"Love What Ought To Be Loved"

   I have been trying to figure out what to write about for a few days. Something meaningful, but something you'll be interested in. I typed about five different posts, and I think I found the right topic..... What really is love? I have been thinking a lot about love. What does it mean to love? How are we suppose to love? My dad often says "Love what ought to be loved." What is "ought to be loved" though? Love, such a small word, means so much more. I am only a teen girl, still trying to understand these questions.

   The world has taken the true meaning of love and twisted it around. Now, when people think of love they think of some type of a fuzzy feeling towards someone else.  I think there is more to it.  Love is not just a fuzzy feeling. It's more than that. It's something powerful and meaningful. Something beyond a feeling. We seem to use the word love in almost every sentence we use. I love that........I love this..........I am in love..... What does it really mean though?

    If I speak in the tongues of mean and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if i have no prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. it does not insist on it own way; it is not irritable or resentful;it does not rejoice at wrong doings, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease;as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes,the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope , and love abide these three;but the greatest of these is love.

~ 1 Corinthians 13

That's the reference and measure that God defines as love.  Let's be honest. . .actually rewind, let me be honest, it's hard to love like that. As a teenage girl I am learning that it's Jesus living in me through his Spirit that can teach me and shape me to love like he wants.  Left to myself I will come up with my own definition of love, and I will find that I have little power to truly love that which should be loved. There are people and things that I do not love how I should, and it shows me how sinful I am and how much God has to work in my life. 

I want you guys to write{if you want to} about where you need to grow spiritually, or how you need to love more? We all have somewhere  we need to grow. I am imperfect, and I will always have room to grow.

Love,

Cindi{rella}