By Denise Turney
Wikimedia Commons – GNU Free Documentation License
As much as we want it to, special love doesn’t exist. Why? Love isn’t fragmented. Love is complete, encompasses all that is real and endures forever. I Corinthians 13:13 says that, “But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
I John 4:7 says that, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”
Love is complete
If love was special, God would love some more than others. Yet, God loves all that God created. Cain may have desired to receive special love from God, to be more highly thought of or cared for by God than his brother, Able. But, Cain discovered that God’s love is not fragmented. It is whole, complete.
Specialness indicates separateness. A single, whole, complete being does not have more important or special parts.
Yet, how many times do we seek after a special love?
We want to be highly favored (Highly favored over who or what? Why isn’t being in God’s will enough?). We cannot bare to see someone who we are dating enjoying the company of someone else. Some of us struggle to keep our grip if someone we are dating enjoys the company of their parent, sibling or a good friend equally as much as they enjoy our company.
Pursuit of special love drives some of us from relationship to relationship. Pursuit of special love drives some of us from worship center to worship center. Pursuit of special love drives some of us from job to job.
Special love lessons
Sooner or later, wherever we go and whoever we enter into a relationship with, we learn that there is no special love. In some instances, it may take years before we make this discovery.
Pursuit of special love could also cause us to stay in abusive and other unhealthy relationships, thinking that, sooner or later, the “special” person we are with will “magically” make our life better. When you think about it, we’re seeking God’s love under the world’s laws.
Continuing to seek what we will never find is frustrating, at best. Is it any wonder that some of us are tired?
Because love cannot exist without God, it’s absolutely necessary that God guide our relationships, all of our relationships. Sounds sensible. Yet, our egos fight and resist, demanding that we keep looking for what we will never find — special love, someone or something that loves us most, more than they love anyone or anything else.
Raymond Clarke and Brenda seek after special love in the book Love Pour Over Me. They aren’t alone in their searching. After all, they meet at college, the place where many of us invest the greatest hope in finding special love.
Searching for special love brings a motley sort of people into Raymond and Brenda’s lives. The search, and its disappointments and illusions of success, help to awaken the couple, opening Raymond and Brenda to real love.
I encourage you to open up to real love. Only God can lead you there.
Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Dayton, Ohio born Raymond Clarke, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.