Love Is All You Need


When the Beatles sang, "Love is all you need" they were more right than they could have ever imagined. Outside of air, water, food, shelter, clothing, and coffee, love is the ultimate need of all things created. I saw a tweet yesterday by Tim Keller that Phil Ryken has written the book above. Dr. Ryken is an extraordinarily intelligent communicator of God's truth and the travails modern age, much of which is a the result of a distorted view of love. I surely could use some pointers on learning to love like Jesus. So, I bought the tome.

I try to watch using words like "I love" beer or something else I enjoy. It cheapens love.

My buddy and I were chatting last night in his fourth floor den--I love the idea that a room four stories high is a den--about love, particularly male/female. Without getting into the details of the conversation, I sensed God told me that to love like Jesus is to love without expectancy. As opposed to: If I love, then a certain set of circumstances follow as consequences. Jesus warns about the reciprocity of such "love" because in the end it could just be two people catering to each other to get what they want. More like a commercial transaction. I give you this, you give me that.

Expectancy is predeterming ahead of time how people are ordained to respond to us. It differs from hope because hope is wanting things to work out well and wisely but also acknowledges the reality that our sun may shine but others may not grow as we plan. In fact, they may not grow at all. And what we may think is pure sunshine of our love is actually selfishness just by a nicer sounder name. When our love is not reciprocated the way we hoped, we still love anyway. When we love without expectancy, we leave the results up to God.

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