Agape
- Hope Dobson
- May 3, 2020
- 4 min read
Feelings are temporary and fleeting. You don’t always feel happy, sad, anxious, etc. 24/7. But there is one feeling that everyone craves and longs for. It's considered the hardest emotion as well as the best and revered by those who don't have it. Love is what we all seek. Love from family, from friends, love from relationships, or the world. Whether we realize it or not, we yearn for love. Not just any love either. The world constantly shows a "storybook love" and we are lead to believe that is what it should look like and what we want. One that sweeps you off your feet and makes you feel like you have never felt before. A love that we watch through a screen and our hearts selfishly want to feel that. So we look for it. How many times have you found it? And I mean truly found what you think is a "love for the ages"? How many times have you fallen to your knees because you found a love so overwhelming that you quite literally could not stand?
Would you believe me if I told you I found that?
I found a love that is never temporary. It does not come and go or hit a high or low point. It follows you there. It's the companion we all want and long for. It's what we yearn to have and seek out for most of our lives. It's what so many get so wrong because there is only one way that its right. It's where we put our hope when we, inevitably, fall into the trenches of our humanity. It's how we stride in the aftermath of chaos.
It's Agape Love. Love: an intense feeling of deep affection. // A great interest and pleasure in something. Love is a feeling. It is just an interest and people lose interest.
Agape: the highest form of love, charity" and "the love of God for man and of man for God" // Selfless, sacrificial, and unconditional love; it persists no matter what. Agape is an act. It doesn't lose interest or come and go. It never stops.
Love, true abounding agape love, can only come from the one who created it. The one that created us to experience it in the first place. The rip off is never as good as the original; there's a reason it's the original. A lot of times we look for the purpose of life in the things closest to us and what we can tangibly, right here and right now, grab on too. It's the quick-fix mentality that consumes so many of our actions and thoughts today. But if you really want to find the purpose of something, the true meaning and use of what something is for, you go to the one who made it in the first place.
"Where do you do to find the purpose of something? You go to the creator. If I have an iPhone I do not go to my car mechanic to figure out how my iPhone works. Not because he's not smart or doesn't know anything about it, it's because he didn't create it. Many of us have been going to culture for the idea of relationship, and culture didn't create relationship." -Michael Todd
Material things do not matter; they aren't mine to begin with. What is mine, and has always been mine, is my Fathers love and care for me. That is all I want and that is all that matters. "Set a fire within my soul that I can’t contain and I can’t control because I want more of you God." Lose control to Him. Let Him open your heart and minds to the love the He is constantly trying to show you. He is actively trying to show you how much He knows your mind. He knows your personality. He knows you. I know that is said a lot but I truly don't want you to miss this. He. Knows. You. If you think you need something, if you feel you want more of something or you are just wishing someone understood what you are going through and how to tell you the right things to make it better. HE DOES THAT.
We are fully known and loved by Him. It is never give and take. This or that. Less or more. He is constantly present and unfathomably wonderful. He is all-encompassing and truly for our hearts. Just as a father protects and wants the world for his children, as does our Father in Heaven want for us.
Hear His heart that is so undeniably loving. Seek His love, and once you have found it find a way to constantly be reminded that He is for you. When I say constantly, I mean every waking second of every day. God doesn't turn on once the coffee is poured. He doesn't set an alarm and manifest once it goes off. It's not that He can't, He is fully capable. But He is there before the alarm and after. During the storm and in the quiet of the wind. Not just sometimes. All the time.
"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." Matthew 6.33
Just as agape is consistently seeking us out, so is He. And that means when you wake, when you sleep, in your dreams, in your subconscious. He is there. Seek Him. For He will never let us go and even though we stumble and flee, every time we look back we see that His hand was in ours the whole time. He is actively loving us.
Once we seek out and come to realize He is the highest form of love we can have, we see thats all He wants for us. He wants us to take delight and pleasure in His creation and how He made us. He made us wonderful and that goes hand in hand with our emotions and feelings. We have to first desire Him and His heart and through that He shows us His love through the things and people around us. And it is good.
He agape us. Let us at least attempt to agape Him.
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