Hi everyone and Hello to Love, Tuesday!

First, I have to say: Look at my brand new mug from Hope*Writers… it’s kind of what I’m loving today!

This month we are continuing to talk about LOVE each “Love, Tuesday” and I’m sorry this one is a little late in the day… I had one of those mornings that did NOT go as planned.

Last week on Love, Tuesday I introduced myself to all the new Hope*Writers ladies (Hi again from snowy Colorado!!) and I talked a little about a couple bible verses on LOVE.

This week I want to delve into the concept of love a little deeper, because let’s be honest… we all WANT and NEED love. It is at the very basic level of our human nature.

But if you’re anything like me, you may have gotten the idea of “love” a little jumbled up in your brain at one time. Maybe like me, you didn’t understand there are different types of love and it confused you as a teenager?

I’ve been thinking about this more lately. My husband and I are almost done raising our three daughters and as the last one will leave for college next year, I wonder if my job as momma was done well. Did I share all the important “things” with them, impart my knowledge from life experiences to them and instill a biblical foundation in their hearts?

I have to say this topic on LOVE this month has actually reminded me of something I may not have shared with them. Something important that I learned at around 17 years old that woke me up to the different types of love.

So I’m going to try to share that today, with you, and maybe my daughters will read this some day as well…

But first… Don’t you just love, LOVE?! LOVE is such a broad word in the English language.

I love that feeling when you first get the “butterflies” of love. I love watching Hallmark movies even though I know who's going to fall in love in the first two minutes! I also REALLY love chocolate chip cookies and pizza. I love my husband and children, and grand baby, and would die for them. I LOVE to travel, especially to Italy and France. I love reading and collecting books and taking pretty pictures of both, as you have witnessed on my IG. :) I love my friends and I love gathering women together and encouraging one another. I love the Colorado Avalanche Hockey Team and get stressed out when they are down in goals.

I’m sure you have a list of all your loves that could go on and on as well, and we know that our lists come with a sort of “priority list.” I don’t love the Colorado Avalanche team above my own children… and I don’t love pizza over my husband. well maybe… hahaha. (If you’ve been to Bellagio, Italy with us, then you know…)

So LOVE has “levels” so to speak.

In God’s Word He talks about this. Some have labeled it “Love Languages,” or the “Four Types of Love” that the Bible talks about:

Agape, Storge, Phileo, and Eros.

These words about love come from the original Greek language and many theologians and authors have explained what each one means. I don’t think I need to go into too much detail on each one today, but I do believe in order to know TRUE LOVE and what that means, you really need to know God and what His Word says about love. If you’d like to learn more, there is a great little bible study on this subject HERE.

For a quick little Bible Study today, I John 4 is a great place to start… just listen to these verses:

1 John 4:7 - 21: “7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot[a] love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

This passage of scripture is pretty fundamental on LOVE. It points to a few things I’d like to remind us of:

1. God established Love. It’s at His very core and reason for everything He has done. He loved us FIRST and He is the example of LOVE.

2. God loves us. He loves you and me, and every single person that was born from the beginning of time.

3. Therefore, we must love others. (This is where it gets tricky… I get it, and I will try to explain where I got confused in this as a teenager)

So I have a question?

Do we love our family AND pizza AND Italy, and all those things on our list because God first loved us??

YES!! Yes, we actually do.

Because God CREATED this world and everything in it and He called it GOOD. And because He blessed it and blessed us with it.

So then, do we go forward showing love to others because we have an example of how to love? YES! It is our responsibility to show love to the world. If they don’t see it from us, the very people who say they are “Christ Followers” then how will they see it lived out? How will they know God IS love and we are to look to HIM and His Word to see how to LOVE others.

But this is where I struggled to understand the HOW as a teenager… and this is where learning about those four types of love came in and helped me to get it.

Because we can’t all love our grocery store clerk as much as our child or husband… and that was never the idea God had anyways.

Oh, we are definitely called to love one another, but let me try to explain. Because guess what… I was really confused by this when I was a teenage girl and I had a guy I liked tell me I wasn’t being a Christian (like I claimed to be) because I didn’t “love” him in the way he wanted me to. See he was this cute guy I met at USC while I was still in High School. (not to be confused with my husband who also went to USC but met a few years later :) This guy was older, wiser, lots of fun, very cute and of course I was attracted to him right away! We were in a group of friends together and went out a few times and started talking on the phone. But the more I found out about him the more I knew something didn’t sit right with me and I knew he wasn’t “the one” for me. He was really nice and he even talked about God, but as I found out, he was actually learning about Buddhism and was very involved in it. Some of the things he started saying really bothered me and they ultimately took us in a different direction and I chose to stop dating him. But he was upset with me and didn’t understand why I was starting to back away from him. Finally in one conversation I’ll never forget, he claimed I was being a false Christian because I wasn’t showing love to him! That really took be aback and I actually didn’t know how to respond to him at that moment, but it was a turning point for me. I felt terrible in the moment and at first I was questioning myself and the decision I made to end things. Was I a terrible “Christ Follower” for not showing him the love he wanted from me?

No, I wasn’t. It just took me a little time to realize why…

What I came to learn was that the love of a husband and wife, or boyfriend and girlfriend in this case is “eros love” (romantic love) and it’s very important to understand that this kind of love needs to be equally yoked between a man and a woman of the same faith. (2 Corinthians 6:14) I had to learn that I could, and should, show this guy the “Phileo” type of love, brotherly love, but it was ok not to love him in the romantic or “eros” type of love. It was hard for a young girl to come to this conclusion, but also to choose to walk away from this young man that had so many great qualities, just not the most important quality I was looking for in a man. This guy had confused these two types of love and it confused me for a bit too. I wish I could have known how to lovingly explain that to him at the time, but I didn’t understand it myself. I actually ended up writing a letter to him a while later. I had time to think about what he said to me, look at the Bible for clarity and pray about how to respond. I never heard back from him, but I hope in some way it helped shape his future relationships, like it did for me.

Ultimately I am so thankful for this experience because I know the Lord used it to grow me in my faith, help me to look deeper into what LOVE really means and it helped me know how to go forward and look for my future husband with more intention.

And I hope my story helps you in some way too.

There are so many examples of LOVE in the Bible and we could talk for years on the subject and not exhaust it all… because it’s something we all crave in our lives. But I think we need to understand, and teach to our kids, the different types of love God designed and how they intertwine, and are separate, for His purposes, and that is a GOOD thing!

Next week we will continue to talk about the subject of love, but we will look a little lighter at the subject and have some fun with it!

Have a GREAT Tuesday everyone! I think I’ll share this story at the dinner table tonight…

Hugs,

Laura McCollough

P.S. A quick side note: I had entered the Traveler’s Notebooks in wrong on our website so they were showing up as SOLD OUT! I’ve fixed the glitch and they should be working now if you wanted to grab one. The only one that is sold out is the darkest “mocha” color. The rest should still be in stock.