Pastor Article 02-09-25

A young teenage boy and girl were sitting in a swing on her parents’ front porch way up in the mountains of North Carolina. They spent a lot of time there away from everyone, just the two of them. They would talk about all kinds of things. Things about when they had grown up. What would they do: go to college? For them, that meant moving away from home and getting enough money to go. For him it would mean getting a job or going into the military for some good job training. Would they have a family together?
Every Friday evening it was the same. He really liked coming to see her, but her mother’s cooking was another good thing about the visit.
When he got ready to go, he would hold her hand and tell her he would see her next Friday and hug her. But this night, he was feeling tender towards her so he hugged her and said from the bottom of the porch stairs, “You know I love you so much I would fight the biggest man, swim the deepest ocean, climb the highest mountain because I love you so much.” He kissed her for the first time and turned to go. Looking back at her as he opened the gate to leave, he said, “I’ll see you next Friday if it doesn’t rain.”
Sometimes the feeling of love is more powerful than the commitment of love. Love should be used as a word of action, not a word that simply describes our feelings. When you say you love someone, please understand that this should mean that you are deeply committed to caring for them and to being there for them, if at all possible, and to sacrifice your own desires to meet their needs. God so loved us that He gave His only begotten Son. What has your love motivated you to give, or to give up? Men, we are told to “love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;” Ephesians 5:25. That requires a lot of work and sacrifice. That is what real love looks like.
Pastor,
Rev. Wayne Marcus