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Loving Too Much?

By Fern Horst

Browsing through the “Love & Relationship” section of a local bookstore, one can find such titles as Women Who Love Too Much, When Parents Love Too Much, and even, For People Who Love Their Cats too Much. We could easily conclude that it is a grave danger to love too much.

Yet, when we turn to the Bible we realize that Jesus calls us to love others as He has loved us (John 13:34), and to love even to the point of dying for those we love (John 15:13).

But we often find ourselves loving someone in a way or to an extent to which that person does not return our love, and we experience great heartache. Often such “love” takes on a focus that becomes a consuming obsession; it becomes a necessity to us to make that person love us back. Or, even when the one we love does love back, we become obsessed with keeping that love. Surely such a focus is not godly nor healthy for anyone involved. Hence the books on loving too much.

So which should we follow? Are the books in the bookstore right? Was Jesus just setting us up for broken hearts?

The true crux of the problem is not that we love someone too much, but that we don't love God enough. When we base our sense of well-being on whether or not someone loves us the way we think they should, then we've put our trust and security in that someone rather than in the Lord. We can love someone with all our hearts, but if we don't love God more than that person, we are setting ourselves up for devastation, unless that human is perfect.

Loving is indeed a risk. But for Christians, loving others is not an option if we are to obey our Lord. We have been commanded to love, not just with warm fuzzy feelings, but to the extent of being willing to die for those we love. Yet we can't seem to take that risk without also obsessing about their loving us back, unless our security is in something greater than that person. There is only One who can give us that security, and that is God. Micah reminds us of this in the following verses:

Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide: keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom. For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house. Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me.
(Micah 7:5-7)

Fern Horst is one of the administrators of Purposeful Singleness. She lives in Virginia, USA, and is a writer and Web site designer (see Fern Web Design).

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    Celebrating Love by Fern Horst

Kept for the Master's Use by Frances R. Havergal (1836-1879) This book is a compilation of Miss Havergal's reflections on the words of the hymn she penned, Take My Life and Let It Be, Consecrated, Lord To Thee. In a Prefatory Note from the book, her sister Maria B. G. Havergal writes: "My beloved sister Frances finished revising the proofs of this book shortly before her death on Whit Tuesday, June 3, 1879, but its publication was to be deferred till the Autumn. In appreciation of the deep and general sympathy flowing in to her relatives, they wish that its publication should not be withheld. Knowing her intense desire that Christ should be magnified, whether by her life or in her death, may it be to His glory that in these pages she, being dead, 'Yet Speaketh!'" Order this book.

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