30 Wisdom SayingsPrimjer

SAYING 18: NO SHORTCUTS TO LOVE

I have friends who have virtually sold their souls hoping to be loved.
Some mask their pain through indifference, but others through false intimacy.  
We all long to belong.   If we belong to no one we can feel life is worthless.  Because of this, we will do almost anything to belong to someone or to belong to something.  
Sex, unfortunately, is used as a shortcut to love.

Sex can be the most intimate and beautiful expression of love, but we are only lying to ourselves when we act as if sex is proof of love.  Too many men demand sex as proof of love; too many women have given sex in hopes of love.  We live in a world of users where we abuse each other to dull the pain of our aloneness.  We all long for intimacy and physical contact can appear as intimacy- at least for a moment.
Sex always comes with a cost. With it, either you give your heart or you give your soul.  It seems you can have sex without giving love but you cannot have sex without giving a part of yourself.  

When sex is an act of love, it is a gift.  When sex is a substitute for love, it is a trap.
Love isn't about conquest.  When we live like this, there is something deeper going on inside us that we're trying to ignore, even drown out.  We are alone, disconnected and deficient in love.  We are not only robbing others; we are pillaging our own souls.
Eventually, it hits you: you cannot take love; you have to give it.  
Love is a gift that cannot be stolen.
Believe in love and believe you are completely worth the unconditional love you were created to know.
 

- Pastor Kim McManus

ACTION

Choose a healthy ending to your day. Give your body and soul to the God who will never leave you.  He really loves you.

 PRAYER

God, the Giver of love, may my body be holy and wholly yours.