we do something over and over and over again we can go into autopilot, where our being just knows what to do, we know what to do, and we know how it's done. The more familiar we are with God, the more close we come to God, the more we prioritize Him, the closer we are to him in our relationship the more we will be able to tell what is love and what isn't. You know when someone is an expert baker. They can look at a cake and tell that they didn't use enough salt or something by how the item sets. They can have one taste and tell what was missing in the ingredients, or what they needed more of. Let's say I went to a souffle tasting, and each souffle was different, one missed something big, one did something wrong in a minor way and one was perfect. The first one didn't rise (this is all I know about souffle) I could look at it and tell something was off, i could taste it and be like mmmm i don't think so, because i was so focused on the apparent way it looked wrong. That's when we have a gut feeling about something not being loving. We can see that isn't right, we can see right away that it's wrong. Then the next two both look perfect. I'd probably have 0 idea something was wrong with the souffle, I would assume it was perfect. Even after taking a bite, without knowing what a souffle should taste like, I'd have no idea that anything was wrong...I'd also have no idea that it could be better. That’s what love is like, when we aren't familiar with love, when we don't receive love as God desires us to at a young age, we settle for whatever we think love is like. We settle for what we think love is, not knowing how far away from love we are. The closer we are to God, the more united we are to Christ, the more we pray, the more we focus on God, the more we let God into our lives the more we will know love. The more we will know what it looks like, and more than that we will know when it's true, beyond the appearance. The heart of it will ring true to us. We will be able to taste a possibility of love and realize that it's missing things. That it isn't right, although it looks perfect it's missing fullness. God is the perfect souffle. Lol Only God will perfectly be able to love us. I say this because going back to the verse in 1st Corinthians, Many people will put someone they’re dating into the verse, like instead of saying love is patient, they will say Mark is patient, Claire is kind. Which is a nice sentiment, but the reality is that no one will ever be able to be all these things in every moment. We can't, because then we'd be God, but we will know when someone strives for it, when someone pursues loving you, as God does we will be able to know that it's true. It's easy for us to put someone else's name in the list of what love is, but what if your name was there? Are you patient? Not just with some people but with everyone? Are you kind to people you dislike? To people that have hurt you? We need to accept our humanity so we can better embrace God's divinity. As i said we have hurts from our past, what we think love is may be muddled, and so even the thought that God is love, may be hard to accept because we sometimes put up walls around God, we put barriers between us and God, we project past pains in our life onto God, it's easy to blame him. To help us move past false views of Christ, and love, I'm going to put Jesus’ name in the verse, and I recommend you to do the same. Say Jesus is patient, he is patient with you, and everyone in existence, he is patient with you no matter how many times you fail, no matter how many times you fall, he is patient with you no matter how you respond to him. Jesus is kind. He isn't a dictator, he isn't unjust, he is caring for you in all moments, he is gentle with you. Jesus is not envious or boastful, or arrogant or rude. He humbles himself to be with you, he humbled himself to die for you, taking your sins, taking your punishment. And even in the midst of suffering and pain he never cursed you, he never talks ill of you. Jesus does not insist on His own way; despite all the pain and anguish he feels for us he refuses to take away our free will, he does not take away your choices no matter how much they hurt him, he refuses to over step and so he gracefully accepts the pain you cause him, as time and time again he reaches out to you to guide you and help you, even though time and time again you reject it. Jesus is not irritable or resentful; He does not hold your sins against you, he offers you salvation, he offers you freedom from sins, he offers you a new start time and time again. Never tiring of forgiving you despite the pain he felt for each and every sin. 6 Jesus does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 Jesus bears all things, as he died on the cross for you, for me, he bears the debt of sins, emotionally and physically. And he time and time again will bear all of our heartaches. Jesus believes all things, Jesus hopes all things, He has hopes for you future of life, and love. A future of joy. And he has hope in you, he trusts you. Jesus endures all things. He will endure anything for you, because that's what love is. And He has deemed you worthy. That is love.
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