A Decision

I agree, love is absolutely 100% a decision. I believe this is true with my husband, my extended family and my friends. I believe the bible when it says love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you. Which means we love everyone. The ability to live in a decision regardless of your own hurt or anger still exists. People do things in hurt to people they love they would not allow a stranger to get away with doing towards the person they love.

I know I have found myself waiting for others to show love before I will. I need to be the change I want to see. If I want others to give me the benefit of the doubt, I need to as well. If I feel loved when someone asks me face to face if something is true, then when I want to feel hurt by something I need to make sure I know their intentions. If I want someone to apologize with out rationalization or excuse I must. If I want people to love me knowing my faults, I have to not place the value of someone as the sum of their mistakes. If I want someone to be able to forgive my slip of the tongue knowing I wouldn't intentionally hurt them, I have to accept no one is perfect. If I trust in an all mighty Heavenly Father who sent His son to die for me then I have to accept that He died for their sins as well. I am not the judge, He is. I am not the one who ultimately was hurt, rejected, betrayed, slandered... it's Him. I can't allow others to set the tempo of what is acceptable in my relationships. I own that. It's my responsibility to look towards God and set in motion the standards for my marriage, my extended family, friends and strangers.





Love is not a feeling, love is a decision you make and continue to make in order to create an experience that is described as love. Love is an action that if you don't use you will lose. Love is like any communication, if you never send it out, you won't get a return. Love is something you do, not something you feel because something happens to you.

Six elements to staying in love, included in Love is a Decision, are:

1. Making your spouse feel truly honored.

2. Learning the art of touching—tenderly.

3. Keeping courtship alive in your marriage.

4. Re-opening a heart closed by anger.

5. Building—or rebuilding—trust in a relationship.

6. Becoming best friends with your family

To define love by the one who IS love:

Love

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If 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 have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

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

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

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

This is a framed reminder that hangs in our home. My SIL Shawna gave this to Billy and I for our wedding.

So it comes down to me for me filling myself with the love of God, Jesus and His Holy Spirit. It's an acknowledgment that I am selfish at my core and I can't do it without help. It means exercising self control, selflessness in all things. It's about knowing it's a work in process, to recognize when I've failed to live up to God's standards, going to help for Him to do better next time. Saying I'm sorry and hurting or not giving love repeatedly does not show a repentant heart. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Ask myself was what I just did honorable, respectful, loving? Would I be ashamed if Jesus were in the room with me? Because He is......