Love or kindness?

"Never mistake motion for action." - Ernest Hemingway

Lately it seems like life has gotten me into this lull where the love that I should be showing through action has become nothing more than a facade motion that can be called kindness (not to say that kindness is not valuable, but it's in no way at the same level as love). This regression affects both my relationship with God, and my relationships with those around me; but I'll look at them separately.

1. Love is really a big word to get around and fully grasp, especially when we talk about "loving God". How does one show love for God in the first place? Spending time with God, talking to Him, devoting his life to God, praising Him etc. And when we love God we follow His commandments, we seek to be more like Him, we tell others about the Lord and how amazing He is, we glorify God, we trust Him, we put our faith in Jesus, and the list goes on. However, it all starts with actually loving God in our hearts, that the rest of these things come from; and sometimes we let Satan get to us and cause us to lose focus of that love. I realize lately that I've lost my focus on loving God with all I am. Sure, I still did my devotions each day, but it wasn't out of love, and it didn't bring me joy with a realization that I was learning about God. And I started skipping devotions for lack of energy, a morning here, a night there (I generally do one at each time). Also, it was harder for me to share with others God's Word; I still did, but when I wasn't actively loving God, how could I share His Word with love?

This is getting long so I'll cut to the chase in saying that basically, most of my actions still showed my relationship with God, but my love for Him wasn't the cause of it. Proverbs (one of my favorite books) says "People may be pure in their own eyes, but the LORD examines their motives."

2. All life comes from God, and all things are in His hands. I've come to realize that when I focus on God first and foremost, He helps the other parts of my life work better as well. When I stopped focusing on God, I stopped showing love in my other relationship as well; and this is where the "kindness" comes in. I was still "nice" to my family and friends, and did all the small things like holding doors or getting something, minor details. But it feels like I did those things just because it was kind, not because I wanted to serve my loved ones selflessly and give of myself. It's easy to "spend" time with someone you enjoy being around when you have fun with it too; however, I've found it's harder to "give" time to someone to do something that's not enjoyable to you. In the same way I was still kind, but it seemed that I lost my will to devote my energy, thoughts, and such in order to please, encourage, and better the lives of my family and friends.

That all got very long very quick, but that pattern for the last few weeks kind of hit me today with Mother's Day and all the talk of and showing of love. Anyway, I feel rather devoted now to following through on showing my love, first to God, and then to those in my life.

I'll just leave with a classic DC Talk line that sums up all that I just tried to say, "Luv is a verb", and I'm still learning how to do it.