The School of Love

Nobody is yet a graduate in the school of Love. I am a fellow student, and we have one teacher, Jesus.

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:8 ESV

From the verse above we can clearly denote that in order to claim to know God, we must love. Someone once told me, “if you are a Christian, you have no other option but to love me” and may I add, to love genuinely. There are moments that happen to us and we say or heard someone say, ‘If everyone did this, the world would be a better place.’ Often, the deed usually originates from a point of genuine love. What we see is the beauty of love expression and thus just like any beautiful thing, we admire. Unlike any other beauty, the beauty of love doesn’t wither but instead it plants a love seed in us. It is like you see people who do unexpected things for a random person just because someone else did the same, maybe so many months or years ago.

And what is love? A lot of people know this from 1^st Corinthians 13 both the importance and the depth or the definition of love.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸Love never fails……

But may I say, love is a doing word. Lots of us have grasped the definition and know about it but the actions don’t match the knowledge. Our justification, some people are just so hard to love. Like I said, I am a fellow student and for sure that rings a bell of a name in my head. I mean I have tried and so I guess you have too.

To show you how hard this was for me, I took it to God, this time in a prayer. Lord, help me love the unlovable. In Matthew 5:43-48 Jesus said,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’⁴⁴ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,⁴⁵that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.⁴⁶If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?⁴⁷And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?⁴⁸Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Do you know how to love the unlovable? Those whom we can’t stand, those whom we want to knock out the minute we meet them, those whom we have tried to no success. One of the things that I know that stains my love for the

unlovable is that I used to have anger issues (speaking prophetically). Love and anger do not go together especially to those whom we know for sure that the only reason we love them is because Christ told us to. While it’s a commandment, I think it’s important to say that He did not command. You still have a choice and a free will. God’s will and our will is something that we will talk about later but as of now, for me, I decided to do what He asked me to, love everyone including the unlovable. Is it easy? No, not at all. But let’s be glad that it is not impossible. We have the Holy Spirit who teaches us all things. There are so many things we tend to do on our own that need the help of the spirit and loving is one of those things.

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. -Matthew 14:26

With the anger issue, (I almost wrote, MY anger issue but a quick prompting of the Holy Spirit reminded me that that is not one of the attributes of God and thus I can’t claim situations that Christ is not known by. If your mind went to the incident of turning of tables, you are with me but that is another blog post.) I know it comes mostly when am trying to correct something and common sense is not common to everybody and sometimes you can’t drill it into someone’s head. So, in this love school, I am learning how to correct in love. To be honest, correcting from a point of love and compassion is not the same as correcting from a point of the need to be right. I think this is a lesson that married couples will often learn as they go. However, this is a lesson that doesn’t have to stay with married people only because we are human beings and social beings at that. Relationships is what we have every day and some end while some flourish. A question to pose is, how do we end past relationships in love? Is there something like ending past relations in love? Or rather let me ask it this way, is it possible to end relationships in love? Rather than ending, could we just love people from afar? What does loving people from a far looks like? I was convinced on this one as I am all for guarding my heart for from it flows everything else. I am pouring everything from the abundance of my heart thus I have to protect it at all cost. But what happens if we are walking on Gold st. in heaven and the person we loved from afar on earth is next to us?

God is love, we ought to be too. This is The School of Love and I am okay with all we have from this lesson is questions that stir our understanding on love. I hope you will join me next time as we discuss a little more. We may get answers, we may get more questions. All in all, hopefully the Holy Spirit will bring clarity too us each day.

John 15:12

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

1^st Corinthians 13:13

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.