Love Is.......

LIMITLESS Andover March 2019

Here is the transcript for our Friday night youth club discussion on Love.

Please read it, adapt it, use it and go bless somebody with it.

I knew the Lord wanted me to talk about LOVE so I prepared a challenge and a silly game but I did not prepare a discussion at all. This is where the Lord took us…… 

Introduction

I found some really silly ‘love is….’ Memes and I found some sensible ones. After showing them to the group I challenged them to come with their own in pairs which we showed to everyone.  

Our silly game was a messy one!

The youth were put into pairs. One of the pair laid on their backs on the floor with an empty ice cream cone in their mouth, clutched between their lips. Their partner stood on a chair, over their mouth, and attempted to drop a variety of pink foods in to the ice cream cone. Needless to say, the ketchup round got messy!

(We used strawberry laces, strawberries, marshmallows, raspberry yoghurt and ketchup).

After clearing away and settling down I asked the question ‘What is Love?’ and we had a free, shouting out, discussion and debate for a while.

Here is a variety of our responses:

Love is – 

‘whatever you want it to be’

‘a scientific reaction taking place in your body’

‘Friendship’

‘family’

‘uncertain’

‘a waste of time’

I pounced on the ‘waste of time’ comment and as a group we explored it further, the conclusion being that love can be good or bad depending on your perspective. Everything can be good if the person sees it as good.

So, I came up with some scenarios to challenge that:

A parent takes their 3 month old to the doctors where they allow a practitioner to stick a needle into their babies thigh in order to inject a syringe full of virus into their little baby.

Is that love?

A 5 yr old has behaved badly so has been placed in time out by the parent.

Is that love?

A 10 year old has spoken to their parent disrespectfully and so was punched in the face or the stomach by the parent.

Is that love?

A spouse being beaten with a stick by the other spouse as they arrived home later than expected.

Is that love?

For most of our youth the answers were as expected in that love was shown to the 3 month old and the 5 year old, but the 10 year old and the spouse had received physical abuse.

However, one different view point was consistently offered: 

It may have been loving to them. Love is an opinion, a viewpoint, and everyone is entitled to their own view point. It may seem wrong to me but if that person thought they were acting in love then it is love.

(Remember I had no plan for the discussion and I was at a bit of a loss about what to say but I do know that the truths in the Bible are absolute, not opinion, so I brought it back to the word hoping that the Lord would take over. He certainly did that!)

What does the bible say about love? It says loads and loads but what are the two greatest commandments.

Love you God with all you heart, soul, mind, strength

AND

Love you neighbour as yourself [Mark 12:30-31]

In church we often talk about loving God well and how we do that but what about the other commandment, the one that tells us to love other people in the same way that we love ourselves.

Do you ever get to the end of the day and start to beat yourself up in your own mind?

‘I’m so stupid, I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘I could have said done better, if I had done this instead it would have worked.’

‘Why am I always such an idiot.’

‘I am too stupid/ugly/thick/worthless/invisible.’

‘no one cares.’

‘no one is interested’

‘no one would notice’

Most of us reacted with horror when we talked about the physical violence earlier but we know that harsh words can be just as painful as being struck with a fist or a stick. And this doe not only apply to words spoken out loud, even those words spoken in your own head can cause pain, pain that really does last.

Let’s learn to be kind to ourselves.

Let’s give ourselves a break.

Let’s look after ourselves well

Practice speaking nicely to you. If your mind is in the bad habit of saying harsh or negative then follow it up with something nice. In doing that you will teach yourself some good habits about looking after yourself well. 

Eventually you will be kind to yourself, gentle on yourself and you will start to love yourself well.

And that is the start.