Love Is… #112

❤ Love…simply just is~ ❤

 

Love is learning to love yourself first so you can love others better.
Love is being kind to them especially when they don’t deserve it.
Love is believing in them more than they can.
Love is making sacrifices without hesitation.
Love is thinking of them before yourself.
Love is growing with them.
Love is overcoming self-preservation for their safety.
Love is believing in yourself, sometimes for their sake.
Love is forgiving first.
Love is keeping promises in inconvenient times.
Love is remembering they’re good for you.
Love is providing comfort when grief enters their life.
Love is building them up every single day.
Love is being a mirror for them.
Love is having the courage to call them out.
Love is loving those they care for.
Love is making and realizing dreams together.
Love is being their rock.
Love is living without the fear of being enough.
Love is feeling less afraid with them.
Love is expecting better from yourself and them.
Love is being grateful for them.
Love is making them feel beautiful.
Love is bringing them a peace they have always deserved.
Love is asking them difficult questions so that they can be truthful to themselves.
Love is not giving up on them. Ever.
Love is winning at life together.
Love is dipping a life-long friendship in honey.
Love is accepting their history and flaws.
Love is making healthy choices because of them.
Love is living with fewer regrets.
Love is learning to lean on them.
Love is listening so they can be heard.
Love is saying sorry over and over again.
Love is proving love is thicker than blood, sweat and tears.
Love is burying them.

~Author Sartaj Anand

 

LOVE IS > LESS

 

 

LOVE IS… being willing to have your life complicated by the needs and struggles of others without impatience or anger.

LOVE IS… actively fighting the temptation to be critical and judgmental toward another while looking for ways to encourage and praise.

LOVE IS… making a daily commitment to resist the needless moments of conflict that come from pointing out and responding to minor offenses.

LOVE IS… being lovingly honest and humbly approachable in times of misunderstanding.

LOVE IS… being more committed to unity and understanding than you are to winning, accusing, or being right.

LOVE IS… a making a daily commitment to admit your sin, weakness, and failure and to resist the temptation to offer an excuse or shift the blame.

LOVE IS… being willing, when confronted by another, to examine your heart rather than rising to your defense or shifting the focus.

LOVE IS… making a daily commitment to grow in love so that the love you offer to another is increasingly selfless, mature, and patient.

LOVE IS… being unwilling to do what is wrong when you have been wronged, but looking for concrete and specific ways to overcome evil with good.

LOVE IS… being a good student of another, looking for their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs so that in some way you can remove the burden, support them as they carry it, or encourage them along the way.

LOVE IS… being willing to invest the time necessary to discuss, examine, and understand the relational problems you face, staying on task until the problem is removed or you have agreed upon a strategy of response.

LOVE IS… being willing to always ask for forgiveness and always being committed to grant forgiveness when it is requested.

LOVE IS… recognizing the high value of trust in a relationship and being faithful to your promises and true to your word.

LOVE IS… speaking kindly and gently, even in moments of disagreement, refusing to attack the other person’s character or assault their intelligence.

LOVE IS… being unwilling to flatter, lie, manipulate, or deceive in any way in order to co-opt the other person into giving you what you want or doing something your way.

LOVE IS… being unwilling to ask another person to be the source of your identity, meaning, and purpose, or inner sense of well-being, while refusing to be the source of theirs.

LOVE IS… the willingness to have less free time, less sleep, and a busier schedule in order to be faithful to what God has called you to be and to do as a spouse, parent, neighbor, etc.

LOVE IS… a commitment to say no to selfish instincts and to do everything that is within your ability to promote real unity, functional understanding, and active love in your relationships.

LOVE IS… staying faithful to your commitment to treat another with appreciation, respect, and grace, even in moments when the other person doesn’t seem deserving or is unwilling to reciprocate.

LOVE IS… the willingness to make regular and costly sacrifices for the sake of a relationship without asking for anything in return or using your sacrifices to place the other person in your debt.

LOVE IS… being unwilling to make any personal decision or choice that would harm a relationship, hurt the other person, or weaken the bond of trust between you.

LOVE IS… refusing to be self-focused or demanding, but instead looking for specific ways to serve, support, and encourage, even when you are busy or tired.

LOVE IS… daily admitting to yourself, the other person, and God that you are unable to be driven by a cruciform love without God’s protecting, providing, forgiving, rescuing, and delivering grace.

https://www.paultripp.com/articles/posts/23-things-that-love-is-reprise

 

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”  ~Mignon McLaughlin

 

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 New International Version (NIV)

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

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