By Kadijah Wiggins
“What’s love got to do, got to do with it?”
We can all remember the lyrics from the secular song created in 1984 by the world-famous artist Tina Turner. I barely make the cut to consider myself an 80’s baby, but I still remember this song being played in our home. I always thought the lyrics were a bit strange because of their depiction of love. Mrs. Turner classifies love to be a second-hand emotion. She even goes on to ask the question, “who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” This line sounds like a cry of a battered heart that doesn’t view love in the right light.
Love is not a second-hand emotion. We can look at human nature and see that love is a first-hand emotion. God has created us with a need to both give and receive love. We can look at babies and see how they consume the love and affection we give them through tons of hugs and kisses. We never really grow out of that. We still need to receive love from the people in our lives, and most importantly, we need to receive love from our Heavenly Father.
I disagree that love is a second-hand emotion, but I am with Mrs. Turner in asking the old age question; what does love have to do with it?
Well, for the believer, it has everything to do with it.
I know you may be asking, well, Kadijah, whose love has everything to do with it? Such a great question! The answer to that would be God’s love. His love has everything to do with it.
God’s love can come into a heart and change everything. His love is everlasting, unfailing, and steadfast. Nothing can ever separate us from it. His love is so strong it should ideally change everything about our lives. It should change how we talk, how we raise our children, how we worship, our work ethic, and even how we love our neighbors.
I think the problem for many believers is that we don’t see our lives being truly transformed by his love in this way. I know this was the case for me. I walked around for quite some time with the head knowledge that God loved me, but there was a disconnect when that fact needed to reach my heart. I knew that God loved the world, but I didn’t know how to receive the fact that his love could reach me personally.
I had what you would call an orphan spirit. I had a heavenly Father but I responded to life as if I didn’t. Things shifted when I began to not look at myself as an orphan and fully receive the love of my Father. I began to look at life in a whole new way. The Holy Spirit translated my head knowledge of his love into an actual understanding with my heart, where I began to know and believe that his love was for me.
I can’t say that I have arrived at the point where I understand the totality of God’s love. I don’t think we’ll do that on this side of heaven. However, the understanding that I do have about God’s love has changed me for the better. The fact that God loves me enables me to love him freely and love those around me the way he has loved me.
So do you have a hard time loving your neighbor? Do you have a pattern of getting in relationships that you know aren’t God-honoring? Or what about those self-defeating thoughts that we rehearse in our minds regularly. All of these could indicate that we haven’t gotten a good enough grasp on just how much the Lord loves us.
If you can relate to just having a head knowledge of God’s love without having it permeate through everything you say, think, and do, there is hope. James said if any man lacks wisdom, all he has to do is ask, and our Father would graciously give it to us. So on our knees is where the work will begin.
In Ephesians 3:17-19, Paul says, “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Paul prayed this for the believers at Ephesus, but I believe we should pray it for ourselves today.
May God grant us the ability to grasp just how wide and long and high and deep his love is for us. Although it surpasses knowledge, his spirit can open our understanding to know his love from different angles.
So ask saints. Ask for a greater understanding of his love toward you. Everything changes for us when we truly understand the great love the Father lavished upon us through Jesus.
A hip-hop artist by the name of Andy Mineo once said, “you live different when you know you’ve been forgiven.” What truth this is! I would even dare to say; you live different when you know God truly loves you.
So, what’s love got to do with it? Everything, my friend.
Connect with Kadijah on Facebook or on her website.
