Week Five Devotional - Love is a Choice

Mark and I are leaving tomorrow for upstate New York (Rochester) to visit his family for Thanksgiving.  Hunter will be here in Florida with his dad this year for the holiday and will be participating in a Thanksgiving Hockey Tournament.  Who plays hockey on Thanksgiving?  Apparently those that play on the travel team.  I think that is silly! Anyways, off track here.  We were going up to NY so that Morgan could meet her great-grandparents who were going to drive up from Philly to NY.  We learned yesterday, that is now not happening, because they are just too old to be driving in that weather.  The weather has been extreme over the last few days, lots of snow.  I am sad they they don't get to meet Morgan this trip, but hopefully they will get to meet her in January. Morgan is the first grandchild and great grandchild on Marks side of the family.  I am very excited about all the snow.  Mark and I are taking some ski stuff so we can go hit the slopes one day (or two).  We love to ski! In fact we went skiing for a whole week for our honeymoon in Jackson Hole.  This will be Morgans 3rd flight since she was born, and her first snow.  I am looking forward to the pictures I hope to capture while out there. 

Anyways, I probably will not be able to post much while out there, and I return on Sunday.  So I wanted to wish everyone a very wonderful, a very happy, and a very blessed Thanksgiving Holiday. I will post on Thanksgiving if I have some down time. I would like to share my list of thankfulness. 

God Bless! 

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Love Is a Choice

by Rick Warren

… That you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Deuteronomy 30:20 (NIV) 

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Love is a choice and a commitment. You choose to love or you choose not to love.

Today we’ve bought into this myth that love is uncontrollable, that it’s something that just happens to us; it’s not something we control. In fact, even the language we use implies the uncontrollability of love. We say, “I fell in love,” as if love is some kind of a ditch. It’s like I’m walking along one day and bam! – I fell in love. I couldn’t help myself.

But I have to tell you the truth – that’s not love. Love doesn’t just happen to you. Love is a choice and it represents a commitment.

There’s no doubt about it, attraction is uncontrollable and arousal is uncontrollable. But attraction and arousal are not love. They can lead to love, but they are not love. Love is a choice.

You must choose to love God; he won’t force you to love him (Deuteronomy 30:20). You can thumb your nose at God and go a totally different way. You can destroy your life if you choose to do that. God still won’t force you to love him. Because he knows love can’t be forced.

And this same principle is true about your relationships: you can choose to love others, but God won’t force you to love anyone.