Saying & Doing

It’s Monday, the day after the Super Bowl.

And if you watched the halftime show yesterday, you didn’t just witness a performance. You witnessed a moment that quickly turned into a message. At the conclusion of the show, a billboard appeared with words that have since been everywhere. In headlines. In captions. Across social media feeds.

“The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”

It’s a message people have been gravitating toward, clinging to, repeating. And it makes sense. Hate causes harm. We see that clearly. And love feels like the antidote we’re all longing for in a world that feels fractured and exhausted.

It’s morally appealing and emotionally true.

We are, after all, a people enamored with love.

We sing about it constantly.

There are songs about wanting love, finding love, losing love, fighting for love, and falling back into love. Songs about being loved and songs about longing to be loved.

We love love.

And maybe that’s why the message landed so easily.

We all want love.

But here’s the thing. We also love everything.

We love our families. Our cars. Our jobs. Our favorite dessert. Our favorite artist, athlete, team, or performer. We love our shoes. A good show. A good meal.

And we also say we love God. We love our spouse. We love our friends. We love our children.

We seem to love everything and everyone, except when we don’t.

If love is so close to our lips, something we are so quick to profess, why does it take, at times, so much longer for love to show up in our actions?

That’s where it starts to get complicated.

Jesus said,

“For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” {Matthew 12:34, NKJV}

So if love flows so easily from our mouths, then love must live somewhere in our hearts, right?

And yet Scripture also tells us,

“The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable—who can understand it?” {Jeremiah 17:9, CSB}

Both things are true.

There are many who profess to love Christ with their lips, yet Scripture says their hearts are far from Him {Matthew 15:8, CSB}. And this is where we often get caught, believing that love is simply an emotion. A feeling. A warm, fuzzy thing we can conjure up when the moment calls for it.

But it isn’t.

“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.” {1 Corinthians 13:4–7, CSB}

Love is also the first listed fruit of the Spirit, the soil from which the rest grow.{Galatians 5:22–23, NLT}

And love is of God, because God is love. {1 John 4:7–8, CSB}

Which raises an uncomfortable question: Can people who do not know God truly love?

And how is it that those of us who do know God seem unable to love the way Scripture calls us to?

This feels like the paradox of being both a follower of Jesus and human. Of having the Holy Spirit in us and with us, yet still having free will. Of knowing the truth and still falling short of it. Jesus said,

“Apart from me you can do nothing.” {John 15:5, NIV}

And Scripture reminds us,

“For in him we live and move and have our being.” {Acts 17:28, NIV}

That includes love.

We cannot live a holy or faithful life without Jesus. And we cannot love in a godly way without surrendering to the Spirit of God, the power of God, and the will of God.

Try as we might, we cannot live, or love, without the LORD’s help.

Which is why we find ourselves as a Bible-believing, Jesus-professing, well-intentioned, yet divided body of Christ. Unable to love the world. Unable to love our enemies. Unable to love our neighbors. Because we cannot even love one another, our brother or sister whom we have seen.

Yet we proclaim to love a God we have not seen.

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” {1 John 4:20, CSB}

This ought not to be.

Yet it is reality.

And I don’t love that.

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It’s the week of Valentine’s Day, a time centered on love and the celebration of it. So over the next week or so, we’ll slow down and take a closer look at love. What we mean when we say it. What Scripture actually calls us to. And how love shows up, or doesn’t, in our everyday lives.

Let’s see how this goes.

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Reflect

Where do you see the gap between your professed love and your lived love?
Who are the people you find hardest to love, and why?

Write

What would it look like to surrender your inability to love to God today?
Write one honest sentence about where you need His help.

Pray

God, I cannot love without You.
I confess the gap between what I say and what I do.
Teach me what love truly is, not as an emotion I muster, but as a fruit of Your Spirit in me. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Return

This week, notice where love shows up in your life, and where it doesn’t.