By: Pastor Jeremiah Balbuena

This Love Month, I want to share a little bit on this prominent lesson we learn from “Beauty and the Beast” – that unlovely things must first be deeply loved before they become loveable.

This is what Paul writes in Romans: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly…. God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”[1] When we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.

Unlovely things must first be deeply loved before they become loveable. Spirituality somehow severed from this crowning virtue of love. John says, “We love because he first loved us.” We know we’ve passed from death to life, we know we’ve made that enormous leap, we know we’ve actually crossed over, if we love each other. Paul talks about putting on love over every other virtue that you can add—like a robe that wraps around them, put on love. In 1 Peter, Peter says, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”[2] Love is the crowning virtue.

The word that Peter uses for love is agape, a word the New Testament writers made famous. It wasn’t really used and didn’t even have a particularly positive connotation until the biblical writers got a hold of it and used it, in numerous contexts, to describe the love of God and the love we’re to show as we grow in our knowledge and experience of God.

When you think about it, most love that operates in the human realm is conditional. It’s an if/then. If you love me back or if you do nothing to forfeit my love, or if you’re beautiful or attractive, if you’re something, then I will love you or continue to love you. The way human love tends to operate is that there is a feeling of attraction, thankfulness, or some kind of emotion, and the fruit of that emotion is a decision that says, “Because I feel this way, I will love you.” The decision can transcend the emotion, but it’s never very far from that emotion. It’s the “if” thing: “I feel attraction; therefore I choose to love you. If I stop feeling attraction, my love will shrink in proportion to that.”

What agape does is completely reverse the terms of that. Agape is not emotionless; it’s just that the emotion follows the decision, not the other way around. In other words, the emotion is the fruit of the decision. There’s a choice that’s been made: I choose to love. On the basis of that choice, emotion rises. But the choice is fundamental. The choice is the thing that’s in place regardless of the emotion. The emotion rides on the decision.

Now here’s where agape gets very interesting: It’s far more stubborn than simply that I choose to love and therefore feel loving. It actually pursues the object of its love. It is loving even in the face of resistance, even in the face of behavior where another emotion might be more expected. So agape will love in the face of rebellion, in the face of rejection, in the face of rank badness. It’s this amazing form of love that has made a decision, and the decision is final. It’s set. On the basis of that decision, whether it’s met with loving, good behavior or not, it continues to pursue in love.

That’s how we normally talk about agape, and that’s a good way to talk about it. But here’s something that I think is an even a simpler way to understand it: Agape is unprovoked love. Normally, when we hear of something unprovoked, we think of anger, attack, aggression, or violence. Agape works on the same principle—just in the opposite direction. As with unprovoked violence, when we seek to understand unprovoked love, we look for the explanation not in the object of love, but in the one who is loving. We say there must be something going on in them, something deep down, that accounts for this kind of act.

What I want to help us understand is that there are three contexts where this love—agape, loving as God loves—has to be present in us or else we default to mere human love. The three groups of people for whom we need agape love are the losers, the winners, and the enemies. If you don’t understand what agape love is, and you don’t allow the love of Jesus Christ to flow into and through you, then you will be fine as long as everything is very satisfactory. As long as love’s coming back to you, as long as you can find beautiful creatures to love, you’ll do just fine. But the minute you bang up against a winner, a loser, or an enemy, you’re in trouble. You don’t have agape.

I think one of the most remarkable biblical stories we have of agape love is the story of David and Jonathan. Saul, the father of Jonathan, was David’s rival. He was feeling eclipsed; he was feeling in the shadows. He does what you do when you have most of these feelings in your presence—you try to throw a spear at them, in some metaphorical or real way. You try to destroy the beauty and the giftedness of the David in your midst, because he makes you feel inferior. That was Saul.

