Is Love Just a Verb?

Deuteronomy  28:47-48 KJV
Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.

How many of us hold ourselves up to this standard? As Moses relayed this message to the people of Israel, it became apparent, it is not only enough to seek to serve God with our actions, the state of our heart as we serve him . . . it matters. It brings up the question. Do we just serve God with our actions? Is love just a verb?

It reminds me of 1 Corinthians 13. It says it over and over. Love matters.

I have heard it repeatedly. Love is a verb. We demonstrate our love with our actions. I think this has been said in response to people who say that they love but their actions say otherwise.

But if that was the end of the story there are verses in the bible that do not make any sense. It says in the bible, if we bestow all our goods to feed the poor and give our bodies to be burned and have not charity (God's kind of love) it profits us nothing (1 Corinthians 13:3). If love were just a verb the fact that the goods were given to the poor would be enough. But, apparently, it is not enough. We need to stop ourselves from just going through the motions if our heart is not right.

Now this can be tricky, sometimes it can be effective to "go through the motions" to get our heart to change. For example, once I was in a heated argument with someone and the Holy Spirit reminded me the verse Romans 12:21: Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. Even though I was angry and would have rather punched this woman, I went over to her and hugged her. She told me to get away. I said No. We cried and all the hate melted away. So, in that case the actions (or verb part of love) came first before the emotions. But the emotion .  . . the feeling part of love did come.

Maybe the point is to not be okay with doing things without joy or love (?) We need to take responsibility for our emotions and our heart. We need to not let it run wild. More than once I ran through my day stressed and went from task to task. It usually blows up in my face. At the end of the day, I sat with God and asked him, "What went wrong?" He told me. I need to stop making life all about crossing things off my to do list. If my heart is not right, I need to stop and get with him until I gain his perspective and get my heart right. He is really good at straightening all that is crooked in our hearts if we give him the chance.

 And when you stop and think about it, isn't it really what is best for us anyway. I think we all would rather serve God with love and joy instead of stress or resentment. It is a higher quality life that the Lord wants for us. We don't have to settle with living our lives with stress and anxiety. We have the opportunity to cast our cares on him.

How was Day 13 of the Complaint Free Challenge? It was a success! So that makes today, Day 14,  the second consecutive day. My daughter, Aubrey, gave me some good advice. She said I should go to bed extra early so I have less time to complain. 😋