Calvary Youth: Navigating Love and Feelings: When and How to Express Them

Navigating Love and Feelings: When and How to Express Them
Question:
I have a student who asked, "When did you know when to say I love you, and how do you know you've developed feelings?"
Answer:
In answering this question, we have a student asking a spiritual leader some deep questions about a relationship.
Maybe you're in a dating relationship that you feel is getting more serious, and you're considering how to express verbally your love towards this person. I would start with the challenge of having the right definition and knowing that we use the word love interchangeably in our English language.
For example, from the food I like to things I enjoy doing to a person I want to spend my life with, we just have one word for love.
However, knowing that the Bible, especially in the New Testament, is written in Koine Greek, or the common Greek language of the day it was written, there are in that timeframe, four keywords that were used to describe love.
So, our one English word has four separate words with separate definitions.
One is Eros. Eros is speaking of romantic love, as the word projects that erotic, more lustful idea and thought. It speaks towards passion, and many times in a relationship, when we say the words "I love you," unfortunately, we're merely expressing that passionate, romantic, erotic type of love than we are the true love of God, which will be the final word I explore.
Another word we have for love that we see in the Greek language is the word storge, which speaks to an affection type love, which, again, you could see in relationships. One of the things we desire is that affection, that attention. And so there's this affectionate love, which isn't a wrong or bad type of love, but when you think of when it’s right to say "I love you," you must have the right understanding of God's love, which we're going to answer from a biblical perspective below.
Another word for love is phileo. Phileo speaks of a friendly or brotherly love. Think of Philadelphia and why it's known as the city of brotherly love. Well, they get their root word from the word phileo, which speaks to a deep friendship or a brotherhood.
And finally, there's the word agape. The key thing to consider, to truly say I love you to someone, is to have the heart and mind of Christ. The type of love that God would express to us.
And so my challenge in a dating relationship is to have the right definition of love before I truly can express, as a follower of Jesus, what that love really is.
And so I'll give you this Bible verse from Romans 5:8 - NLT.
"But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners."
And this agape love is a selfless love. It is a sacrificial love. And to really know when we're ready to say I love you is when you can truly put that person and their needs and desires above your own. So you know there's a challenge in the seriousness of the relationship, that we would be patient and loving.
The Song of Solomon 8:4 NIV speaks towards romantic love and uses the phrase:
"Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires."
It speaks towards that romantic love, so just be cautious in that area of your life to really develop that supernatural-agape love of God.