Living A Life Of Unconditional Love

LIVING A LIFE OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

By: C. Mason Davis

A pastor from a small town was asked to preach in a large city’s church while their pastor was away. This church had more members than he’d seen in any one place before. He was pretty nervous and even more so just minutes before the service was to start, he realized that he’d forgotten his teeth back at the hotel room. Panicked, he sought out the associate pastor and told him of the problem. “I can’t preach without teeth,” he said. The associate pastor thought for a second and then told the pastor he’d be right back. He told Brother Jones of the problem and Brother Jones said he might have a solution. Five minutes later he came back to the study with Brother Jones in tow. Brother Jones pulled a set of dentures out of a pocket and gave them to the pastor. The pastor put them in his mouth, but they were too small. “There don’t fit,” he said. Brother Jones took them back and reached into a different pocket and handed another pair to the pastor. “These fit perfectly,” the pastor said. Even better than his own teeth, he thought. He went to the altar and gave the best sermon of his life. Afterwards, he sought out Brother Jones to thank him. “Brother Jones,” he said, “I’d like to know where your office is, I’ve been looking for a new dentist.” Brother Jones looked at him with a confused look on his face and said, “But I’m not a dentist, I’m an undertaker.”

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE

1 John 4:16 “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”

Love takes effort. Just like a smile takes more facial muscles than it does to frown. Unconditional love takes faith. Faith in Christ, faith in yourself, and faith in those that you love, as well as trust. It’s easier to be lazy and not try as hard, taking everyone and everything for granted, and possibly end up forgetting how to love, as well as who we love, and why. Too many couples lose sight of why they became a couple in the first place and quit trying to make their relationship work. Ephesians 5:33 states, “However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” Fact is a lot of couples quit trying long before everything becomes a mere convenience. The romance stops, the love falters when the effort stops. Instead of being lazy by spending more time in the recliner with the television on, why not work at spending quality time together as an effort to put the romance and love back into your relationship and into your lives. If you’ll try, you might just be surprised how bigger issues suddenly become small and insignificant.

You might just be surprised how your thoughts and feelings can go from negative to positive. Perhaps then you’ll be able to smile at each other without much effort, or even notice that you’re smiling. 2 Timothy 2:23-24, “Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil.”

It is so much easier to yell and argue about issues than it is to talk things out calmly. We talk more and listen less, and we don’t allow ourselves any room in our argument to understand the spouse’s perspective, which in most cases would help in solving the issue at hand. Although it takes more energy to react in negative ways it seems to be how we choose to act when facing different viewpoints or opinions. When we are tired, mentally and/or physically, we often take the direction that takes less effort by talking louder, faster, and losing patience. What we should be doing instead is reaching down deep into ourselves, showing our special someone’s how much we love them without conditions. How much we want them to be happy, even if that means being more patient, giving into their wants and needs more often, so any disagreement can be ended with a long kiss and a tight hug. At times we can become so weak and tired that we ignore problems and don’t face them. Unfortunately, when the problems go ignored, they become much bigger, like a big weed in a beautiful flower bed. Don’t allow anything to take all your strength, not even your job. It’s great to work hard to support yourself and your family, but it takes a great deal of work to make relationships of any kind to flourish. If your work zaps all of your strength and you haven’t any energy to work on your relationships, they will become the weeds in your flower bed. All relationships take work, whether they’re old or new. If we’ll make the effort to renew our love for our families and other relationships, and especially our love of God every day, we’ll find that all of our relationships will thrive, God will give us the strength we need, and other’s will be more forgiving towards our shortcomings. This is when we’ll be able to see more clearly that nothing is as bad as it seems and our want for loving unconditionally can be realized. When we don’t give our thanks to everyone in our lives often enough, negative feelings, thoughts, and issues can build around you like a tall brick wall, and you feel stuck with no relief in sight. But with the love of family and love from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, no wall is impenetrable. No hurdle is too high. Psalm 110, 3 reads, “And your strength shall be renewed day by day like dew, morning dew.” All it takes is more effort and you’ll be surprised how uplifting life can be.