What is love?

A nice simple question to answer today, what is love? Why is this question important? - Let's start back to front, why is this question important - I think we are all looking for love, I don't mean just finding a life partner, I believe we all want to be happy and they way we find that happiness is to be fully loved. Watch a movie at the cinema and 9/10 films will be about a love story, or a story where good overcomes evil. For me cinema often depicts what is going on in our hearts, so why do we all look for love. I believe it is the way we have been made, that our hearts are yearning for this something, the bible says that God has written eternity on our hearts, a longing, a searching for happiness and love, we look in so many places but the bible says there is only one place to find it.
So, what is love? Is love being head over heels for someone who looks beautiful, if so what happens if there beauty is lost, is love when someone makes you really happy, if so what happens when that person makes you angry. Is love when someone follows a set of rules or obligations and the closer you follow those the more love you have? The bible defines love as - Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. - Wow, where do we see this love? 1 in 2 marriages end in divorce in the UK, we have had the bloodest century since creation, we are scared to talk to people on the train on the way home from work. So where do we find this love, people often end up falling on pets these days, one of the reasons for this I think is that animals often love you unconditionally even if you forget to walk them they still run up to you tail wagging, even abused animals love their owners.
What we see in Jesus Christ is this very picture, someone who loves us even though we abuse him, someone who says I love you even though you turn away from me. He says I love you without condition. He laid down his life in your place. Imagine you are in the dock, the questions that the judge asks you is have you ever lied, ever stolen, ever looked at someone with lust, ever hated someone in your heart, of course we are guilty. We face the death penalty and in walks the person we have committed the offence against, Jesus, he walks up to you and says "I love you so much that I am willing to take your place if you will let me?" He offers you this sacrifice, so you don't have to face the consquences of what you have done, amazing. It is what the bible calls, grace, something we don't deserve. You see the love you are being offered here is not dependant on whether you are beautiful, whether you behave well enough, whether you live in the right part of town, whether you are nice to people, it simply depends on him, now that is true love. He gives you all that you are looking for, you do have to make a decision, you can remain in that dock and take the debt yourself, face hell on your own or you can turn to him accept his offer and let him love you with a depth that we can never fully fathom.
How do I know this is true, because he has given it to me, I have experienced it, tested the evidence in history, witnessed it in countless others and felt this love that has completely transformed my heart, my lifestyle, my living, my job, my girlfriend, my everything....just investigate it, he says those that seek will find him. - georgeosborn@avantiministries.com

Sacrifice

The heart of love is sacrifice isn't it, a married couple need to sacrifice some of their own needs in order for the marriage to work, parents need to sacrifice their own time and money for the well being of their children, love of a job means a sacrifice of time back home, the point is we all make sacrifice for the thing we love, the important thing is do we love the right thing. Speaking as someone who struggled with addiction, I often sacrificed my health in order to get high.
What do you sacrifice so that your heart can get what it loves? I don't know about you but I sacrificed so much to so many different things that in the end all of them fell short of providing me with the love and satisfaction I was looking for. A job always lets you down, a partner will always make mistakes, a car rusts, money doesn't quite cut it, we go on.
The perfect sacrifice that is made many of us don't even see, I didn't for years, the perfection of Jesus' sacrifice in our place. He gave the biggest sacrifice ever, not only time but his own life, there is no greater love than when someone lays down his life for you. This at a time when we don't even care for him or love him. Some people say to me why can't I pay the price, why can't I do good things and why can't God just let me off some of the bad things I have done, we all make mistakes.
Let's imagine for a moment that you have a car, you crash that car into your neighbours. Now there are a couple of options here, you can pay for the damage, or your neighbour can pay for the damage. Either way somebody has to pay for the consequence of your action, there is always a cost. Take it another way, say your son smashes a plate, he says sorry and you forgive him, however it has still cost you the plate. You see the same is true for us, we have all broken God's laws and we have a fine we need to pay, unfortunately we don't have the means to pay that fine, we need somebody to pay that fine, it is the highest costing fine in the whole universe therefore it is going to take someone with the biggest heart of love to pay that fine. It is going to cost so much that someone needs to give their life as a ransom, as payment, as the bounty if you like.
In steps Jesus Christ who sacrificed himself so that debtors like you and I can have all our debts wiped clean, all we need do is come to him acknowledging that we have nothing to offer as payment and turn to him and he will provide it for us.
God doesn't call you to come to him with your goodness, it is like going to the neighbour of the smashed car and offering him 20p, it's an insult it cost far more than that. If you feel you are going to stand before God at the end of your life and offer him 20p as a merit for getting to him, that is a huge insult, especially when he has paid for it himself.
Look, this isn't about us breaking a few rules and trying to make up for it, God is your father who wants the best for you, he wants to love you, much like you would with your own children provide them with rules that is going to give them the best, God is the same. He is offering you the biggest help, the biggest satisfaction, the biggest joy, the biggest freedom and we turn away from him and play around in the mud when there is an offer of paradise for free!
drop me a line georgeosborn@avantiministries.com