Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: LOVE (agape and/or phileo) (03/12/15)
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TITLE: What Love Isn't | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jessica Seale
03/18/15 -
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Love: it’s a word everyone is talking about, part of the very fabric of our lives. But what does unconditional love look like? It’s easy to equate love with a feeling, a rush of emotion that excites the passions and promises the world. All too often, though, this kind of love doesn’t last. The Bible tells us about a love far greater than that, a love that keeps going even when we don’t deserve it, a love that enables us to love others even when it seems impossible.
The following story is entirely fiction, and is intended to illustrate what unconditional love isn’t and what it is.
“I love you,” he whispered in her ear, as she lay in his arms. For the moment, she believed him, as his kisses drowned out the doubts in her mind. How could something wrong feel so right? Her confidence in his love lasted a few short months, until the unwanted and inconvenient happened. The love she thought would last through any storm failed her when he learned of the new life inside of her. It was a responsibility he wasn’t willing to take on, and he left her with an ultimatum: “get rid of it, or I walk away.”
She felt empty inside the morning he dropped her off, and even worse when he picked her up hours later. Things were not the same after that. They tried to go on as if nothing had happened, but the illusion had shattered. This love, she discovered was only temporary. It lasted only as long as the fun did, leaving her empty, broken and alone.
“I love you,” He whispered in her heart as she lay alone in the dark, wiping away the one-thousandth tear she had shed that day. She had almost forgotten about this kind stranger she had learned about in Sunday school years ago. As a child, she had listened wide-eyed as she learned about the man who was God, the One who loved her so much that He was born as a baby and died on a cross for her sins. “I don’t deserve you, Jesus,” she whispered in anguish, painfully aware that the life inside of her was gone forever. As she waited in silence, a reassuring love like she had never known seeped into her loved-starved heart. She couldn’t remember the right words to say, but as she dropped to her knees, she showed this loving stranger all the dark and broken places of her heart and asked Him to make her new. She drifted off to sleep with a smile on her face, in awe over the fact the one who loved her more than anyone was no longer a stranger.
The love she had known before was a fleeting, selfish love. The love she found in Jesus was unconditional. Because of it she could truly love others and fulfill the Apostle Paul’s heart cry for the church at Ephesus found in Ephesians 3:14-19.
“ For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (NKJV)
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