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THOSE THREE LITTLE WORDS by FELIX SNIPES THOSE 3 LITTLE WORDS ... WHERE DO THEY REALLY COME FROM? February is the month for lovers! Whether it is well known because of the greeting card and floral industry promotions or because of the seemingly mythical work of St. Valentine, it is still a time of special opportunity for lovers to say, "I love you!" Those "three little words" are too often said in order to produce selfish results and too seldom said selflessly from the heart to bless someone else. I relish every opportunity to say those three magical words whenever possible to those with whom I feel that genuine emotion! The fact that "love" is an emotion brings us back to the question of what creates an "emotion?" There is a difference between "instinct" and emotion. "Instinct" seems to be something that the Lord places within our makeup to protect and preserve family and self. It is instinct that came from God that leads a little female dog to chew off the umbilical cord of her new-born puppy and clean him of all that "gook" with her own tongue. Webster defines instinct as the ABILITY to respond to environmental stimuli WITHOUT INVOLVING REASON (OR MENTAL LOGIC.) Instinct is the desire for sex while "love" is the emotion that controls that instinct. Instinct seems to be something that God has given to us that cannot be explained but we know it when we see it. Emotion, however, is a "feeling" that is produced throughout our physical body by our brain. The Lord built us in such a way that emotions are created and controlled by the various combinations of chemicals that the brain produces. Now the key is to understand that it is our mind that produces those various chemical combinations. In other words, it all starts in our thinking. As the Lord said in Proverbs 23:7, "As (a person) thinketh in his heart, so is he." This is the reason that it is so critical as to what we think about. What you fill you mind with is what you become. One of the most stupid statements I ever heard to supposedly contradict this is that if this were so, a teen age boy would become a girl because that is all he thinks about. Anyone with one-half a brain would know that this is not the object of that boy's thinking. It is "her" becoming "his" that he is thinking about. "Love" is a very real emotion, but it is an emotion that we choose. (The old joke is that it may be puppy-love, but it is real to the pup!) Real love is an emotion that can become all consuming. It can motivate a person to do and say things that he never thought possible. But all this begins with a conscious "choice" to love. In other words, as my wife, Patsy says, "You may not be what you think you are, but what you THINK ... YOU ARE !" This Valentine's Day let me mention a couple of Scriptural areas that husbands and wives need to make this conscious choice (decision) that will produce continual love. Some time back, I was preparing a wedding ceremony for someone very special. So I wanted the ceremony to be unique ... and especially Biblical. As I searched the Scriptures again for what our Lord instructed us relative to marriage, I was impressed with the major commands he gave to husbands and wives. I think HE GAVE THESE SPECIFIC COMMANDS BECAUSE HE KNEW THESE EMOTIONS WOULD BE THE MOST DIFFICULT TO PUT INTO PRACTICE. If they were easy and "natural" then He would not have had to COMMAND us to follow them. To the husbands He commands us to love our wives and be not bitter against them. (Colossians 3:19) "Bitterness" toward one's wife MUST be a major problem with many. In 1 Peter 3:7 we are commanded to give our wives honor as if she were weaker than we are. Note again that this a "choice" that we make to love her no matter what! He used the illustration of us loving our wives in the same way that Jesus loves His church. Even when we grieve Him horribly, He STILL loves us. So we are to love our wives even when we feel as if they are un-lovable! We are to love her in the same way that we love our own bodies! (Ephesians 5:28) The "natural" thing for men is to only be attracted to physical beauty but He commands us to love her even when she has curlers in her hair and no makeup on ... or is older and more wrinkled than that secretary! His command to the wife was not so much to "love" him (this seems to come natural to women) as it was to "submit" to him (vs. 22) and to "reverence" him (or honor him - vs. 33.) THIS is the MOST difficult thing for a wife to do ... to "reverence" her husband ... because she can so easily see all his bad points! She is commanded to submit to him in the same way that the church is commanded to submit our will to that of the Lord. Throughout history, from Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah to the present, many tragedies have come thorough a wife who took leadership over her husband. I mentioned a couple of months ago that even the conflict in the Middle-East of today (which hit OUR shores September 11) originated with a wife manipulating circumstances instead of trusting GOD to work things out in His own way and time. In fact in 1 Peter 3:1, wives are told that "submission" (not preaching) is the way to win a lost husband to the Lord! Please do NOT feel as if I am being "politically incorrect" to say this about wives. It is not I saying it, it is His Word. And frankly, the Lord is much harder on the husbands than on the wives. Again, He gave these specific commands, ones that we are to "choose" to obey, because they would be the most un-natural things for us to do. Yet in our CHOOSING to obey these commands we will produce GENUINE LASTING LOVE in our emotions! Personally, for me, it is EASY to say, "I LOVE YOU" to Patsy, because she is so lovable ... or maybe that, too, is a choice I have made ... though everyone seems to agree with me! This Valentines day, TELL HIM OR HER THAT YOU LOVE THEM AND DECIDE TO MAKE IT SO !!! Felix Snipes has been a Southern Baptist pastor and evangelist for over 30 years. For the last 20 years, he has used magical entertainment to share the Gospel in over 900 Baptist churches resulting in over 160,000 public commitments for Christ. He is a member of First Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA |
