By: Maureen Le Roux
“What’s love got to do, got to do with it
What’s love but a second hand emotion”
– Tina Turner
“{What’s Love Got to Do With It” by Tina Turner (1984) was, and still is, one of the most iconic female songs. What’s surprising about the catchy, upbeat tune is that it’s a song about a woman who feels no emotional attachment to her lover. She wants him to know that love has nothing to do with how she feels about him, which she dismisses as a “sweet, old-fashioned notion.” When the song was first presented to her, Tina hated it and never wanted to record it in the first place. However, the song became Tina’s first top-10 and helped to earn her a Grammy.
What has love got to do with anything?
Today, in the face of all of society’s problems, the answer to this question may be, “not a lot” but love is the very foundation on which healthy lives and societies are built.
American psychiatrist Smiley Blanton in his 1955 book “Love or Perish” defines love as: “The power that reaches out to build and construct. Love is the immortal flow of energy that nourishes, extends and preserves.”
It’s February and because of Valentine’s Day, our focus is drawn to the meaning of love and what it could possibly mean. Every store I walk into, is decked out in red love heart balloons and chocolate candies. The flower shops are selling their red roses at double or triple the cost and restaurants are promoting their Valentine’s Day special menu. Love is in the air in all its commercial glory, beckoning us to consume in the name of love, and yes, in all this commercial hype, I am asking with Tina Turner “What does love have to do with it?”
Putting aside all the Valentine’s Day hype though, there is no mistaking the power of a love that “reaches out to build and construct, that nourishes and preserves.” It is important we weave this definition of love into all that we do and say – not only in the month of February!
To answer this question, I want to suggest an acronym for L O V E:
L = Letting Go
The first love mentioned in the Bible is not a romantic love, but a parental love. In Genesis 22v2 God says to Abraham “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
Love is realising people belong to God and we don’t own anyone! Loving our children, our spouses, our friends, the people we are leading, means letting them go to develop their own relationship and walk with God. It means letting them go to learn their own lessons. It means letting them go to try out their ideas. It means letting them go to make their own decisions.
I remember someone once telling my husband and I in our early years of leadership and parenting, that the only time we step in and intervene in our people or children’s lives, is if the decision they are going to make will be a life-or-death decision or if it will alter or affect negatively on their destiny.
People belong to God – yes, even our children and grand-children – and for the time they are in our lives, we are stewards, not owners. We get to shepherd, guide, encourage, support, build, nourish and disciple them. We don’t own them. He does. And, just as Abraham’s love for Isaac was deep, it wasn’t deeper than his devotion to God. He was willing to sacrifice Isaac if that was God’s will.
Love is letting go!
O = Other-centered
Love has everything to do with reflecting Christ and His love for people and it is certainly not a second-hand emotion, nor is it a temporary feeling.
Jesus commands us to love. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35). All Christians believe this Scripture and many quote it, but there is often a disconnect between what people believe and what they practice.
Love has everything to do with how we connect and relate to each other. There are so many Scriptures on this very subject, with Romans 13:8 ESV summing it up like this: Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Loving in a way that is other-centered can be described as swimming upstream against the norms and ways of the world as people today look out for themselves and their own comfort. Other‐centered is defined as behaviour predominately motivated by the interest of others. It is not selfish, but thinks of others as being better than themselves and does not look out only for their own interests, but takes an interest in others, too. (Philippians 2v3,4)
Somehow by today’s standards, this seems a difficult thing to do.
V = Victorious
What does victory have to do with love? The reality is that it is a challenge, a battle, and virtually impossible to love the way the Lord commands us to love! It requires dying to self and it can hurt as we deny the flesh and choose to love even when the last thing in the world we want to do or feel like we should do or even feel like we can do in a certain situation, is to love.
But we can have victory and be victorious in loving! We can love the unlovable because Jesus first loved us when we were unlovable! The victory when it comes to love is IN THE LORD!
Romans 8:37-39 NLT No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As we reach out to Jesus to help us in those situations when the flesh is weak and the last thing we want to do is love, we will find He will pour out His love into our hearts so we can walk in love and live in the love He calls us to.
Ephesians 5:2 NLT Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered Himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.
We can be victorious in love! The choice is ours!
E = Experience
John 15:13 There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Love is seen in what we do, not so much in what we say. Love is an action word!
We live in a society that overuses the word love. People say it all the time. I love ice cream. I love Scrapbooking. I love weekends. We have used the word love so much that it has lessened the meaning of the word to some extent. Simply saying that you love someone may not mean as much to them when you also say, in the next breath, that you love pasta or the smell of coffee.
The world’s definition of love is usually a feeling, but feelings change all the time. We can experience more than one kind of love in one day: there is romantic love, family love, friendly love, and for Christians, there should also be loving your enemy.
Love can certainly be a feeling, but it is not always. The feeling will come and go but the real proof of love is sacrifice. It is self-sacrifice. In the Garden of Gethsemane, we see Jesus didn’t feel like dying on the cross or facing the pain and torment of the experience before Him. But He did it anyway. He paid the price and sacrificed himself on our behalf when we did not deserve it. Why? Because of Love!
“Love is the overflow of joy in God that gladly meets the needs of others”. John Piper (Desiring God)
Love is an experience that goes far beyond our feelings. It is seen through our actions. Because of our own love for God, we can love. 1John 3:18 Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions.
What was your last action before reading this? Did it show love?
So then, the conclusion to the question ‘What’s love got to do with it?’ has to be….. ‘Everything’!