Many Christians protect their hearts by acting like they don't have one. It's sad because they ought to be the most heartfelt and loving people around. When Christians fail to protect their hearts or love properly, they agonize, and the faith suffers. The resolve to this devastating condition is that a Christian must learn how to put on the breastplate of righteousness. This plate represents a Christian trusting wholeheartedly in what God has done through His love and being prepared to defend it at all costs with the belt of truth. To protect God's love, we must understand what it is. Let's investigate by examining the first of the four aspects of God's Love.
The Bible is clear; without love, a person is nothing and gains nothing in this life or the next (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). With such a radical claim about love, I believe nothing is more important than knowing more about it to gain understanding and to live in the wisdom of the gift of God's Love. Let's start with the most familiar of loves known as affection.
To picture affection, think of the care of a mother to a child, or a grandfather (Papa) snuggled up in a recliner with his grand-daughter taking a nap together, or a beloved pet standing there wagging their tail to express everything is just fine. Affectionate love is a broad type of love that relies on the expected and the familiar. Affection, simply put, is a gentle feeling of fondness or liking for something or someone. C.S. Lewis describes it as a humble type of love. Affectionate love sits alongside the other loves of friendship, romance, and (the target of Christian love) unconditional or charity love. For example, when a man and a woman fall in love, it is often because of certain affections – a particular location or culture, experience, personality, or interest – that begin to wrap around the couple to create a love that is then expected and a regular part of their shared lives.
The challenge with affectionate love, because it is so familiar in our everyday lives, is that people often label it as the chief of love, which it is not. That honor only goes to charity or unconditional love I'll share in a later devotion. Affectionate love is lovely; however, it can never be the leading way to define love because affection, like feelings or impulse, come and go. If we rely on this love as the boss of love, then coldness of heart will set in with the familiar, or people will chase love, never catching it, eventually ending up with nothing and gaining nothing.
To avoid the dilemma of falling into the trap of thinking affectionate love is ultimate, bypass leaning on your familiar and expected feelings, your heart, to determine what love is. Instead, put on the breastplate of righteousness to rightly understand the fullness of God's Heart and Love that protects now and forever.
With love,
Pastor Drake