I think it is important to teach our children about love. We all love our children, and they can tell we love them, but are we really teaching them what true love is?
I remember back when my wife and I got married. The wedding vows were said, but I didn’t grasp what they really meant until much later.
“I take you to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I pledge myself to you.”
These vows weren’t saying that I will love you as long as I feel like it. Rather it was saying the opposite, that no matter how I feel, or what you do or say, or what our circumstances are, I will still love you. In other words, I choose to love you no matter how I feel. Each day I promise to decide to love you no matter what. This is an example of how God loves us. God calls us His children, and He doesn’t love us because we somehow make Him feel happy, or feel love for us. In fact the Bible teaches that we can’t make God love us any more or less, and we can’t do anything to merit His saving grace. So why does God love us? He loves us because He chooses to love us, even though we don’t deserve it. Here are some Bible verses that explain God’s love for us.
But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were sinners. (Romans 5:8)
No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow – not even the powers of hell can separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39)
The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is His faithfulness; His mercies begin afresh each morning. (Lamentations 3:22-23)
This is a key concept of love that we need to explain and demonstrate daily to our children. The world is constantly telling our kids the opposite; that love is an emotional feeling. We need to teach our children that if it is solely emotional, then it is lust, not love. The world teaches that love at first site is a dream come true, but we need to teach our children that it is lust at first site. Love comes later as you get to know each other, and then make a decision to love that person no matter what.
We need to explain to our children that we will love them no matter what they do, what they say, how we feel, and how many times we have to punish them. Nothing will be able to lessen our love for them. Then we need to encourage them to love others as Christ has loved us, and how as parents we are imperfectly trying to love them. Only then will our children know the true meaning of love.
