Are you really in love? How can you really tell or how does one really know? Well I have two friends that are both well over thirty years of age and I introduce them to each other. One day later one of them said to me thanks for introducing me to my future spouse. Wow I thought can someone fall in love in one day? Many people have such a crazy definition of romantic love between a man and woman. In a little while I will talk about the different types of love as it pertains to our Christian faith as well as the English definition of the term, but for now I want to continue to explore the thought of, “falling in love with that special someone.” What I am referring to is that thing that you feel inside of you that says, I believe this is the one that I want to be with or the one that I am in love with. As adults we feel so many things that are direct results of the choices that we have made in life. So who’s to say if your feelings are really authentic or for that matter real? At some point one has to decide between fiction and reality. Maybe the problem is that love is not reality but more spiritual or a strong emotion. I dare not play psychologist extraordinaire here but I do dare push the button of deep thought that there could be more to this issue of love and how to discover it. So my question to you is have you ever been in LOVE and if so how did you know?
Love by basic definition can be broken down in several different ways. I will attempt to address a few of those definitions in a simple way to help shed some light on a sometimes complex topic. Agape is the main word used for “love” in the New Testament. There are three principal Greek words which can be translated as “love” in English, each with different connotations. The two most common were eros, which refers to sexual love, and philos, which means friendship or brotherly love (eros does not appear in the New Testament, but philos does). Agape was the least used in Greek and least specific in its meaning. Because the concept of agape was so general in Greek, it was possible for the early Christian community to use it without bringing in too much philosophical or theological baggage. Thus, among the Christians, agape came to refer to the unearned love God had for humanity — a love so great that God was willing to send his only son to suffer and die on our behalf. However the concept of agape is not limited to just God’s love of humanity; it can also be used to describe the love one person has for another. In contrast to the sexual love of eros or the friendship expressed by philos, though, agape described a selfless kind of love that involved giving without expectation of anything in return.
If this article has you feeling confused about love so far hold on and let me try to make sense of it all. When you know you are in love you have an over whelming feeling and need to give to that person. I think that true love brings you to a place of wanting to be there for that person every step of the way to help, to protect, and to multiply who they are. In life a person can add, divide, subtract, or multiply your life. It’s my belief that a person that truly is in love with you will cause multiplication to you and vice versa. Keep in mind your emotions are involved when it comes to love because we are emotional beings and feelings are real although misleading they are many times close to reality. With that said I would strongly advise that love is not something that can be worked up, fixed up, or faked up. You either have it for that person or you don’t either way you look at it love is something that almost has a life of it’s on. So how do you know when you’re in love? There is not only one right or specific way to know because it’s just something you become and something that becomes a great part of you.