Jonathan, Saul’s son, had more to lose than Saul did. He was the prince. He was the one who was actually going to be supplanted by David; he would not inherit the throne because of David’s greatness. And Jonathan did everything that David did: he knew the art of war; he knew the art of wooing; he knew the art of leadership. Everywhere that David was good at, Jonathan was good at and had aspirations for. It’s just that David was better.

David did it better, yet Jonathan became David’s biggest champion. He actually made enormous sacrifices for the sake of advancing David’s cause. I’ll tell you why: because he saw it as God’s cause.

You know what the opposite of love is? It is not hate. It’s fear. John says this in 1 John 4:18: “Perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” Fear will block the love of God infusing you and coming out of you. Fear has to do with punishment.

Fear has to do with: “You don’t measure up. You’re not worth it. If we really knew you, we wouldn’t like you.” That’s fear. Yet the reality is: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”[3] Jesus Christ went to Calvary: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly… God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”[4]

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By Charles R. Swindoll

1 Corinthians 13

It is February. Overcast, chilly, bleak-and-barren February. If you’re not into skiing the slopes, skating on ice, or singin’ in the rain, there’s not a lot outside to excite you. Sure was gracious of God to make it last only twenty-eight days . . . well, sometimes twenty-nine. No wonder bears hibernate at this time of year—there’s not even Monday Night Football!

But wait. There is something extra special about February. Valentine’s Day. Hearts ‘n flowers. Sweetheart banquets. A fresh and needed reminder that there is still a heart-shaped vacuum in the human breast that only the three most wonderful words in the English language can fill.

To love and to be loved is the bedrock of our existence. But love must also flex and adapt. Rigid love is not true love. It is veiled manipulation, a conditional time bomb that explodes when frustrated. Genuine love willingly waits! It isn’t pushy or demanding. While it has its limits, its boundaries are far-reaching. It neither clutches nor clings. Real love is not short-sighted, selfish, or insensitive. It detects needs and does what is best for the other person without being told.

As we read in that greatest treatise ever written on the subject: “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears . . . believes . . . hopes . . . endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:4-7).

“I LOVE YOU.” Simple, single-syllable words, yet they cannot be improved upon. Nothing even comes close. And because we don’t have any guarantee we’ll have each other forever, it’s a good idea to say them as often as possible.

Tell each one of your kids you love ‘em. Don’t just say, “Love ya.” Say, “I love you.” There’s a difference. If you don’t have any kids, tell your mate. If you’re single, call up a close friend and say those three powerful words with feeling.

Excerpted from Day by Day with Charles Swindoll, Copyright © 2000 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. (Thomas Nelson Publishers). All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission.

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By Reah Padla

Every time I look at my son Noah, I remember the love that I share with his Daddy Joshua, my husband. I still can’t believe that it’s been two years since we got married on that rainy day in January 2008. Oh how time flies!

God has blessed us with a baby. I believe that he is a reward from the Lord, a blessing that we are responsible for.  But I’m not writing about parenthood because I am only touching the tip of the iceberg that is being a mom. I just want to say that the baby is a great reward for waiting on God and for the one, my one true love.

True Love Waits. Those three words stuck with me ever since I attended a TLW (True Love Waits) seminar almost a decade ago. It was more than just a reminder to the youth to say “No to Pre-Marital Sex”.  It was an event that made me think about my future – my future mate, my kids and God’s faithfulness to me.

True Love Waits. I remember my batch-mates in CROSSLinC attending the seminar right here in ICS. A lot of us signed pledge cards to commit to purity. I waited. Sadly, some didn’t. I wonder how many of those who made a commitment became true to their words.

True Love Waits. I would always tell my friends about the importance of not rushing into relationships. Desipte that, however, I have a lot of friends who made the mistake of going into many relationships, to their disappointment. I asked God for grace to be different. I set my standards in looking for a man higher because I know God wanted it that way.

True Love Waits. I didn’t want my heart broken many times over because I knew that, whoever God had destined to be my husband, he deserved to receive it whole. I knew I could learn from the mistakes of others and that I didn’t have to try them for myself. I didn’t have to search and wait long enough because he was just right in front of me. I just needed for him to make the first move.

