Love, the Lover and the loved
Copyright ©2017 by Ayodele Ajileye
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Ayodele Ajileye
+2348069837333
Unless otherwise stated, all scriptural references are from the New Living Translation. The message translation is referred to as msg, Amplified Bible as AMP and King James Version as KJV.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to you the reader because you are a love being.
Let's Talk About Love
Everywhere I go, all the places that I've been
Every smile is a new horizon on a land
I've never seen
There are people around the world
Different faces, different names
But there's one true emotion that
Reminds me we're the same
Let's talk about love
From the laughter of a child
To the tears of a grown man
There's a thread that runs right through us
All and helps us understand
As subtle as a breeze, that fans a flicker
To a flame
From the very first sweet melody
To the very last refrain
Let's talk about love
Let's talk about us
Let's talk about life
Let's talk about trust
Let's talk about love
It's the king of all who live
And the queen of good hearts
It's the ace you may keep up your
Sleeve, till the name is all but lost
As deep as any sea, with the rage of
Any storm
But as gentle as a falling leaf on any
Autumn morn
(Song by Celine Dion)
Introduction
Let’s talk about love, shan’t we? Back in the day when Celine Dion sang the song titled Let’s talk about love people chanted, “Go Celine” but many did not give much thought to what she meant by the song. Perhaps, she was more driven to emotion by the depth than the rhythm. She was speaking my mind and the mind of everyone that could think deeper to reach for the message and not the noise. As she said, love is the true emotion that shows that we are the same. It is what connects us as human.
Love is what makes the world go round. It makes the heart stop or keep beating. It is what defines us as human. Love is all encompassing. Celine Dion saying that it is one true emotion shows that regardless of color, tongue and other differences, we are still the same.
Love. What a word? So vastly used, misinterpreted, defined and expressed. It is all that human exist for and it is all human exist in. It is what is claimed when rebuking someone, the same is claimed to mislead another. It is what we claim when pampering someone and the same is claimed for indulgence. Love is the cover people claim for doing it right as well as when things are done wrongly.
Love happens to all other good virtue; patience, joy and so on have to be in love. May be that is why Paul mentioned love as the first in the attributes of the fruit of the spirit. Jesus said all laws and prophets are summarized in the word love. Once love is appreciated, accepted, misinterpreted, wrongly defined, rejected, misused or abused, every other good virtue receives the same treatment.
I have seen different definition and expression of love which sent me straight to wanting to know the true definition and expression of love. Following the perversion in the present world, one may be confused at what love truly is. This book is written to show, at least, in part, the true nature of love.
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Corinthians 13:14)
I started an exposition on 2 Corinthians 13:14 and this is the second after Grace. Grace is the Lord Jesus Christ; He is grace personified. It is him (grace) that introduces human into the likeness of God. Now, love is of the Father and the Father is love. It is important to understand what this means in order to love in the right way.
This book presents the true nature of love and its true operation in our world. However, I would like you to keep a journal around while reading through this book so that you can map out what you are able to understand about every issue of love discussed so that you can know how to applied the exposition to your own love life.
Peace.
Love in Person
I wonder what people will not do in the name of love, don’t you? One kills another keeps alive, one hunts another shepherds, some grow it while some steal it, and some go for it while some wait for it. It is endless what people do for love. And indeed, love is in everyone. Though there is diversity in its expression but it all comes down to love. However, this wide mode of expression got me wondering what love really is.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I am willing to swallow my pride and go back to where it all started so as to see for myself the true meaning of love and its practice. I think that if the world has come this far in issues of love, then there is a beginning to love as there is for everything else. Love is the essence of life and so I think that the giver of life is also the source of its essence. Now, this is not a religious book but like any other good seeker of the truth, I have to go to the one that created it all and that is God. We can only trace love back to God because the creation shows who the creator is and the creator shows what the creation is.
Well, as far as I know and have come to believe, the Holy Bible is the book that vividly describes who God is because it is said to be inspired by His Spirit. (1 Timothy 3:16) So, let’s search for answers in the Bible.
Why would one kill, another preserves, and all still call it love. Really, what is this thing called love? Well, the bible says that God is love (1 John 4:8), I believe it. But love seems scary in this present world yet the Bible never paints God as scary. So, I think that for us to know what love is we need to know who God is since Love starts and ends with God (Jeremiah 31:3)
Now, if we are created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26) then it is sensible for us to say that we are love being or love creation or love image. So, if we can map out who God is, we can map out what love is and how to properly express it. Let’s consider what God calls Himself:
- He is I am that I am: He is at every moment who and what you need. Human’s needs change with time and God stands to meet those needs as they arise. (Exodus 3:14)
- He is Perfect: God is faultless in all wise and He does all things faultlessly. (Psalm 18:30, Matthew 5:48)
There are so much more names that are used to qualify who God is and all of who God is, is what love is. God is all encompassing as we shall see as we continue in this book, but I want us to take the two mentioned above as our starting point. He is everything good, awesome, holy, beautiful, honorable and graceful to mention few. He is incomprehensible; He is too high, too deep, too wide to fully grasp, plus He is very diverse in His ways. So take this as your own assignment from this book – search to know who God is. No matter how much I try, I can only give you an introduction into who God is, you’ll get it better when you search for yourself. However, this book will help in your perspectives as you read on.
