Find Hope in God's Unfailing LoveSample

Love Is a Choice

“If I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:2 (NIV)

Love is not a feeling. Love is a choice. Even when you don’t feel like it, you can choose to love anyway.

I once talked with a young mother who was overwhelmed and weighed down by life. She felt like all she did was nag her kids and scold them incessantly. When she looked at herself, she saw a failure.

She cried out to the Lord, read her Bible, and heard him respond in 1 Corinthians 13:2. She read, “If I had the gift of prophecy and knew all about what is going to happen in the future, knew everything about everything, but didn’t love others, what good would it do? Even if I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, I would still be worth nothing at all without love” (TLB). In that moment, she realized: “Without love, I am nothing.”

“I realized the single most important thing I could do was love my family,” she said. “So I began to live my life by love.”

What made the difference for this young mom? She made a choice. It changed the whole dynamic of her home and the way she saw herself as a mother and as God’s child.

When you love in spite of your feelings, that’s called loving by faith. And it doesn’t just change the other person. It changes you, too, and makes you more like Jesus.