Imperfect Love.

Do you think being loved is having your whims indulged? Do you think being loved means having another person tell you they love you? Every single day of our lives there are people who have told other people they love them and then they go and hurt those people. They abandon them, they abuse them, they ridicule them, they cheat on them, they lie to them, they scorn them, the list goes on and on.  Out of the mouth comes those words of love, but out of their actions is a much different story.

Do we know what love is? For many it is merely an idea caught up in a familial or romantic form.

Love is a longing for something we know exists yet has been warped in so many twisted ways it is barely recognizable any more. People truly believe they love one another even as they exhibit plenty of actions that would say otherwise.

Some believe love is a bottom line, and above that line is a lot of murky, messed up stuff that never does away with the bottom line. That bottom line remains all the while a swamp rises up over it, and we war against the thick muddy sludge that threatens to erase the bottom line. Daily we push back just enough filth to keep the bottom line visible. We might hear the words- everything I do is out of love for you, it's for your own good, it's because I love you, I would never hurt you intentionally- yet, impulses seemingly beyond the ability to control will rise up and erase those spoken and believed words. The love hasn't gone, the bottom line remains, but it was temporarily invisible as the inescapable lusts took over muddying the water.

We are only human we cry out! We are fallible! We are tempted by a powerful evil, and we succumb all the while hating that we do! We love so incredibly imperfectly, ALL OF US! We love yet we hurt over and over and over again. We love yet our actions constantly say otherwise because we aren't comprehending fully the forces at play in our world. My idea of love and your idea of love can be at odds, whose would be considered right? One is right for you, and the other right for me. When two people try to merge their ideas of love they are in for a battle because the ideas will never align perfectly and the invisible forces of evil in our world will use the misalignments, no matter how slight, to its every advantage.

You say you love me, but you hurt me! You say you love me, but you do things that make me hurt you! These are all signs of the evil behind our lives. Clearly love does not want to hurt you, yet the forces of evil in our world don't want you to be loved and revel in your pain. Where real intentioned hurt is NOT present, we go further and imagine the hurt is intentioned. We think we know the thoughts of others and sometimes we do, when we catch glimpses of the private things they seek to hide from us. We think we know the thoughts of others when we know the evil forces are enticing them towards their temptations. We wallow in the misery of knowing we are far from what people know is the idea of perfection and we can't help but believe others want the perfection but merely settle for us with all our incredibly many flaws. We flail about life in a constant ebb and flow of imperfect love- loving and being loved imperfectly.

Love.  God's love is the only perfect love that exists. Our attempts to love are riddled with the fiery darts of Satan's evil. Yet we must keep attempting love, we must strive to love always! We must never give in to Satan's despair of keeping us from love.

We need to accept that ALL our love is imperfectly given and imperfectly received. We need to recognize, even if we don't always agree with, others ideas of love, which will differ from our own. We need to strive to align when Satan throws the misalignments up in our faces. You're not perfect, I'm not perfect… we agree to live imperfectly together striving to keep things on as even a keel as possible. We agree that storms will arise throwing us off keel violently as hurricane force storms can, but we recognize the storm will eventually pass, and as we will push the debris aside brought down by the chaotic forces at play we will be able to see the bottom line- the imperfect love line that tells us we agreed to live this life together imperfectly- needing to forgive and to be forgiven- over and over, and over again.

Whether it is familial love, romantic love, or the love of friendships- it is all imperfect love, and it needs to be cherished, not discarded. It needs to be healed, not put out of its misery. It needs to be recognized and fed hope. One day, one day very soon, when our Savior returns, then the love we've protected through HIM against the fiery darts of Satan, will be finally perfected.

Sin, Satan and all the evil he has introduced into existence will forever fight against us, we must don our Spiritual armor and hold fast to the LOVE OF GOD.

All through the love of our Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord now and forever!!!!!!!

Joh 14:21 KJV He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

Joh 14:23 KJV Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.