Celine Dion mentioned love, life and trust because all these are together and they keep the world going round.
We say love is a strong feeling of affection toward someone. Emotion it is, but deeper than just an emotion, it is logical and spirit-connecting. It is God. If God is love then we will be wrong to say that love is just an emotion because God is not an emotion. He is a person – a being, a personality and as such, He is physical, spiritual and soul-ical. Love is an emotion, a choice, a life, a style and so on.
I'm in love
When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, you are in me, and I am in you. (John 14:20)
God is love, and all who live in love live in God. (1 John 4:16)
For in him we live and move and exist… (Acts 17:28)
This is what we are used to – we say, “I’m in love.” Meaning we live our normal lives through love; our lives finds expression in love. We breathe in love, fight in love, laugh in love, cry in love – we do all we have to do in love. You’ve got to abide in love in order to have your life saturated with love. You have to be in God for your life to be lived through God such that when others perceive you they perceive love. When others touch you they touch God. Since you are in love, they touch love before they touch you. They touch perfection before they touch the growing-into-perfection. It is not a mask but a garment that shows who you would like people to see you as and what you are becoming.
It is not enough to have a drink of water but to be deep into water. It is possible to tell someone, “I just finished taking water.” And the person does not believe you. But there is no way he will not believe when he sees you dripping with water. Having love in you is like drinking water. It goes to do what it should in aiding digestion, controlling temperature, dissolving toxic and making excretion easier. That is water doing what it does naturally in you and its effect is seen all around you as you are healthier. However, being in love is to be soaked in water that your wetness can be seen by those with sight, felt by those who can, heard by those who are sensitive to hearing and perceive by others. Being in love makes love so real that you can almost hold it. It is the same as being in God; it makes God so real that people touch Him when they touch anyone that is in Him.
Love is in me
When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, you are in me, and I am in you. (John 14:20)
Considering the nature of God we can say that love is the reason why a parent disciplines or pampers his child. Love is just everything needed per time. How will you know what is needful per time if you don’t have what it takes? That is how I came to the fact that love has to be in someone to be able to give it. You can’t give what you don’t have. For anybody to truly love another he must have love personified in him – there must be the indwelling of the person of God who is himself love. Whatever is in a man finds expression through the man “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” The ‘mouth speaks’ is used to show expression or output of a man. So you’ve got to have love for it to find expression through you.
I’m not being pushy here but seriously, if God is love then God must be in you in order to produce true love. God is the author of all truth and emotional love which is the ‘one true emotion’ as Celine Dion puts it is not left out.
The reason for so much adulterated love is because people do not have the true love gland – God – in them; people express what they generally have within and that is adulterated love from adulterated ‘god’.
Love in me, finding expression through me is love living His normal life in me and my every life is an expression of all His work within me. This is what love wants – people He will live through so that the heart need of many others can be met.
You are probably wondering why you do not seem to be able to love right. You seem to be in love and yet you get it all wrong or your heart seems to be filled with so much love yet your expressions do not depict love. Even you know true love when you come across one but you seem to always get it wrong. Could it be that you have the wrong definition of love – that what you think that love is isn’t what it is and you’ve got in the wrong love or got the wrong kind of love in you. Dear, the lamest pursuit I know is the pursuit of a wrong definition of a thing. Not knowing the truth leads to the acceptance of anything as the truth as long as it appeals to the immediate desire. God is true love and anything that is not found in God is not true love. True love is heavier, deeper, higher and wider than anyone can contain yet simple and light for everyone to be contained with.
Now that we know that God is love, we can understand that love is perfect and true in all wise. Meaning, whatever love that does not bring a person to perfection is not true and whatever love that does not bring you to the truth is not perfect. Jesus loves yet He instructed his disciples to dust their sandals and depart from whoever rejects their message of love. God loves enough to rebuke and correct. This still brings us to wanting to know what true love is and as in a direct proportion knowing who God is because He is love.
Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. (Ephesians 3:17-19 emphasis
Impressum
Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG
Texte: Ayodele Ajileye
Bildmaterialien: Shakers and Changers
Cover: Shakers and Changers
Lektorat: Shakers and Changers Editorial Team
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 30.12.2019
ISBN: 978-3-7487-2495-7
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Widmung:
This book is dedicated to you the reader because you are a love being.