Fruits and Values Series #1: Love

I know I have written a few posts on this topic love as I entered some contests before this. When I saw this #lovechallenge by @thelovejunkie whom I adore her series, I hesitated if I should join because my readers would probably be tired of my lovey-dovey posts. Hahaha I was prompted to start a series of Fruits and Values that we can learn in life and through life in this order: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. So the first post will be about love anyway. 😜💝

I have written a quite elaborate post about love here, which I intend to summarize what love means to me in some bullet points and quotes perhaps.

What Love Means to Me

• Love is a need that can only fulfil me by having God's love and His Very Person, hence God is Love and Love is God. Love is to be given and to be received. I learnt to love and receive love through Him and having Him.

• Love is laying down our own lives for someone who matters to us. I am amazed at how I'm "powered up" to love my son, beyond my means, beyond my natural temperament, beyond my limits too sometimes.
  

  

• Love perseveres through difficult times. Even if we walk through tense situations, we don't give up on the person we love.

• Love is still doing good when we are hurt. We still can love when we are disappointed, or wronged. Love is more powerful than hurts.

• Love is doing crazy and embarrassing things even when our natural selves may not feel comfortable doing it. You may check out here on what I did for my husband this Valentine's Day.
  

  

• Love is an action of forgiveness and overlooking wrongs, giving second chances and let a relationship be restored in its own timing. On the other hand, when one is at fault, love is the willingness to face up with hurts and admitting wrongs. It takes the first step to say sorry and move towards restoration even if the feeling doesn't feel like it. Love is greater than offense.

• Love is the very solution for fear. In love, fear diminishes. Sometimes, we do not act the best we are because there is fear. When there is fear, it means also that we aren't complete in love. Whenever I'm scared of something, I let God's love immerse me and I allow myself to be loved. If we find ourselves can't love or be loved well, it is perhaps time to check if there is a fear present.

• Love is also trusting another person more than ourselves, at times. We allow ourselves to be corrected in humility. Love means accepting another person as who he/she is, seeing his/her full potential and yet not just blindly allowing himself/herself to just be himself/herself. You find this confusing and contradicting? Haha. This is because there are so many quotes such as Be yourself, Don't live to please others, just be yourself nowadays that everyone just want to be individualistic and use it as a coverline to not consider others, wanting other to just them be 'who they are', not knowing they can really be better and they are more than what they perceived. This is a very common scenario in the youngsters in our era. (Hopefully I can find the articulation to expound on this one day!)

• Love is putting our selves in another person's shoes. Love is not selfish but considerate. Love doesn't treat others the way we don't want to be treated. It can be sensitive to others' feelings.

• Love is practical though abstract. It can also think on how another person would receive love the best. This would be the famous five love languages.

• Love is thinking and looking at a far bigger picture to carry out necessary actions even if we are to be misunderstood.

• Love may look fierce sometimes when it is really zealous for a cause.

• Love is more than a feeling and it is sometimes not dictated by feelings at all, but for the good of all.

• Love is no separation even if our own minds try to "separate" ourselves. You know sometimes we can think it is better to let someone live without us and we ourselves try to 'separate' from them. Love is greater than such separation too.

With that, I would end with a quote/verse from the Good Book:

Who could ever separate us from the endless love of God’s Anointed One? Absolutely no one! For nothing in the universe has the power to diminish his love toward us. Troubles, pressures, and problems are unable to come between us and heaven’s love. What about persecutions, deprivations, dangers, and death threats? No, for they are all impotent to hinder omnipotent love, Yet even in the midst of all these things, we triumph over them all, for God has made us to be more than conquerors, and his demonstrated love is our glorious victory over everything! ~Romans 8:35,37 TPT

Thank you so much for reading!! Each and everyone of us will continue to learn about love as we live. It is something which we can't avoid or run away. Love pursues, chases us and overtakes us! 💓

If you wish to read more posts about love that I have written earlier:

• #sevendaysoflove Challenge Day Seven: Love is a Need

• #sevendaysoflove Challenge Day 5: A Story About My Spouse AND Best Friend

• #sevendaysoflove Challenge: A Beloved Child

• A Bouquet for My Beloved