“Love is a choice.” If you had been in my youth group in the early 2000s, you would have heard me saying that phrase a LOT!
Many people are deceived about what love actually is. People think love is an emotion, a feeling. People think it’s something we fall in and out of, that it’s the ultimate goal to earn someone’s romantic love for us. Love is so much more than that.
Think of how many RomComs are out there. Dramas with a love interest are the top movie genre for so many people. Why? We love watching people love each other, or try to love each other.
We want to love our children well, but we’re not sure how to do it on our own. We do that we tend to love poorly or ineffectively. On our own, we tend to show our children more or less affection based on their behavior. We tend to love out of our own effort and it’s always lacking.
1 John 4:8 says that God is love. Love is from God, so it’s Him giving Himself to us when He loves us. When God gives us love, He gives us Himself. What a beautiful example He sets for us.
God’s love is “agape,” unconditional. He doesn’t love us based on our behavior He just loves us. We don’t have God’s pure, unconditional love, but we have Him. We can choose to give Him to our children.
The more of God we give our children, through training them from His Word and training them to talk with and listen to Him, the more we show them love.
Giving our children access to and knowledge of God is loving them beyond what we’re capable of on our own. Let’s get busy loving our children this year!
What is one way you can give God to your children to show them love this week?