LOVE

Love is a SLIPPERY word. It means different things to different people. In today’s society the concept of love tends to be a very selfish thing. In that it becomes all about us. That is not the kind of love that God has for us. His… is a very unselfish type of love. He doesn’t love us “if…” or “because…” He simply LOVES us unconditionally. You will find below some of the more useful quotations about this type of love. (Feel free to suggest more and I’ll edit them in later)

Here are some of my favorite write me downs about LOVE:

1. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end. Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, Message Paraphrase)
2. Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being “in love” which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.” (Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. “Love is the beauty of the soul.” —St. Augustine)
3. “To love is to be vulnerable.” (Philip Yancey)
4. “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained” (C.S. Lewis)
5. “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” (C.S. Lewis)
6. “He loved us not because we are lovable, but because He is love.” (C.S. Lewis)
7. “Love is the opener as well as closer of eyes.” (George MacDonald)
8. “Love is a verb.” (Jack Hyles)
9. “Biblical love is not emotions or feelings, but attitudes and actions that seek the best interests of the other person, regardless of how we feel toward him.” (Jerry Bridges)
10. “Love is not a feeling but a determined act of will, which always results in determined acts of self giving. Love is the willing, joyful desire to put the welfare of others above our own.” (John MacArthur)
11. “Beware you are not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.” (John Wesley)
12. “Love is a command, not just a feeling. Somehow, in the romantic world of music and theater we have made love to be what it is not. We have so mixed it with beauty and charm and sensuality and contact that we have robbed it of its higher call of cherishing and nurturing.” (Ravi Zacharias)
13. “After learning to love God, learning to love others is the second purpose of your life.” (Rick Warren)
14. Because God is love, the most important lesson he wants you to learn on earth is how to love. (Rick Warren)
15. “The things that we love tell us what we are.” (Thomas Aquinas)
16. “We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to “like” one another.” (Thomas Merton)
17. “Read the Scripture, not only as a history, but as a love-letter sent to you from God.” (Thomas Watson)
18. The desire of love is to give. The desire of lust is to take.
19. “Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.” (Warren Wiersbe)
20. “God wants us to love Him more than our Isaac.” (Watchman Nee)
21. “God loves us the way we are, but too much to leave us that way” (Leighton Ford)
22. “If you love something set it free… if it comes back to you, it’s your… if it doesn’t it was never meant to be.”
23. “The quickest way to receive love is to give; the fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly; and the best way to keep love is to give it wings” (unknown)
24. “If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you.” (Winnie the Pooh)
25. “Love wasn’t put in your heart to stay. Love isn’t love until you give it away.” (Michael W. Smith)
26. “Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross.” (William Barclay)
27. “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” (Augustine)
28. “What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.” (Augustine)
29. “There is no fear in Love; but perfect love casts out fear. – Bible” (1 John 4:18)
30. “God is love.” (1 John 4:8)
31. “Love is a decision.”
32. “It’s not something you feel… it’s something you do.”
33. “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.” (Chuck Swindoll)
34. “Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.” (Martin Luther King)
35. “If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours… and if they don’t, they never were.”
36. “The love we give away is the only love we keep.” (Elbert Hubbard quotes)
37. “You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.” (Amy Carmichael)
38. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
39. “Love gives life meaning and purpose.” (Joyce Meyer)
40. “Love God and do whatever you like.” (Augustine)