Loveology

Ahava is the one and only kind of love that will carry a relationship past the early “deep feelings of affection” and through the whole of life — decades of highs and lows, marriage and family, a career and unemployment, suffering and celebration, sickness and health, and well into the epilogue of life.

Do you trust that the way of Jesus is the best way to live? Do you trust that what looks like freedom is actually slavery, and “repressing” your sexual desire may just be the best thing to ever happen to you? Do you trust that God’s heart for you is good? That God’s heart for you is joy? Because if you do, there’s a tree of life in the middle of the garden, and you’re invited to come and eat.

To God, your identity — what makes you you — isn’t rooted in the past (who you were) or in the present (who you are), but in the future — in who you are becoming.

If we aren’t willing to take risks, we will never grow beyond an impoverished version of ourselves. Of who we could have been.

I have the gift of teaching. I believe it’s what God put me on the planet to do. To be honest, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s labor. It’s brutal at times. And more often than not, it’s discouraging. However, there’s something deep inside me that says, “I was made to do this.”

People ask me all the time, “What is God’s will for my life?” Here it is. Spelled out for you in black-and-white. “Avoid porneia.” Like the plague.

“Live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”7 Put another way, “This is who you are. Now live up to it.”

The point of marriage isn’t to find our missing half. It’s to help each other become all that God intended. Our future, real selves.

I have this amazing dad. He’s old-school. No tact. He doesn’t beat around the bush. After Emily and I started dating, he sat me down and said, “John Mark, treat her like you would treat your sister. If you guys break up, and one day in the future you meet her husband, you should be able to look him in the eye and shake his hand without a twinge of guilt. And he should be able to say to you, ‘Thank you for taking such great care of my Emily.’ ”

The same is true for holiness. We have to say no to all sorts of things, but we do so in order to say yes to life with God.

“favorably disposed” toward the Israelites. They made an idol out of the very thing that was a gift from God. Are we any different? There is a bent in all of us to turn gifts into gods.

The serpent is not his equal, but he is his opposite. Jesus called him “a murderer from the beginning” and exposed his agenda as one who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”6 What God builds up, the serpent tries to tear down. What God sets free, he tries to imprison. What God creates, he tries to deface.

You are “holy,” and you are in the process of becoming holy. You are “pure,” and you are in the process of becoming pure. You are “blameless” (or without defect), and you are in the process of becoming blameless. God starts with the end in mind and works backward, kind of like reverse engineering.

Marriage is the product of creation, not culture. Humans get credit for a lot of stuff in the Genesis story. We came up with science and technology and the arts and architecture and urban planning — but not marriage. It goes all the way back to God.

The opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s apathy. And there’s a fine line between tolerance and apathy.

Jesus’ life is the example for how to love.

The opposite of holy isn’t evil. It’s ordinary, common, go with the crowd.

When it comes to the feeling of love, you’re in the passenger seat. As I said before, your role is passive. It’s something that happens to you. But with the action of love, you’re at the wheel. Your role is active. It’s something you do.

As a general rule, where the Bible is dogmatic, we should be dogmatic. Where the Bible is ambiguous, we should be open-minded and loaded with grace. And where the Bible is silent, we should shut the heck up.

nobody is a perfect match. Tim Keller makes this great point about how every other person on the planet is a bad match for you. You’re all incompatible. Nobody is a good fit. It’s just that some people are a worse fit than others.6