True Love Waits. Even if I knew I had found the one for me, I waited on God. It took us three years to nurture our friendship before our relationship became “official.” While it took others only a few days or a few weeks, it took us years. Why? Because we believed (and we still do) that a good foundation for a strong, long-lasting romantic relationship is a deep, authentic and cherished friendship. We placed God in the center of our relationship.

True Love Waits. It took a lot of courage before I said the words “I Love You”. There were many times when I wanted to say those words to Joshua but I didn’t because I knew the right time, God’s time, had not yet come. Every time I decided to finally say those “magic” words, God would seem to providentially not allow us to see each other. It may sound unbelievable but there was even one time when I believed God blinded both of us. We were at the same place at the same time but we weren’t able to meet. It was the time when I really wanted to tell him but, somehow, I felt God urging me, “It’s not yet time.”

True Love Waits. When we finally became “us”, we took it very slow. We knew we’d always end up together but we had to slow things down and not act as a “lovey-dovey” couple. I could not understand before when my dad wouldn’t allow me to join his family on an out-of-town vacation trip. Nonetheless, I obeyed and only later began to understand my dad’s reasons, especially when I became a parent myself.

True Love Waits. Josh and I waited. We committed ourselves to purity because we knew that we deserved the best. God wanted us to enjoy His gift only within the bounds of marriage. So we listed down rules. We obeyed our families. The farthest place we’ve been to together was Tagaytay and we even had the family driver with us. We made a promise to wait for each other and not let God, our parents, our families, and our church down.

True Love Waits. After almost three years, he proposed. Three months later, we married. Within those short months of preparation, we could have easily given in into temptation because, after all, we were getting married. But we didn’t.

True Love Waits. A few months into the marriage, there were talks of having a baby. We felt we weren’t ready yet so we waited some more. When we finally decided, the waiting become longer. The desire to have a baby was stronger than ever. Little did we know that God had already blessed my womb.

True Love Waits. We waited for Noah for almost ten months. 2009 was one long but fulfilling year for me. Waiting for my little love at the labor room was truly worth it. Now, I look at our baby and I see how wonderful it is to wait on your one true love and how it is best if you preserve yourself for your future children.

True Love Waits. I always believed that it is never too early to prepare for one’s future. I was just a young girl when I decided to preserve myself and commit to purity because God wanted it. I deserved the best, my family deserved not be shamed, my future mate deserved a whole me, and my future kids deserved all the love and the right to live in a healthy environment. I made a decision. I made a commitment. I waited.

True Love Waits. The waiting part was difficult but I thank the Lord for His amazing grace. We couldn’t have done it on our own. It is only by God’s grace that we were able to resist temptation and wait on Him.

True Love Waits. It’s true. One doesn’t need to fall in love many times and get hurt over and over again. Waiting for “the one” by following The One always brings about blessings. It is my prayer that our young people also experience God in their relationships.

True Love Waits. This is more than just preserving one’s virginity. It is a commitment to a life of purity as the Lord wills it.?? God is the Greatest Author of Love Stories. Allow Him to write yours.

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Four Sundays of February, the youth of ICS will be talking about True Love Waits. We’re now on our second week and we are happy with the response. We at CROSSLinC believe that parents should take a big part in the future of their children. So parents, we encourage you to bring your high school and college sons and daughters to join this seminar. If you want them to learn about love and sex from a wholesome, positive and meaningful Christian perspective, then have them join the youth of ICS.

By Mr. and Mrs. Christian and Claire Pascual

HE SAID…

It’s almost Valentines and it will be special – it’ll be our first one as man and wife. I’m thinking of making it fancy. But not too fancy. Alas, taking the notch too high makes it more difficult to top next year.

