So Loved

Love can be a very difficult thing to define and understand. We love pizza, we love our spouse, and we love Jesus. All love, all very different, but similar in certain ways. I "love" how Paul defines love in 1 Corinthians, he gives us some true qualifications of what true love looks like, how it operates, what it is, as well as some things it's not.

From an immature perspective, we may misunderstand love as always getting along, or as a higher level of "Like" or as doing anything and everything we can to make another person happy or at least actively helping them to avoid any pain or difficulty, no matter how warranted it may be. While these things may be part of love, they are not the all inclusive ingredients of what deeper love actually consists of.

At its fuller and deeper levels real love will lead us to painful confrontations with someone we love, who is ensnared in sin or hard heartedness because true love finds no joy in unrighteousness. Real love can lead us to stepping aside and stop protecting or enabling someone who is headed for destruction. True love forces us to allow the true, difficult and sometimes ugly circumstances of life to have their full effect on those we cherish most. Love also keeps us by their side through those hard times. Love also pushes us to have patients with them and with ourselves as we face the failures and droughts in our lives and relationships.

At its deepest level, love doesn't hold on to offenses or wrongdoings, love throws away the record book of offenses and wrongs, love forgives, love gives the benefit of the doubt, love trusts, and love doesn't end.

When we say you are SO LOVED at Unhindered Church, understand that it comes from a place of wanting the very best for you, God's best for you, sometimes that's a warm and fuzzy feel good thing, and sometimes it means allowing people to face some uncomfortable issues.

True love does everything it can to stop a person from walking off the cliff, false love rubs their back and tells them everything is okay, as they take the last step off the edge.

You are #soloved