Feelings...

[enoob57]

15 hours ago, shiloh357 said:

Love is in operation when our feelings are the opposite.   For example, I utterly despise Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton in the strongest terms possible.   But if I happened upon either of them  drowning in a river or swimming pool, I would save his, or her life.  

I could pass by and get away with not stopping to help, but that is not how I am, even with people I cannot stand.  I can also love people I don't know from Adam, people I have absolutely no affection for.   I don't "feel"  anything.  It's an act of obedience.

does this include mouth to mouth resuscitation?   

9 hours ago, Willa said:

We can't know true faith except through God's Word.  We respond with a decision to follow Christ.  Feelings result from true faith and the realization of His forgiving love for us.  

We can't know God's love except though God's Word.  We also make a decision to love a person as we see them as God does, with compassion as well as realizing their value.  Our marriage would never have lasted over 50 years without that kind of love as well as God's forgiveness, forgiving as we have been forgiven.  For 11 years I didn't receive that kind of love from my husband.  It was most often a selfish kind of human love.  After he was saved he became so kind and affectionate, he was annoying.  I had adapted to the old man, but the new born again man took some getting used to.  Perhaps God waited all that time to save him because it took that long to change me into the kind of wife he needed.

One of the places The Witness of The Holy Spirit within us secures our hearts to Himself is the outside of time a thing is accomplished where at the time is not seen... the depth and mystery is seen in objective realties through life experiences (personal) and forever kept in The Glory of God... 

Romans 8:28 (KJV)

[28] And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

thanks for the witness Willa!  Love, Steven

[GoldenEagle]

11 hours ago, shiloh357 said:

20 hours ago, GoldenEagle said:

For some people they cannot comprehend what they do not know or have not experienced. 

It is one thing to know what love is intellectually or by reading a book. 

It is quite another to experience the joys and challenges of marriage. To make those vows and experience life together for the first few months (or even decades). To get a taste of what it means to be united with another person and to glimpse how God feels for us. 

Or to express to another person what it's like to hold a newborn, your newborn, in your arms for the first time.  To get a glimpse of the joy and pleasure that God feels toward us.

Love is action but love is also a feeling.

A person who never has seen color as you mentioned will not fully comprehend what it means to look upon or eat a red apple. 

God bless

Ge

Nonsense. That assumes that only people who are married  with children have experienced love, that love only exists in that context.

If we were talking about the particulars of marriage, then yes, there are things about the nuts and bolts of marriage that I am not able to speak to.   But that is not what this is about.

In Scripture, whether your theology makes room for it or not, love is presented as an action, not an emotion.  In the Bible, love is operative in nature and James demonstrates that in James two when he uses the operative nature of love to illustrate the operative nature of faith.  

Faith and love work the same way.  Neither are rooted in feeling or emotion.  Neither are circumstantial in that neither depend on circumstances to be right in order for them to operate.   Both love and faith find their source in God, not in human emotion.

Romantic "love" is really just infatuation/affection.   That's not bad or evil, but that's not love, despite what the popular culture tells us.

Shiloh,

Do you often start out responses to people by completely discounting their position? Something to pray about for sure.

I have simply shared my experience in understanding love better through the eyes of the role of a husband and the role of a father. Multiple people have disagreed with your assertion that love is not a feeling.

Again, I do not think that word "nonsense" means what you think it means... Or how you are using it.

Nonsense:
1. spoken or written words that have no meaning or make no sense.
2. foolish or unacceptable behavior.

3 Questions then:

1. How did what I say not make sense or have no meaning?

2. How is what I said foolish or unacceptable behavior?

3. Do you disagree that there is a difference between experiencing intellectually something by reading it in a book and by experiencing the event itself?

I found your whole tone very distasteful. Then again that's not surprising that seems to be the case often these days. Perhaps like @Out of the Shadows I'll simply have to agree to disagree with you on this subject.

God bless,
GE

[GoldenEagle]

In reviewing the thread it seems @Out of the Shadows, @RustyAngeL, @kwikphilly, @Teditis, and myself believe love is both action and a feeling.

It seems @Davida, @Ezra, @Yowm, @angels4u and @shiloh357 believe that love is only an action.

I have no idea where @gdemoss, @batarang, @Willa, @Dok, @Churchmouse, @enoob57, or @missmuffet stand on the topic.

Is this correct?

 

It's also clear that some people don't believe that psychology should have any bearing in the conversation about feelings. While others believe psychology can be a useful tool.

 

I'll state it again, a person who is wise will use the Bible, the Holy Spirit's guidance (prayer), logic and feelings to make decisions.

God bless,

GE

[Ezra]

12 minutes ago, GoldenEagle said:

It seems @Davida, @Ezra, @Yowm, @angels4u and @shiloh357 believe that love is only an action.

What should be brought out is that AGAPE is love in action. Here is what it means as pronounced by Christ (Luke 4:18,19):

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

That does not necessarily mean that feelings are not involved. But the important point to note is that Christian decisions are not to be based on "feelings" but on Bible Truth.

[Guest shiloh357]

12 minutes ago, GoldenEagle said:

Shiloh,

Do you often start out responses to people by completely discounting their position? Something to pray about for sure.

I have simply shared my experience in understanding love better through the eyes of the role of a husband and the role of a father. Multiple people have disagreed with your assertion that love is not a feeling.

 

I am appealing to Scripture as it is what provides the best definition of love and the Bible only ever presents it in terms of action.   That other disagree with what love really is,  is really nothing to me.  I am appealing to the only infallible source for understanding what love is. 

[Guest Teditis]

Other's appealed to Scripture as well and came to a different definition...

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

[Guest shiloh357]

2 minutes ago, Teditis said:

Other's appealed to Scripture as well and came to a different definition...

 

There is not ONE reference to love as a feeling in Scripture.  So, no they didn't.

[GoldenEagle]

15 minutes ago, Teditis said:

Other's appealed to Scripture as well and came to a different definition...

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Apparently so. Didn't you know there can't be multiple interpretations of the Bible on any given subject? Lol  

God bless,
GE

[Guest Teditis]

15 minutes ago, shiloh357 said:

There is not ONE reference to love as a feeling in Scripture.  So, no they didn't.

You must have ignored postings then... they're there. And you're wrong again.

[Flsnookman]

Love is Not a Feeling

 

Sacrificial love has transforming power. Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truly loves does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present. It is, so much the better; but if it isn’t, the commitment to love, the will to love, still stands and is still exercised.

Conversely, it is not only possible but necessary for a loving person to avoid acting on feelings of love. I may meet a woman who strongly attracts me, whom I feel like loving, but because it would be destructive to my marriage to have an affair, I will say vocally or in the silence of my heart, “I feel like loving you, but I am not going to.” My feelings of love may be unbounded, but my capacity to be loving is limited. I therefore must choose the person on whom to focus my capacity to love, toward whom to direct my will to love. True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. It is a committed, thoughtful decision.

Dr. M. Scott Peck.

That was in bible.org...I think we err when we forget that there are 3 types of love, agape,phileo and the eros. The 3rd one I think is a feeling but not the other 2.