Choose to Love

This is Valentine's Weekend. What a joy to know YOU are God's Valentine.

At Valentine's, we think about love and how that love is expressed in personal relationships: husband-wife, parent-child, friends. Most struggle at one time in a relationship with "lost feelings" for the other person. Typically this is in a husband-wife role. One says, "I just can’t love that person." or "I don't love that person anymore."

God would not have commanded you to love that person if God was not intending to enable you to love that person. You can love that person by faith.

We must choose to love as an act of faith and obedience.

C. S. Lewis wrote,

Don’t waste your time bothering whether you love your neighbor. Act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you’re behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.

I read the story about a minister named George Crane who told of a wife who came into his office. She hated her husband, and she was coming to find out how she could get rid of her husband but also how she could hurt him as deeply as possible before divorcing him. She was so angry, so full of hostility. She said, "I want to get even."

Dr. Crane suggested this plan to the woman. He said,

Go home and act as if you really love your husband. Tell him how much he means to you. Go out of your way to be as kind, considerate, and generous as possible. Spare no efforts to please him, to enjoy him. Make him believe you love him. After you’ve convinced him of your undying love and that you cannot live without him, then drop the bomb. Tell him you’re getting a divorce. That will really hurt him.

After two months she didn’t come back, so Pastor Crane called her and said, “Are you ready now to go through with the divorce?” “Divorce?” she said. “No way! I discovered that I really do love him.” See, her actions had changed her feelings.

So as you think about those that God has put in your life to love, ask yourself, "How would I act if I really did love this person?" Then choose to act as if you loved that person and watch God change your heart as you begin to act in a loving way.