Are You in Love with Love?

Have you ever been in love with love? It is driven by a deep desire to love and be loved but somehow gets twisted in the process of seeking after that love. Let me explain. Being in love with love is an obsession of being with someone, anyone, just so you are no longer single and feel a sense of being loved.

Now that we are in the peak of the holiday season, I’m wondering how many singles are being bombarded with the desire to simply be in a relationship. There is nothing wrong with this desire, but it is what we do with it that matters. Christmas time and celebrating the New Year can elicit joy and cheer, but if we’re not careful what we focus on, it can also move us into a place of sadness, self-pity, and discontentment.

The question is how will we deal with the tension of having a desire that goes unmet? Will we throw away our trust in God and try to make something happen in our own strength? Or will we trust and obey the One who knows best and is working for our best interests? Will we focus on how almost everyone around us seems to be happily in a romantic relationship and with constant companionship with another person while we don’t, or will we focus on the best gift of the season? That is - God’s Presence brought to us through the miraculous birth of His Son, Jesus, who never leaves us or forsakes us.

We have a choice to make about what we will allow to influence our thoughts this holiday season. Will we embrace our True Love or will we settle for the empty obsession over the idea of “love”?

Let’s explore the difference between being in love with love and embracing true love.

This is how I define being in love with love:

• Being in love with love drives you to settle for less than God’s best.
• Being in love with love is an obsession and passion for the feelings of falling in love.
• Being in love with love pushes you to do anything and pay any cost to have the exhilarating feelings of being desired.
• Being in love with love makes you blind. You see no one but yourself and what you want. In other words, it constrains you to selfishness.
• Being in love with love pushes you to look toward a shiny object or another person that “promises” a quick fix to the problems you’re facing and look away from the True Love right in front of you. In the end though, embracing these quick fixes leaves you feeling empty.
• Being in love with love is a lust for something, not a true love for someone.
• Being in love with love is idolatry.

I’m here to tell you that being in love with love is a sure way to fall into a swirling trap of discontentment.  The start of the journey might be fun and exhilarating at first, but then all of the sudden you realize you’ve traded one problem for another, and you find yourself stuck again. I’ve been there before, and it is not fun. The game changer for me was when Jesus captured my full attention. The fullness of His love led me to repentance. Acceptance, peace, joy, and a deep awareness of being loved simply for being me ensued. This gift is for all of us if we desire it!

How can we have this innate desire of loving and being loved met in the midst of singleness and not let it get twisted in the process? It helps to know what love is. What does true love look like? Scripture gives us a pretty clear picture of what love is.

“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”  Ephesians 2:4-7

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

These are just a few scriptures that capture the true fragrance of love. If you want to know more about what true love is, you can do a word study on love in the Bible.

Now that we’ve taken a brief look at love in the scriptures, let’s look at the One who loves us. Yahweh/Jehovah means Lord and was first spoken to Moses “I AM who I AM” (Exodus 3:14). This name denotes immediacy and a presence. Yahweh is present, accessible, and near to those who call on Him for deliverance. What an encouragement! When we’re feeling lonely, we can just call on I AM. He is already with us, but as we call on His name, we come into agreement that He is indeed immediately accessible and present. It opens up the way to encounter God in a whole new way.

While reading an Advent devotional from Celebrate Jesus, I came across another wonderful name of God: “Jesus’ name in Hebrew is Yeshua (or Y’hoshua) which means “Yahweh is Salvation, Restoration, and Deliverance, or “God saves, restores, and delivers.” That is exactly what God did when He sent Jesus to be born of the Virgin Mary: he came to save us, deliver us, to rescue and restore us!”

There’s HOPE! No one is perfect, and we don’t always make the best decisions. Do we embody all of the descriptions of love in the scriptures above all of the time? Probably not. It is my heart’s desire to do so though. The good news is that God does embody the purest truest form of love as described in these scriptures. Praise God that He is so patient, gracious and willing at any point that we decide to look to Him to deliver us and move us back onto His good path that He has designed for us. I love that He doesn’t balk at our mistakes, rather he lovingly pursues us and rejoices when we come running into His arms! Then He moves us forth into the glorious way that leads to everlasting life.

I believe the key is found in 1 John 4:19, “We love because he (God) first loved us.” The way we discover true love is by both understanding and experiencing God’s love for us. We can only love because God first loved us. How do we understand and experience God’s love? We spend time with Him and His love letter to us – the Bible.  Yahweh, the great I AM, is near and accessible awaiting us to call on Him to encounter us with His love. 

Jesus is enough. God is trustworthy. The Holy Spirit is a wonderful guide.

My friends, God’s love doesn’t disappoint. It might look different than what we had pictured in our minds or what the world defines as love, but it is infinitely better than anything we can think or imagine. As we behold the One who embodies true love, we will become more like Him daily and will be filled with His perfect love. If we keep our gaze on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, our desire to be loved will be met even in singleness. God is knocking on the door of your heart. Will you let Him in and drink in His complete love for you this holiday season?