Love, Like and Lust

As humans, most of us will experience love, like and lust as we go though life. It is possible to love someone without liking them, and to lust after them without even knowing them. Lets’ discuss lust first. Back in the 1970's, when Jimmy Carter was president, he shocked the faith based world by admitting that he lusted in his heart. How could he do that? After all, he was a Southern Baptist and a born again Christian. Simple - President Carter told the truth. Most people have at sometime or another had a minor or not so minor unclean thought about a person of the opposite (or sometimes same) sex. The enemy has convinced us that this fine and normal. After all, who is hurt? It is just a fantasy. As time has passed, the enemy has also convinced us to "hang the fruit lower on the tree". What that means is that today we have almost unlimited opportunities to have our minds wander. We wander when we see magazines at the grocery store, watch soap operas and other television shows, movies, video games, clothing styles and so on. Keeping lust out of our hearts has become a big problem.How about love? Do we love the way that the bible commands? Or is our love conditional? Christ’s final commandment to us was to love each other the way that He loves us is a tall order. Truthfully, we will probably never get there. However, it does not mean that we should not try. Human love, no matter how pure, is still conditional to some degree. God’s love, on the other hand, is unconditional to every degree. Many of us have heard there is nothing so good we can do to make God love us more or nothing so bad we can do to make God love us less. He loves us absolutely; period, end of story. Even though we may never love each other absolutely as God loves us, we should still use it as our guide, our goal.Finally, what about like. While on this planet, there are going to be people that just rub us the wrong way. We may try our best, but there are some things the person says or does that we don’t care for. The bible understands that, but still commands us to do the following with our fellow man or woman: 1) love them, 2) serve them, and 3) forgive them. One final thought on like – we can pray for discernment. The problem may not be with the other person, but rather us. We can pray for understanding and tolerance towards others.Like, love and lust are all part of our daily lives. When we stumble from lust, the bible wants us recognize it, repent and confess in prayer. We will be forgiven if we come to Him in prayer with a repentant heart. As we get deeper in our faith walk, we will do it less often because we will recognize it easier and become more uncomfortable with it. When we don’t love as we should, we should pray for God to open the eyes of our hearts. God will answer that prayer by allowing us to look at others more like the way Christ looks at us. Finally, pray for tolerance and understanding. Not only that we can understand and tolerate others better, but they might also understand and tolerate us as well.