Are You In A Theory Or A Love Affair?

Today I saw a picture on the She Reads Truth app devotional which is the picture above with the saying "let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair". First off all, I haven't written in a while, so hello blogging world! I'll be honest with y'all I've been very uninspired to write, I've written a few things but I haven't been able to get myself to post them, why? Who knows! But anyways I saw this quote this morning and it was as if God himself gave me a nice slap in the face! A loving one of course. To often we make our Christian life a routine that we forget it's a beautiful love affair. A love affair with ups and downs, faults, struggles, weakness, and strengths. We also forget that there are others doing the same as us. I've seen many Christians bashing on other Christians for not being the perfect Christian that in theory every Christian should be.

THEORY:  a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena.

LOVE AFFAIR: a romantic relationship or episode between lovers

I'll choose love affair over theory any day. Living a life being in love with God and being on a whimsical love affair with Him is different than being in a theoretical relationship. I'll tell you why, theoretical relationship revolves around thinking too much and observing too much. To come up with a theory, you must research, observe, think and come up with conclusion to create a theory. When we are in that kind of relationship with God we question everything. We observe everyone around us, we think of all the wrong they may be going or even think off all the wrong we, ourselves, are doing. And we draw up conclusions of what we have observed. That's the gate way of being religious, we finger point the faults of others, we think we have ways of making everyone better, we start talking like Pharisees.  

Now a love affair relationship is very simple. I wrote a blog a while back called "Why I Am Dating A Black Man" and I wrote something that I'm going to bring into this, "Many say love is blind. I disagree. Love sees it all; the colour, the perfection, the imperfection, the weight, and the height but love decides to look past all that. Love sees it all and loves it with greater passion." Now that is a love affair. If you are in a love affair with God you are also in a love affair with His people. Simple as that. You love Jesus? Good, but remember; “I really only love God as much as the person I love the least.”- Dorothy Day. When you love, you forget about what the people aren't and you start looking at them for what they have. Like Jesus does to us. The judging stops and the love affair takes over. We start loving in a different way, an innocent way. You may even start to love the annoying things your brother/sister in Christ does. Instead of critiquing you may even crack a joke and enjoy yourself a bit more. 

Ive been in both of these relationships with God, lately I've been on the theory side, were I sit back and draw conclusions in my mind and think I'm right, I caught myself doing this and just started laughing at how absurd I was. As if my God needed a body guard. I stopped myself in my righteous tracks and here I am writing about how good it just feels to love. 

Maybe you've been to hard on others or even yourself, I don't know who this is for, but if your reading this just know it is easier to love than to not love. It takes more muscles to frown than to smile. Make this love affair count, be in love with Jesus and His creations. Don't be afraid to love, love doesn't run out; it's never wrong and never boastful. 

With Love & Grace- Diana C.