Love is a Choice
Practice loving others in practical ways in our daily online chat room.
“… That you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Deuteronomy 30:20
Love is a choice and a commitment. You choose to love or you choose not to love.
Today we’ve bought into this myth that love is uncontrollable, that it’s something that just happens to us; it’s not something we control. In fact, even the language we use implies the uncontrollability of love. We say, “I fell in love,” as if love is some kind of a ditch. It’s like I’m walking along one day and bam! – I fell in love. I couldn’t help myself.
But I have to tell you the truth – that’s not love. Love doesn’t just happen to you. Love is a choice and it represents a commitment.
There’s no doubt about it, attraction is uncontrollable and arousal is uncontrollable. But attraction and arousal are not love. They can lead to love, but they are not love. Love is a choice.
You must choose to love God; he won’t force you to love him (Deuteronomy 30:20). You can thumb your nose at God and go a totally different way. You can destroy your life if you choose to do that. God still won’t force you to love him. Because he knows love can’t be forced.
And this same principle is true about your relationships: you can choose to love others, but God won’t force you to love anyone.
Question: Is there someone in your life whom is difficult to love (annoying, foolish, immoral, etc)? Can you choose to demonstrate God’s love by choosing to love them yourself?
I LOVE God with all of me. Love use to be difficult in my home, as it was there, but not always, as we were different people but still a family. I love my Granny very much, as she was my budy amd cushion to fall on when needed. Now that they are all gone to heaven. My total love goes to God=100% I have surrended all of me to Him, becasue I love Him. I love my brothers and sister too! Love to me is very important as I need to be love too!
Well said Tamara
Rolando, you can choose to love her in a different way by leaving her along and promoting what is best for her in the eyes of God; her marriage. You can love her as a sister in Christ and hope that she learns what true love is. It is very hard. Those initial feelings seems so real and all encompassing and the media bombards us with the notion that if those initial, lustful feelings are gone that you’re wrong for staying in the relationship. I love my husband very much and every once in a while I go through this crisis and I talk to him about it immediately. He always says, “The movies usually show what happens UP to the wedding, or UP until when they fall in love. It doesn’t show you the sweaty, mean, farty, in-debt, annoying, lazy, fat, fighting reality that every couple faces afterwards. You want magic, you have to make it, despite all of that.” We work really hard at making that magic. My husband is my best friend. Our love goes through cycles but its there and very strong.
Well, actually I don’t have to give a definition of love because the Bible does that for me in 1 Corinthians 13. However, to boil it down, I’d define love as the willful choice to put someone’s best interests over your own. Love is a choice, not a feeling.
So Richard, you would define true love as submission to God’s will? I guess that means we need to love in a way that is consistent with what we find in the Bible, right? What do you see are some of the essentials of what the Bible presents as true love?
Freedom is submission to the will of God and “falling in love” with someone outside your or their marriage is definitely wrong. (check out the Ten Commandments) I do not know who Ross and Rachel are but TV is generally not Biblically inspired. Therefore, where TV conflict with the scriptures the Bible is always correct.
I am glad to hear your lack of cheering Tom :) Yet I think we live in a culture that often does cheer for that as love. Obviously you define ‘love’ differently from the prevailing culture . How would you characterize what ‘true love’ is?
Jamie–I certainly would NOT cheer for a man who “freed” a woman from her “restrictive” relationship. If I’m understanding you correctly, that would be cheering for adultery. That’s not love–that’s lust.
Wow Richard. That is a tough call to make. That is not the way that love is promoted in our culture. In a movie or TV show wouldn’t we cheer for the man who freed the woman from the bonds of a restrictive monogamous relationship and allowed her to expereince ‘true love’ with himself? Didn’t that happen on ‘Friends’ a bunch of times with Ross and Rachel? (okay maybe it wasn’t always with a married couple but sometimes I think it was) And yet you would call that selfish. It seems you have a different definition of love. How would you characterize ‘true love’?
Rolando. Love is more concerned with the happiness and success of the one they love than they are with their own situations. You cannot love another man’s wife as she is not apart of your life. She may be a fantasy that you have developed but if you indeed loved her then you would want her marriage to succeed. However, as you are emotionally involved the very best thing you can do for her is to bow out and leave her alone. To do less than this is selfishness rather than love.
Rolando:
This is a case where you choose NOT to love (at least in any way other than a general love for all people.) While you can have little say in whether a person loves you (unless you’re going out of the way to entice them to love you), you have every say in whether you will return that love–particularly when it is a love that would a sin before God.
How about if the person who loves you is already married. How can you choose to love her?