As a teacher, the Valentine festivities were rampant yesterday. To add to these festivities, I played a singing bee game with my music students using well known love themed songs. One of the songs I used was Tina Turner’s song, “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” So, it got me thinking what does love have to do with it - ‘it’ meaning life in general? The answer would be everything! Love has to do with everything you do on a daily basis. The reason is this, love is more than a warm fuzzy feeling. Love is an attitude that causes us to act and react to situations differently. Love is a way of living and is very contrary to how we feel like acting most of the time.

The God Kind of Love

The bible beautifully describes in detail what love should look like and act like in 1 Corinthians 13. If you read through it you will notice that it never describes love as a warm fuzzy feeling. In fact, walking in love will make your flesh feel just the opposite. Your flesh will want to scream when it doesn’t get its way. It takes a lot of self-control and discipline to submit your soul (mind, will, and emotions), to your recreated spirit on the inside.

You may be thinking, “I’ve really tried to be patient and kind, but you don’t know what I have to put up with or what circumstance I am in right now.” Your right, I don’t but God does and He knew what and who you would be facing before you did.

Love In Action

Years ago I had a job working as a residential instructor in a home with kids who had severe mental disabilities. The job was challenging in itself, but I also had to help manage the staff as well. To give you a little bit of history, every person in my position before me was run out by this staff - they were plain mean! I would come home in tears not knowing how to remedy the situation. As I prayed to God and dumped my frustration and hurt at His feet, I asked Him what I should do. His response was very clear in my heart - walk in love. You can imagine my feelings to this advice. I whined, “but God, you see how they treat me, do you want me to get run over?” Again He took me to 1 Corinthians13 to remind me of how love was to act. This was one of the hardest things I had ever done. At one point I even had to ask forgiveness from someone who up to this point had made it her goal to make my life a living hell!

A strange thing happened the longer I purposed to walk in love, I started seeing a change in the staff. Well long story short, I watched how God softened the hearts of these individuals and gave me favor with them. Not only that, but walking in love opened doors for me to talk to them about my relationship with God and why I was ‘different.’ They were receptive not because I had the right words to say, but my actions truly spoke louder than any words ever could.

I don’t share this story from my life to gloat or say look what I did, but to show you how walking in God’s commandment of love will help bring those around you to Christ and open the flood gate of favor on your life. The list of blessings that came from that job highly outweighed the awful times.

I challenge you to read 1 Corinthians 13 daily if need be and to act and react to situations the way it outlines for us. Live out of the love that God has already poured into your life.