The Power of Love - 12 November 2007

This week’s Devotionals are based on the theme of love. In my humble opinion, this is one of the most often written about subjects, particularly when it comes to songs, and often the most misunderstood. I did think about trying to get as many song titles including the word ‘love’ into this weeks devotionals, all I can say is that the editors pen still works!!

Where shall I start? As all good preachers would, go back to the origins of the word. The English language has a simple 4 letter word to describe a huge subject with various different meanings. The Greeks had 3 main words for it, each having a different meaning – ‘eros’ being sexual love, ‘philia’ being love for fellow man and ‘agape’ being friendship. We however have to cope with just the following – ‘love’, and that’s were some of our problems start – misinterpretation.

What is love? 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 is a well known passage that I have heard at many weddings and is one that I don’t tire of hearing. I am constantly amazed by the unconditionality of love, and that is one of the traps that we as humans fall into. Too often, we fall into the ‘if…then’ scenario where love is made a conditional thing. God gives an excellent demonstration of love by sending Jesus to save us – knowing that he was going to pay the ultimate price.

So to the power of love. A true fact – in 1985, there were 3 songs in the top 40 at the same time all called the ‘Power of Love’. None actually addresses the point I am going to make though. The real power of love is that it has the ability to overcome all things. That to me is a pretty strong statement, one usually expects there to be caveats and get out clauses, but taking the statement as it’s written there are none. And that’s what I find difficult at times. The world imposes on us a set of conditions for most things that we do and in turn we do the same back. Here, if we are to love as instructed, then that doesn’t apply.

Today, as you are going round doing your Monday stuff, think about the effort required to love on an unconditional basis. I tried to do this as I was writing these words whilst being interrupted, prodded and poked, and I found myself in the ‘if……then’ scenario. If I love my children unconditionally, then giving them toast to make them go away isn’t demonstrating that.

Have a great day, because God loves you, unconditionally!