Love is a Choice. Choosing to Love.

In review of Deuteronomy 30:20 it says, “You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him.”

Bottom Line:

Choose to love the Lord your God and obey what he tells you. Committing yourself firmly to him will be key for how to live life.

What this means to me:

I can choose to live a life of love, because I love the Lord and choose to do whatever he tells me to do. I commit myself and place my faith in him.  This is key to living a life he desires. The two top things he tells me to do is to; love him and to love people.  Our culture has bought into a myth that love is uncontrollable, it just kind of happens to you. The language we use even implies that we can’t control how we love. It’s common to say, “I fell in love”, like it was a ditch you stumbled into (I was just walking along one day and, bam! fell into it. I just couldn’t help myself.)  However this really isn’t love.  Attraction and arousal are common and uncontrollable, but are not love. They can lead to love, but they are not love. What I’m learning is that “love” is a choice. In a wedding, a man and a woman stand before each other and say their vows. They say to the other person, “I choose you above everybody else in the world, and I choose you for the rest of my life.” In this statement they are making a public announcement of their choice. Now,  that’s a commitment. I’ve learned early in life that you can’t force anybody to fall in love with you, and you can’t force them to stay in love with you. This is because love is a choice. Love cannot be forced. This is true of all relationships, including my relationship with God. The first part of Deuteronomy 30:20 says, “You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him” (NLT). So based on this, in order to make a real difference in my life, I must choose to love God. God isn’t going to force me to love him. I could always just thumb my nose at God and go a totally different way, but ultimately destroy my life. God will never force me to love him, because love is a choice. Today I can choose to love God by obeying his two overarching commandments, to love him and to love others. I can take steps today to show others in my life that I love them by adjusting my perspective towards them. Instead of going about my busy life/schedule, I can take the time and choose to be interested in their lives, and to listen to them. After all having relationships with people can lead to everlasting changes in their life, especially as I let them know what God has done for me.