{"id":173,"date":"2010-05-03T14:12:37","date_gmt":"2010-05-03T20:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lifestreammin.org\/?p=173"},"modified":"2010-05-06T12:21:07","modified_gmt":"2010-05-06T18:21:07","slug":"love-is-a-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lifestreammin.org\/?p=173","title":{"rendered":"Love is a Decision?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.lifestreammin.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/IMG_2628-copy2-300x249.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_2628 copy2\" title=\"IMG_2628 copy2\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-82\" \/>We&#8217;ve heard the sermons: &#8220;Love is a decision&#8221;. Really? <\/p>\n<p>Is that the kind of love we experience from God? Okay, I&#8217;ll love you if I have to. Just stay out of my face because I really don&#8217;t like you very much. Aloof.<\/p>\n<p>Treating someone else with love, especially if they are difficult, may begin with a decision, but that&#8217;s not what love IS. It can&#8217;t remain in the place of being merely a decision. It&#8217;s not <em>agape<\/em> unless it&#8217;s like God: kind, gracious, warm, compassion, free, and showing favor because of the very desire to do so. Tall order? Of course; it requires allowing the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus to have full reign. Christ in us, the hope of glory.<\/p>\n<p>To profess a &#8220;decision&#8221; to walk in love or to forgive, while remaining aloof reveals a little nasty-nugget of selfishness in the core of the being. Reserving ourselves for ourselves. Not at all like the Lord who gives Himself to us freely. <\/p>\n<p>What we initiate with a decision, we must allow to flow in fulness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve heard the sermons: &#8220;Love is a decision&#8221;. Really? Is that the kind of love we experience from God? Okay, I&#8217;ll love you if I have to. Just stay out of my face because I really don&#8217;t like you very much. Aloof. Treating someone else with love, especially if they are difficult, may begin with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,8,7],"tags":[48,40,33,64],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-dailyinsights","category-spiritual-life","tag-christ","tag-glory","tag-holy-spirit","tag-love"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifestreammin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifestreammin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifestreammin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifestreammin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifestreammin.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifestreammin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifestreammin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions\/188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifestreammin.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifestreammin.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifestreammin.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}