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What does love look like?

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It's easy to know what it looks like for those that we cherish and who return our kindness and affection back to us. But what does it look like to love your neighbor, and to love your enemy?

I've watched some here show patience to those who are hard to understand. And in the threads they start, though it is hard to understand a lively and kind conversation comes out of it. As if the OP was writting in riddles to figure out. Here in these round I've found a header of love that I need to know better and to strengthen in.

I've seen love in welcoming and accepting people who struggle with an issue. Though sometimes the issue they struggle with becomes it's own focus to point at and condemn, there is still the people that encourage and uplift them. Loving them as their brothers and sisters in faith instead of a piece of a heated debate. Because of this I've been colored for such struggles and debates, and want to follow suit in metro ring that model of kindness. Again something I've seen from these forums.

I've seen love from other families. Their version of patience and together on the same team kind of thing. It surprised me a bit, and not always do I agree with it. None the less, I can recoginize it as being loving trying to be there for the other person.

There are many models to look after for how we should love. To be patient instead of always correcting someone. To look out for each other (which sometimes still includes correcting them). To knowing what needs need to be met and seek out to meet them, like many people do when someone is out of a hospital or morning a loss, they deliver meals easy to bake or eat right away, or they help in some other need.

If anyone has anything to offer. I think somethimes we need examples of what it looks like to be loving. So we don't conform to the coldness of the world. Thanks in advance.
 
Love is a series of actions, its not a feeling.

Kindness
Compassion
Tenderness
Empathy
Forgiveness
Discipline
Correction
Patience
All of the actions you've mentioned have feelings attached to them, so love can feel differently depending on the situation and can change during the course of those actions. Love can always lead to reconciliation when both parties focus on the above loving actions you've listed.

I've always liked what Paul had to say in 1 Corinthians 13 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Paul writes that we were once enemies toward God. Yet Jesus prayed for our forgiveness with his dying breath. His hope, that which Paul writes about to the church in Corinth never ceased.

We can learn a lot from that. It's easy to lose your hope in other people when they disappoint us, or dont live up to our expectation or worse yet cause us bodily harm (think Jesus getting beaten and nailed to a tree). But we have as a way of example to never lose our hope... and I think maybe that helps us have a little more patience with others.
 
Do you walk in unconditional love, forgiveness in your heart, love and pray for your enemies? If you can be completely honest and answer yes to this then go look in the mirror as this is what love looks like as you are allowing the light of Christ sine through you.
 
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