[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], January 2021]
The movies tell us that love is a feeling worth giving up everything for, but what happens when the feelings die? Is love just a feeling or is it much more than that?
Would you say you are a romantic? Maybe you’re the sort of person that loves those romantic movies – you know the ones, they all seem to be the same. You have two unlikely people who come together and fall in love and, despite what the world throws at them, and usually despite some sort of misunderstanding, the feelings of love overcomes all and by the end of the film they’re together because the love, that feeling of love is worth more than anything else. It’s worth more than anything the world could possibly offer as an alternative.
[00:58] Maybe you’ve experienced that kind of love. Maybe you are experiencing that kind of love, that kind of heady feeling, that madness when your love for the other person is more important than anything else. You just can’t think of anything else but, whereas in those films the film ends at the moment when the love is fully realized, in life life carries on and we live our lives. We get married, we carry on and the habits of life get in the way, the routines of life, and maybe that feeling of love starts to fade away. Maybe you wake up one morning, you think ‘do I even love that person any more?’ and unfortunately those feelings of love can be replaced with feelings of annoyance and even anger. Perhaps that’s why so many marriages fail. It makes you question the wisdom of marriage and monogamy.
[02:22] Now the Bible says that God is love. If you wanted to define God with one word then that word would be ‘love’ and we as human beings know love because we’re children of God, because we are made in the image of God. But if love is fickle and temporary then what does that say about God and what does that say about us?
[02:53] When I was growing up one of my favourite bands was “Massive Attack”. In one of their songs the lyrics went ‘Love is a verb, love is a doing word’ and maybe that one sentence gives us a clue. It gives us an understanding of why we’ve got love so wrong in our movies and unfortunately in our lives as well. That love is about action, it’s about doing things, it’s about demonstrating our love, and I don’t mean that by buying flowers or a box of chocolates. I mean love is truly love when it is enacted, when it is experienced beyond a feeling, when you do something for someone even when you don’t want to, even when you don’t feel like it, even when it makes things hard, because actually you recognize that love is about doing. It’s about action, it’s about demonstration. It isn’t about feelings.
[04:17] I believe that’s what Jesus demonstrated in his life and his ministry, love in action, and I think that says something really important about God. God isn’t fickle, God isn’t temporary. Actually God is permanent, God is unchanging and God loves us beyond anything that we could possibly earn ourselves. In fact the Bible says that God demonstrated his love for us by sending Jesus to the cross himself, sacrificed for those he loved. That’s a real challenge I think to us, particularly as when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment is he said “well it’s basically love God, love others and love ourselves”. Not a fickle and temporary love but a love demonstrated by what we do.
Well, thank you so much for watching this midweek message. Do subscribe to our YouTube channel and do share it on Facebook. That would be really appreciated.
Just to say that our midweek messages are linked to our Sunday sermons and you can actually access those on our Horley Baptist YouTube channel. We’re actually finishing our series ‘living like Jesus’ this coming Sunday and we’re going to try something new on Sunday evening at 8pm on Facebook on the Horley Baptist Church Facebook page. We’re going to have a live discussion with Chris Tilling from St Mellitus college and Daz Jones from Horley Baptist Church about the sermon series, about those things that we’ve learned, those things that have challenged us, and we’re just going to take things a little bit deeper so do join us for that. Do watch live at 8pm on Sunday the 31st of January, that’s this coming Sunday.
Thank you for tuning in and do remember to subscribe. ’bye
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[1] YouTube link: Is Love Just a Feeling?
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Contributed by Martin Shorey; © the Author
