Live Free with Josh Howerton - Why "Love is Love" is Not True | Ep 346 | Monday, June 3, 2024

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

God is love. But is this divine love different than what our culture calls love? It is easy to be swept away into cultural sayings such as “Love is Love” without considering why that might contradict God’s true definition of love. So let's trust God, let Him define love and sit in His word to find what love truly is. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. Church slash daily drive. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Well, hey, welcome to the Daily Drive. If we haven't met, my name is Carlos, and I get to be a part of the pastoral team here at Lake Point, and we get to hang out this week for a few minutes every day as we dive into the Word of God.

Just a quick disclaimer. In today's episode, we'll be briefly addressing some themes around love and sexuality as we discuss our cultural landscape. So parents, if you're joining with your kids, I leave it up to your discretion of whether or not this is an age-appropriate conversation for them. And the reason we want to lean into some of these topics is because if the church doesn't disciple people, the world will. Now, today's verse is found in 1 John chapter 4, verse 7 to 8, and it says this, Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is.

is love. I was born in race in El Salvador, and when I turned 18, I moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan to go to college. And in my junior year, I met a beautiful girl who is now my wife. Her name is Brooke. And I asked her to be my girlfriend. Now, as somebody who was born in race in a Spanish-speaking country, naturally, my first language is not English. So I had to learn not only how to speak English well, but also some of the cultural differences between my culture and in this case, back at the time, my girlfriend's culture. Now, here's what I knew. When you date somebody, you say nice things like, you're beautiful, would you like to go out with me? I enjoy hanging out with you. And then also things like, I love you. But what I didn't know is, I don't know that

there was any way that I could have known this. Apparently, in our American culture, there's like a special weight that comes with saying, I love you. Like if you say, I love you to whoever it is you're dating, apparently you're very serious and you really mean it and you're taking the relationship to the next level. Now, where I come from, that's not a thing. If you're dating somebody, honestly, just naturally will say, I love you and it doesn't really mean much and it doesn't mean I'm ready to take a relationship to the next level. So I think it was around a week after I started dating Brooke that I was.

I looked her in the eye and I said, hey, I love you. And she was shocked. She could not believe. I just said, I love you. And me, on the other hand, I was just confused because I'm like, you're my girlfriend. Why would I not love you? And in that moment, I realized we're both familiar with the same word, love. But it seems like they mean too very.

different things. It seems like for you it means one thing and for me it means something else and you have all sorts of implications that come with this word but that's not really the case for me. And I start there because that's what happens today in our culture. Love is this word that we find in scripture as we learn that God is love. So we use it all the time and so we say we love God but we also love football. and we love to sleep in and our culture celebrates love. But it seems like when the Bible speaks about love, it's as if we're not really talking about the same thing. And so let's just start there.

We take this for granted, but if you're a Christian, you were created by God and you belong to a God who is love. Now, we hear that and we're like, yeah, I've heard that before. But throughout history, the predominant belief about God has not been that God is love. God, traditionally, throughout history and cultures, has been primarily perceived as someone or something to be afraid of, but not someone to be loved by.

So anybody today that says, I believe that God is love, they didn't get that from anywhere except for the Bible. Now, the Bible says God is love, but the culture today says love is love. But there's several problems with this idea that love is love, and what it intends to communicate, and this could honestly be a whole series of episodes

that we might actually explore in the future. But for now, let's address it very briefly. One, the Bible teaches that God is love, but love is not God. If God is love and you're a Christian, then you trust God to define what love is. And what we don't do is take our own personal experience or what culture says today and project that onto what we believe God should bless and how we think God should be.

If you're a Christian, you trust God to define love for you and he does in His Word. And especially through what he did as he gave himself in Christ on the cross to save sinners like you and I. That's one. Two, today's popular idea that love is love at its core boils down to feelings and desires. So there's an underlying belief that if you feel one way, then you necessarily have to express that or act on it or be your quote unquote authentic self and your own unique expression of those feelings should be validated now by everybody else's legitimate, equally moral, and equally valid way. This belief is at the core of the LGBTQ plus sexual ethic.

but there's a sense in which if you think about it nobody really believes that quote unquote love is love is always true your feelings and desires should not define who you are and not all feelings and desires should be trusted and acted on to give you just two brief examples every married man will feel attraction to somebody that's not their wives. Those feelings might be real, but they should not be pursued because that's not love, that's lust. In the 1970s, in the United States, Nambla was created. And this is the North American Man Boy Love Association, which is, according to their website, quote, a political, civil rights, and educational organization that wants to educate society about the positive and beneficial nature of man, boy, mutually consensual love.

This group is seeking to change this, but today the vast majority of people, regardless of your personal beliefs, would probably agree that that is not love either. Those are just two examples where just because something is called love doesn't mean it is. And in those two cases, if somebody were to say, well, love is love, that wouldn't make it true. the biblical view of what love is involves feelings yes but it's also more than that author tim keller says love is never primarily defined in the bible as a feeling at its foundational at its foundation love is at least a commitment and a promise in fact this is really interesting listen to this in any relationship according to the bible love frequently occurs and it's lived out in spite of feelings so every

time when it comes to love and what it is and how to live it out according to the Bible, there is so much more to consider than only your feelings and desires. So back to 1st John chapter 4, verse 7 to 8. Let me read it just one more time. It says this, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God, anyone who does not love, does not know God because God is love. Here's what this means for you very practically today.

Number one, don't let culture define love. Let God define it. And trust that because he loves you, what he says in his word is always true and is always good. Number two, if God is love, this is what it means for you and me is that even when you turn your back on him, he says, I love you. When you run towards him, he says, I love you. When you fail again and again, he says, I love you. Romans 5.8 says that while we were still sinners, God demonstrates his love for us in Christ, that he died for us in our place.

God's love for you is not dependent upon your character. It is dependent upon his covenant. God does not love you because you've been lovely. He loves you because he is loving. And number three, if God is love and you've experienced, experience his love. Now, go and love God with all your hard, body, soul, and mind, and go and love others like God loved you. We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays

at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. For more information, visit Lake Point, point.church slash daily drive.