Becoming A Person of Love
It’s February. The Month of Love…or, at the very least the month we celebrate a specific day of love. Love is so very important to our relationships. I think we can all agree with this. What is also cool to know is this: love or loving others is also a skill that you can learn.
This is something I learned when I was sixteen years old. And it literally changed my life and is one of the main reasons I have been married to the same woman for the past 31 years.
What is the key to love? I could site many things that can help us to live more fully and effectively (I will cover these in future articles, Lord willing). But if there is one thing that I know is crucial to love others it is that you become a person of love. That you become someone who lives and embodies love. How do you do that? I am glad you asked. Let me share with you three steps I have used to become more loving - a person of love.
Step #1
The Decision
The first step to becoming a person of love is a decision. It is deciding “I will be a person of love -I will be someone who embodies what love is all about.” This is important. Because who you decide to be will determine how you live. It will determine what yo do or don’t do day in and day out. As I like to say “Your Who (who you are, your sense of identity) determines your Do. If you want to be a person of love make the decision "From this point on I am a person of love, this is who I am and how I live.” It is the first step, a simple step but a most important and profound step. Everything else is built on this.
Step #2
The Commitment
The second step in becoming a person of love is to commit to loving. It is another decision that is the second foundational stone in loving others. It is the decision/commitment that you will love, even if no one else around you ever does. It is deciding that you will not allow the behavior of others to determine whether you will love or not. This is taking 100% responsibility for loving others - and not making others or their behavior responsible for your loving them. What this does is effectively remove any excuse for not loving others or being a person of love. And while at times it can be challenging it is also very liberating. This is a commitment you make to yourself and before God “I commit to loving others even if no one else around me ever loves. If everyone else chooses not to love -I will still love” Why? Because of step #1: You are a person of love -it is who you are. Your commitment now reflects and is an expression of your identity, who you are.
Step #3
The Practice
Love or loving others well is, as I stated above a skill. And to become good at any skill you need to practice it. This is no different for love. To love well we need to practice loving others well. Now most skills need to be practiced in private before we apply or seek to demonstrate the skill in public. How do you practice the skill of loving others in private? Through the use of the imagination or mental rehearsal. In Philippians 4:8 we are read “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything I”s excellent or praiseworthy—think about/meditate on such things.” Philippians tells us to think on or meditate upon virtues. Why? Because biblically speaking meditation is how you make virtue your own. The word for “meditate” in Greek means to contemplate or think about something in such a way as to make it your own. We can do this (and must do this) with the virtue of love. Here is one way of doing this that I began practicing as a sixteen-year-old.
Take the famous love passage I Corinthians 13:5-8 and personalize it. For instance, where it says “Love is patient and is kind” I would personalize it and say “I patient and I am kind”.
I personalized verses 5-8 in this manner. And I would literally walk the floor of my bedroom and quote that to myself over and over (see Joshua 1:8). I did this on a daily basis. And it began to change the way I thought of myself and how I related to others. I assimilated into my thinking and my mind became renewed to a new reality “I am a person of love who is patient, kind, who envies not, who believes the best of others…” and so on. By meditating on the virtue of love and its qualities in this way you make that virtue and those qualities a part of your thinking and decision making. It guides your thoughts, actions, and behaviors. Or as I like to say “What you focus on you follow after”
Loving others is easier (not necessarily easy -but easier) when our sense of who we are is love-based and love shaped. Use the steps above to help you begin to become the person of love for whom loving others is a way of being and moving in the world. You will be glad you did. And so will those you love (well, most of them anyway 😉 )
