{"id":46,"date":"2007-02-14T09:28:54","date_gmt":"2007-02-14T15:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/?p=46"},"modified":"2011-03-12T18:34:37","modified_gmt":"2011-03-13T00:34:37","slug":"love-sacrifice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/love-sacrifice\/","title":{"rendered":"How to be an Offering: Love = Sacrifice"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It’s Valentine’s Day and we all know what that means. \u00a0A lot of people will be sappily celebrating superficial love, a lot of peope will be miserably lamenting their lack of love, and, a lot of people will be honoring each other with the love that the Bible talks about.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong, I actually really enjoy Valentine’s Day, but I think it encourages society to view love as something temporary or something that can be bought, and that if you don’t have someone “loving” you on this day, your life is pitiful<\/strong>. \u00a0I was glad to see an article on MSN<\/a> that encouraged people to celebrate their singleness and just plain enjoy the day and realize that it’s really overrated, but I was also sad to see that when I searched for blogs on Valentine’s day, so many people were miserable that they wouldn’t be getting the gifts that everybody else was getting.<\/p>\n

So, MSN says that Valentine’s Day love is overrated. \u00a0Could it be perhaps that the world’s view of love in general<\/em><\/strong> is overrated? \u00a0I think so. \u00a0Fairy tales end “happily ever after,” but that is not the case in many of real-life’s stories. \u00a0People blog that if they had a date or someone to buy them something on this day, they’d feel loved and happy, yet when the flowers wilt and the day goes away, that happiness could very well turn into a nightmare.<\/p>\n

So what is real love<\/strong>? \u00a0Jesus says in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.” \u00a0This same man went on to do just that; lay down His life for all of us so that we could be free. \u00a0Jesus also calls us to daily “deny yourself, take up your cross and follow” Him. \u00a0And Paul tells us as husbands to “love our wives as Christ loved the church, and gave up Himself for her.<\/a>”<\/p>\n

So how do we apply those things to offer ourselves to God and to others with true, Biblical love<\/strong>?<\/p>\n