Today’s Podcast

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1. Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.
2. We hear about love a lot. We think we see it everywhere. Jesus commands that we love. So what is it, anyway?
3. Scripture
   1. John 14:23-34
   2. Jesus:  Anyone who loves Me will listen to My voice and obey. The Father will love him, and We will draw close to him and make a dwelling place within him.  The one who does not love Me ignores My message, which is not from Me, but from the Father who sent Me.
4. Devotional
   1. I went to everyone’s favorite source of perfect information to find the answer to the question, “What is love?” The Internet, specifically Wikipedia
      1. Love is a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection (“I love my mother”) to pleasure (“I loved that meal”). It can refer to an emotion of a strong attraction and personal attachment.[1] Love can also be a virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection—”the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another”.[2] It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans, one’s self or animals.[3]
      2. Ancient Greeks identified four forms of love: kinship or familiarity (in Greek, storge), friendship (philia), sexual and/or romantic desire (eros), and self-emptying or divine love (agape). Modern authors have distinguished further varieties of romantic love. Non-Western traditions have also distinguished variants or symbioses of these states.[4][5] Love has additional religious or spiritual meaning—notably in Abrahamic religions. This diversity of uses and meanings combined with the complexity of the feelings involved makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, compared to other emotional states.
      3. Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.[6]
      4. Love may be understood as a function to keep human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species.[7
   2. Does that get us any closer to understanding love?
      1. Definition of love is like definition of ice cream
      2. Must experience it to really understand it and even then do you really understand it?
      3. How can you really describe the experience?
      4. Yet when we go through the event, when we eat ice cream for the first time, we know we like it and we want more
      5. When we experience real love, not the mushy fake lust we see advertised, but real love,we know we like it and we need it and we want more
   3. How do we get love?
      1. We get it unconditionally from God
      2. Most of us get it unconditionally from mothers and fathers who try to be good parents no matter how flawed they are
      3. Most of us get love, though sometimes misunderstood and again flawed by the image of what love is from the media and the world in our marriages
      4. But the best way to get love? Give love to others – unconditionally
      5. What kind of love? – that one that says, “Love can be a virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection—”the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another”.[2] It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans,
      6. That’s the love God shows toward us and asks us to give it to others in return
   4. Jesus says if we love Him we will obey Him, His commands usually come in the form of helping others, thinking of others more than we think of ourselves. Doing and giving and lifting others to show them real, genuine love in a world that knows so little about real love today
   5. Love is the universal language, but so few know how to speak it today. Go out and teach them through your actions
5. If you want to learn more about my church, you can find us at SAF.church. If you like the devotional, share it with someone. If you don’t, tell me. I hope you’ll join me again tomorrow for “A Little Walk with God.”

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