What's love got to do with it? part2

Previously I touch on the two elements that effect our emotions and ultimately define how we engage each other. Those two powerful forces are lust and love. We must be careful to understand them both and how they effect the climate and condition of our relationships. We must view love and lust as two different people with different personalities and characteristics. Their motives are different. Love desires to give and lust desires to take. Love thinks of you and your greater well being. Lust thinks only of itself and it's own desires with no regard for what you may need or want. As you can see we can really clear the confusion around lust and love when closely examine who they are and how they operate.

The character and nature of love and lust will never change. I 'm centering my discussions around the character and nature of love based on IICorithians Chapter 13.
I believe in many cases we have misunderstood and demonstrated a nature in relationships that hasn't reflected love that was healthy and balanced due to great levels of selfishness. Selfishness isn't a characteristic of love. It reflects the nature of lust that only seeks to take and not give. It seeks to expose and not protect. it's this misconception that I seek to challenge.

Most people attribute love to a feeling. In fact we do feel love but it's not a feeling. I believe love is a "NATURE" that we decide to commit to in our mind and soul before it becomes enamored in emotions.

Nature
1: The essential qualities or characteristics by which something is recognized; "it is the nature of fire to burn"; "the true nature of jealousy"

2: The emotional and intellectual attributes that determine a person's characteristic, actions and reactions; "it is his nature to help others"


Lust and love have two different natures. We either commit to the nature of love or commit to the nature of lust in our relationships. Love and lust contradicts each other by the nature in which they act and respond. There motives are different. They are what they are. In your relationships stop looking for what not there imagining that it's there. Judge what nature is consistently presenting itself to you and call it what it is. We must stop calling lust love.

Finally we must examine ourselves and determine whether we are truly demonstrating the nature of love or demonstrating the nature of lust. Before we tell some one we love them we must know and understand the nature we are committing ourselves to demonstrating. Love is not about just describing how we feel it's about deciding how we are committed to care, act and respond consistently toward a person place or thing.


I don't know what it takes for each individual to make that decision but it's from that decision that love establishes it's place in our heart. When we classify love as a feeling it gives off the impression that love is subject to change and that's not true in my opinion. I believe that love is a nature that we commit to beyond how we feel. IICorithians Chapter 13 states:
Love is patient,
love is kind,
love does not envy,
(love does) not boast,
(love is) not proud,
(love is) not disgraceful,
(love does) not desire its own (way),
(love is) not provoked,
(love does) not reckon the wrong,
(love does) not rejoice at unrighteousness but
(love) rejoices with the truth:
(love) bears all things,
(love) believes all things,
(love) hopes all things,
(love) endures all things.

The only thing that's subject to change based on it's nature is lust. we cant mix the nature of love with the nature of lust. It's from this place that I desire to see change.

Think on these things...........................

Eric T. Little
aka "Twin"