By Rick Warren — 09/24/2023
“You have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.”
Revelation 2:4-5 (ESV)
Love is an action, not just an emotion. Love is something you do.
It’s easy to love somebody who loves you, isn’t it? It takes nothing at all.
But real love acts and does the loving thing when people don’t deserve it, when they don’t respond to it, or when you don’t feel it. In fact, acting in love when you don’t feel it is the highest form of love. It’s a more mature love when you act loving toward a person who does not respond the same way.
Have you noticed that it’s easier to act your way into a feeling than it is to feel your way into an action?
Some of you have been married for a long time, and the truth is, the flame has gone out. The thrill is gone. You’re living separate lives in the same house. How do you rekindle that romance? How do you rekindle the feeling of love?
You act your way into a feeling. You may say, “I don’t feel like acting loving toward my spouse.” So what? If you start acting in love, I guarantee you the feelings will follow—because feelings follow behavior.
In Revelation 2:4-5, Jesus says to the church, “You have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (ESV).
What Jesus told the church is the same principle for renewing the love in a marriage or any other relationship. You remember, you repent, and you do the things you did at first. The reason the love went away is you stopped doing the things that created the love in the early days.
God doesn’t want you living by your feelings. He wants you living by faith. So you know what he does? Sometimes he lets the feelings go away. Then you have to live by faith and love by faith.
When you love somebody and do the loving thing, even when they’re not responding and even maybe when they’re retaliating, you are loving by faith. That is an action.
Talk It Over
- How do you show your love to the people around you through actions?
- What unloving person around you needs to see your love demonstrated to them through action?
- What “works you did at first” do you need to revive to help grow a relationship?
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