Mondays Encouragement - A Love Story by Anthony Walker of Anthony's Desk

A Love Story: Falling In Love

Remember when you first fell in love? It was amazing. Nothing else mattered. You didn't care about how your friends joked about you. You didn't care about how late you were on the phone. As a matter of fact, time didn't even exist! You were lost in the forest of love. Colors smelled better, sounds felt better! You were living in a dream. But then, your heart was broken. It was the worst plane crash, earth quake, disaster that could have been. How could they ever? Why would they even think about? It was horrible. You cried and cried and sulked and cried. But then something strange happened. Within the limbic system of your brain, the area that controls the sensations of pain and pleasure, something started tingling. Your frontal lobe, your area of cognition and reasoning, started twitching. You began to reason that I will never let that happen again. So you started building walls that were never supposed to be built. You started shutting down areas of your heart that were supposed to remain open. You started saying foolish things like, "It takes a fool to learn, that love don't love nobody!" All of the happiness in your life began to have a dark cloud looming over it. "Relationships" sounded like a terrible cruise line of broken hearts and painful feelings.

But then, another person comes your way, named Jesus. He says somethings that your bitterness tells you, "Sounds too good to be true." Jesus says, "I'll never leave you nor forsake you. I will always fulfill all of your needs. Nothing will ever come between my love and you." So now Reason is asking, "What's the catch?" Well there is no catch, just truth. In order to experience the fullness of this love, you have to "fall" in it. Fall in love? Yep, fall in love. You begin to think about the last time you fell. The last time you fell, you hurt your hip, or scraped your elbow, or bruised your knee. Research says that the #1 scariest nightmare one could have, is the nightmare of falling. It's not just the falling, it is the fear of what happens in the end. But remember when you first fell in love? There were no inhibitions, no caution, no walls, no closed doors. It was free!. Jesus is asking you today to fall in love with him.

We've been approaching this love thing all wrong. Jesus' prescription of love is "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself." And the order is very important. We must first come to love perfection. God has a perfect love. He teaches us how to love. Once we can love perfection (God), we can then love imperfection(mankind). He (the man you desire) must love God first before he can love you. She (the woman you desire) must love God first, then she can love you. If he won't listen to God, what makes you think he'll listen to you? If she won't submit to God, why on earth will she submit to you?