Love, Faith, and Courage

What is Love? It isn't just some nice feeling you get when you think about someone. It's not just some meaningless emotion that has been labeled to be something special by misguided people. There's a reason that it's been projected this way, and that's because Satan doesn't want real, true love to be seen or understood in any way. He wants us to keep living a lie that we believe to be truth so that we never harness a power that is infinitely greater than his. Real love is so much stronger than anything he could ever do. However, there are also so many different kinds. It's something that's hard to understand unless you look it up in say... Hebrew. Because the English language decided it would smash all the meanings down into one word. Yeah, how helpful is that? It makes things incredibly confusing sometimes, wouldn't you say? I won't even pretend to understand all of it, I'm still quite young, and I don't think anyone will ever understand everything there is to know, or even know everything there is to know. Why? Because there is one person who IS Love. But He is infinite, which makes it just slightly hard to learn everything there is to learn, since of course He never, ever, ever ends. However, here is what I do know. Love isn't something that just goes away. But it's not something that just stays either. You have to build it and take care of it, or it will fade. But it's strong enough to last through testing and trials. Love is stronger than anything, but like everything else we have to choose it over fear. Something that I have observed, experienced, and been taught by some very good people is that love and fear can't exist in the same place. If you trace back something that happened in your relationship with someone, anyone, and it ended badly or the relationship was never what it should have been, almost always it can be traced back to some kind of fear. Love pushes out fear, but fear also pushes out love. You have to choose which side to stay on. That is where courage comes in. Even if you are afraid, you can choose to move with love and courage, to beat fear and force it to leave. If you think about it, faith is similar to courage in that way. Faith isn't the total absence of any doubt. Because there will always be some measure of doubt in your mind at some point, just as there will be some measure of fear at some point. So how can you have great faith? By trusting. By choosing to trust in God, who is Love, and to move forward in what he has planned. Just recently I gave a drawing to someone with a note written on the back. I didn't hardly know the person at all, didn't know what was going on with them, and had written the note and done the drawing before I ever talked to them. But for some reason I felt that they needed it. I had doubt, but I trusted what God was asking me to do and gave it to her. Just from the reaction on her face I could tell she needed it. But even doubt is back to fear. Fear that you may be wrong, or that something bad will happen, or that nothing will happen. Courage and faith go hand in hand with Love. You can't have any of them without the others. Isn't that perfect though? Three things that cannot be separated, just as God is a trinity, and while can be addressed in three different ways, cannot be separated from any of the others, because He is a three part being. So to get the fullness of Him you need all three, just as to get the fullness of Love you need all three.
     That bunny trailed off in a direction I wasn't planning on, but getting back to the main point; love is something that needs to be practiced, built up, and strengthened. We need to learn how to love everyone despite things that they have done or are doing. That doesn't mean you have to just roll over and ignore the problem. Help them see the problem and try to fix it if they're willing. You can still love someone without doing anything to help them except that. Loving them. But it comes from a place of trusting God, having the courage to do what's best for everyone, and most of all listening to what God has to say, not only about someone else, but about yourself. If you don't listen to how He loves you, you will never be able to learn how to love yourself, and then others. Loving yourself isn't being a arrogant jerk. It's understanding who you are and who you were made to be, and not condemning yourself for things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the future. It's not any easy thing, but it can happen. So my advice is to listen to God and learn how to love and how to be a whole, full person in Him.

I hope you found this post interesting or helpful, but more than anything I hope it made sense.
~SoR