"True Love is Chosen Love"

Our transitional pastor used this phrase during a sermon a few months ago.....it struck me as being 'deep'. I went back through the sermon that day and couldn't ever figure out WHY Brother Hal said this...it really didn't seem to fit with anything else he talked about. But....again.....it struck me. I vowed to try and figure out why it struck me, what about that phrase stopped me in my tracks, who it was talking to and how it applied to my life.

In the Bible, the major 'love' emphasis is to love God, love ourselves and love one another. Although we Christians know this, believe this, long to live this emphasis out....we have SUCH a hard time doing it! Is it because we think that love is something we can conjour up ourselves? Something that we can 'do' on our own?

No, love is not something we're naturally good at. Only when the Holy Spirit sets up shop in our lives, only when we give up and surrender all control, only when we truly understand the love that God has for us are we able to let that same love flow through us.

So...back to the 'true love is chosen love' idea. Can we be made to love someone? Can we be told that we should love someone and it automatically happens? No. Not. At. All. Do we instead decide that someone is worthy of love? No, that can't be it either. Worthy of? Really? Who among us IS worthy of love?

Chosen means that someone makes a conscious choice, right? Does that mean that there's no 'love at first sight'? No....'I just knew'? No, 'it was meant to be'? No....I think that all of these are real. But LONG TERM love, serious relationships, feelings that really matter...those are indeed CHOSEN.

How so? Well, let's think about spouses and friends.

Something like 50% of marriages end in divorce....let's call that 'love that didn't last'. How many other marriages DON'T end in divorce but are prime examples of love that once was but is no longer? What does a marriage look like where love is ever present? It's a marriage where both man and wife CHOOSE to love one another. It's where both parties come to the knowledge that love is work, that love is a commitment, that love is both of them looking to be more like God. And that if they're both on that path, the path towards God, that they are on the SAME path, and that the love forged in that path is the love that will prevail in their lives.

And friendship? Especially between girls? Women? Are their harder friendships that those, when we are so naturally predispositioned to be vain, jealous, back-stabbing? Well then....is it possible that a true friendship could be anything BUT chosen? We MUST make a choice, we must decide, we must set our hearts to love a friend in a way that forgives, that accepts, that desires to love in a way that can only be from deep within. I know this love. I know this desire to be friends in a way that cannot be shaken. I know this love that is CHOSEN.

You can't force love. You can't be MADE to love. If you could, would it really be love?