Love means never having to say you're sorry

Disclaimer----  I am feeling a lot of anger tonight.  This post will probably not be as eloquent or put together or as encouraging and soft and I like to think my writing usually is.  I am going to use words you probably don't usually hear me use and be as raw as ever in trying to share my heart even as my blood is boiling.  I am also not going to proofread so take the grammatical errors with a grain of salt tonight.

"Just follow your heart."

"Do what makes you happy."

"Love means never having to say you're sorry."

What.  Bull.  Crap.

I am sick and TIRED of reading and hearing garbage like this, from my own brothers and sisters nonetheless.  We are supposed to be the LIGHT of the world.  Not walking advertisements for the world and for worldly "wisdom"!!!

Follow my heart?  "The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick.  Who can understand it?"  Jeremiah 17:9  How about I *lead* my heart instead?  How about I stop settling for what my heart wants and do what my Savior wants instead?

Do what makes me happy?  You know what Scripture says will cause me to be happy?  Being gracious to the poor -Proverbs 14:21  Being reproved by God and not despising his discipline -Job 5:17  Keeping the Law -Proverbs 29:18

And how in the WORLD am I supposed to be able to figure out exactly what it is that I can "do" to "make me happy" when I am so fickle and constantly changing my mind!!!!!  Some days I think a big ol piece of chocolate cake will make me happy, until I eat it and then realize I don't feel happy but I feel sick, depressed, and full of regret.  How about when I think I will be happy if I spend a lot of money on a new dress only to buy it and realize the happiness fade within days, maybe hours.  

And the last one.  Love means never having to say you're sorry.  Oh pah-leeze, people.  You cannot honestly believe this nonsense!  We have all of these really cute and catchy slogans about what love is or isn't.  That somehow love has something to do with our happiness or what feels good and how our happiness is of the utmost importance.

Let's all take this moment to hold hands and jump down off our high horses.

Love has nothing to do with how you FEEL.  Happiness is so fleeting that if that is our ultimate goal in life, we are all up a sewage creek without a paddle.  Happiness lasts only for a season, just like any other emotion.  It cannot be attained and then held on to indefinitely.  Within the same hour I can feel both love for my husband and so happy about our marriage and also feel so disgusted with him that I think our marriage is the most miserable relationship in the world and then back to feeling like he is prince charming riding on a white stallion.  (Side note my husband really is truly amazing and I am ashamed at myself for ever doubting him.  My flesh is so weak, which is my whole point!)  I feel those things even now, as he and I are enjoying one of the most incredibly passionate and enjoyable seasons of our relationship.  But my emotions are fickle. 

If i followed my heart.  My wicked, evil nasty hateful heart, I cannot even imagine the messes I would find myself in......Oh wait, yes I can imagine it.  All I have to do is think back to my years as a teenager when I followed my heart as a way of life.  I cannot imagine ever having to endure the miserable HEART ACHE of teenage life that typically is the result of following the heart.

This is worldly advice, folks.  This filth and propaganda that we subscribing to is ludicrous. And we are believing it and passing it on to our children and our grandchildren without blinking an eye.

Let me tell you what Love really is.  And I am going to say this as genuinely as I can without getting all Sunday school on you.  Love is dying for someone, even someone who utterly despises you and will spit on you, mock you and hurl insults on you even as you are dying for them.  Love is giving up what you deserve so that someone else can be spared from what they deserve.  Love is putting someone else before you.  Love is neglecting yourself so that someone else isn't neglected.  See the pattern?  Love is not about YOU.  Love is about THEM.  That is what happen at the cross.  When you start making the cross about YOU instead of about HIM instead about THEM you are making a mockery out it.

Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

You cannot love what this world tells you that you can love and still love God.  THE WORLD will tell you that you can have it both ways.  You can't.  It doesn't work like that.

We have people hurting all around us.  I know in my family and extended family alone I have some people who I love who are hurting in ways I can only begin to imagine.  And I am hurting for them and with them.  How on God's green earth am I ever going to LOVE them if I think love is about ME, my HAPPINESS, my wants, my needs, my heart, my my my my my my!!!!!!!!!!  IT "AIN'T ABOUT ME!"  And it "ain't about you neither!"

Please, stop.  I am begging you to stop.  If you are following Christ, then STOP following this world.  Stop neglecting people who really need your love, your support, your forgiveness, your help, your honesty, your virtues.  Lead your heart where Christ leads you.  Let your heart follow you down a righteous and God-fearing path.  

Oh, yeah.  And if I see one more asinine post from a fellow believer in Jesus Christ, telling me and the rest of the cyber world to do what makes me happy, I may just link this blog to your wall.  Fair warning.  And no more sad kitten photos while we're at it.