Are You – Loving Or Selfish?
The whole world wants LOVE. It is the most talked about and sung about subject on earth. As the Beatles’ sang in the 60’s, “All you need is love.” Yet, this world doesn’t seem so loving. There are now more conflicts, divorces, murders and human trafficking and abuse than ever. Maybe what is billed as “loving” isn’t that loving.
To understand love you must go to the source. God reveals Himself as Love. He is Love. It is His essence and nature. He cannot be anything else but love. God defines love in this way: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…”, (John 3.16). Love is revealed in giving the best. Love is in giving yourself. Love is in sacrificing what you love for the benefit of others. In I Corinthians 13, (the love chapter), Paul writes: “Love is patient and kind, love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never ends.”
Love is not selfish. Selfishness is when you put yourself first. Selfishness is a perversion of love. A person that is selfish thinks another will satisfy all his desires and needs. He may marry to be loved, join a church to be accepted and loved and even have children to receive the attention and love he so desires. If the reason you enter into any of these areas is to meet your needs or desires, then you should never marry, have children or join a church. It is just a matter of time before things just don’t go your way and you end up disillusioned and hurt. It is then that this kind of love grows cold and you move on to some other more self-appeasing arrangement. What the selfish person thinks is love, ends only in bitterness, broken hearts and hate.
Marriage, family, church and even worship only work where the Love of God is experienced in the lives of the people involved. Love is unconditional and edifies. Selfishness has expectations and expectations are what kill relationships. It is using another for your own satisfaction. It is like the leech in Proverbs 30.15-16 that has two daughters: Give and Give. It can never get enough attention, love and pleasure. This selfish love is what is promoted in the majority of relationships in today’s world. The Rolling Stones express its futility in their song: “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”
One must decide to be loving rather than selfish. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said: “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” It cost him his life to love and it may cost you yours. But true love doesn’t think about what it may cost him. Love just concerns itself with others. We can love, because God first loved us. So draw from the source of Love and then give and give and give.
Scriptures to meditate on:
I Cor. 13; 8.1; Gal. 5.22; John 3.16; I John 3.16; 4.7-12; Prov. 30.15-16