Love You More!

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind. Secondly, love your neighbor (friend) as yourself. Matthew 22:37 & 39

As we enter into February, the month characterized by love, it’s a great time to grab onto the feeling that runs through this month. During this special month, our hearts, minds and emotions turn to all the different kinds of love in our life. Love is the emotion that gets a lot of attention both romantically, physically and emotionally.

Philia is the Greek word for brotherly love; the kind of relationship between close personal, nearest and truest friends. It is a special kind of love. Randy and I have some friends who never leave a gathering with us without this exchange: One of us will say, We love you; and the other will respond, We love you more. It’s become a tradition of sorts, and a gathering wouldn’t be complete without it.

I began to ponder how we can love someone more? It seems that there are many reasons that we might say I love you more to friends, and it’s dependent on the situation. In our situation, it’s a combination of many things such as: love you more because you make us laugh, love you more because you always listen to us, love you more because we feel safe with you, love you more because you host the best parties, love you more because your personality is awesome, love you more because you still laugh at the same old stories, love you more because you are always there in times of need, love you more because you are easy travel partners, love you more because you support us, and the list goes on.

In order to love someone more, there are some things we need to do. We need to love unconditionally, love sacrificially and love selflessly just to name a few.

When we speak of loving more, it needs to be said that in order to love people, you first must know those you love more. It takes time and a lot of water under the dam to truly know someone. Sharing life’s experiences, both good and bad, leads to loving unconditionally. Jesus would say that there’s nothing we can do that ‘s bad enough to make him quit loving us. The same can be said for people who love us more.

Sometimes to love more, we have to make sacrifices. Jesus said, greater love hath no man than this; to lay down one’s life for his friends. John 15:13 When we love you more, we don’t physically lay down our life, but we are willing to accept pain and suffering, to support, defend and comfort friends whenever needed.

When we love more, we must love selflessly. The best example of loving selflessly seems to be the story of the Good Samaritan, a man who took time from his own travel to help a wounded man by not only taking him to have his wounds treated, but also paid the price. If we love someone more, we are willing to take ourselves out of the equation and selflessly put them first.

There is no such thing as unloved Christians or friends. The Bible says whosoever believes in Him; therefore, Jesus’ love includes all of the whosoever’s. We have never been and will never be loved by anyone as much as God loves us.

We all have these kinds of special friends in our life that we treasure. Unfortunately, the longer you know someone, the more likely you are to take them for granted, look for faults, and remember the bad times instead of the good. We never want to be guilty of that, and we want to celebrate the friendship and love. So to all our friends, near and far, old ones and new ones, thank you for loving us more. We love you more, too.