Should I bring her flowers? Maybe. The last ones I gave her, not counting the wedding, were for her birthday last year. Chocolates? We have tons of them, since I developed a sweet tooth. Jewelry? Another Tiffany? I’m broke.

Alas, these are not the romantic musings of a man still courting his girlfriend/fiancée – these are reality-based considerations of a married man who, together with other married men, is discussing with them how they each plan to celebrate this romance-filled time of the year. True enough, the counsel of a wise pastor-friend says that the courtship does not end with the marriage. “A happy wife makes for a happy life,” he said. “Celebrate the monthsary.” I’m heeding these advices.

I can say that I’m truly blessed with our courtship, engagement and wedding story. People who’ve read our story may think we’ve got the marriage made. Not exactly. The road to Now was not easy. It took a tremendous amount of mountain-moving faith, and a fair amount of rock-pushing hard work.

Nowadays, people’s minds are awash with media’s perception of Love. But that’s a different topic entirely. It’s easy to be swept away with the dreamy, diluted and preconceived ideas of love and how it tickles one’s fancy. I’ve seen too many movies and heard too many songs describing how love is like. Marriage is often put in a bad light and is often even blamed for spoiling relationships.

Taking Life as a teacher, I’ve learned that Love is not merely warm, mushy feelings, as it has been commonly relegated. Love is a decision.

And there is no better description of it than the one we find in the Love chapter – 1 Corinthians 13. What does it say? Love decides that I be patient. Love decides that I be kind. I decide not to be jealous. I decide not to be boastful. I decide not to be demanding. I decide not to be unjust. I decide to keep enduring. I decide not to give up. I decide to hope. And that is because I love.

And that is Love.

Now, barely a few months after proudly updating my Facebook status, I am faced with the often-asked but barely-satisfactorily answered question: “How did I know that she’s the one?”

So how did I know that she’s the one? I decided by the Faith that I had.

Was I correct with my decision? I believe that God gave me the best. And I will keep working to make this marriage the best that God wants it to be for me. How? By God’s grace, I will continue to try and be the best husband, friend, lover, leader and servant that I can be for my wife.

In short, Love is not what we have always thought it to be. Love is never easy. It is hard and very costly, so costly that it took the life of the Father’s only begotten Son to reconcile His beloved to Himself.

Claire, I love you. I thank God for you. Happy Valentine’s Day, Love.

____

SHE SAID…

Our present home was the sole witness to Christian’s grand proposal – it was part of his promise, to love me forever and to build a family with me. The whole kneeling-down-on-one-knee sequence happened right where a sofa now holds guests when they come over to our small condominium unit somewhere in Kapitolyo, Pasig.

After the wedding ended and the festivity quieted down, we knew that our life was now changed forever. We had left our parent’s house and now it was just us- two personalities, two sets of habits, with two different lifestyles. Not to mention moving away from our respective comfort zones. Cleaning, cooking, and paying the bills. We now had no one to turn to but each other.

I, for one, had never cooked a single meal in my entire life. But I do now. Christian, on the other hand, well, let’s just say that if my mother-in-law could just see him clean the house the way he does now, it would bring tears to her eyes.

It’s tough doing chores, especially when you’re practically exhausted from your day’s work and the bed is calling out to you. But its not about just me or him anymore. Love is never without sacrifice.

We knew all these had to be taken in stride. We have talked to pastor friends (and ninongs and ninangs) and we realized that being on our own is a blessing. It is a process of molding, shaping and preparing us for a bigger family.

We know people have our backs too. Our home was lovingly prepared for us by our parents before we moved in. We have friends at ICS whom we can turn to for advice. And most recently, we have started marriage counseling sessions with two other young couples during the weekends. It was refreshing, to talk with Christian people who are experiencing the very same things we are, and going through them with the guidance of God’s Word.

I know this is just the start. I am excited for what is to come. The wedding has been a blessing. Our marriage, for sure, will be pretty amazing.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mimi and Karl

Give Me Five!

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