How’s your love life?

Fair or not, Valentine’s Day is a day when the male species is called to step up for their significant other, for the “love” in their life. Sometimes, however, men forget to use their internal editor. There was a husband who made two terrible mistakes in one day. First, he forgot Valentine’s Day. Then he tried to cover his oversight without thinking through the consequences of his excuse. He said, "Honey, I want you to know I didn't forget Valentine’s Day, I just decided I didn't want to get you anything."
As Tim Hawkins sang, “If you're a man who wants to live a long and happy life there are the things you don't say to your wife.” As an added word of advice, no good conversation ever began with the words, “Those jeans make you look like your mom.”
Psychiatrists say that three of the greatest needs of a human being are: The need to be wanted, the need to be needed, and the need to be loved.
When we think of our love life and the need to be loved, most of us think in terms of romance. We think in terms of a special someone, another human being. It's sad, however, that when many people think of God, they don't think of love. What many think of when they think of God is religion. They think of rules. They think of ritual. Although the Bible does include a lot of these, they all pale in comparison to relationship. God is into relationship. And God wants to have a love relationship with you and with me, and God wants us to have a love relationship with each other.
Communicating love is key to a good relationship.
Try this! Put your fingertips from your right hand up against the fingertips of your left hand. You have just made a bridge. But if you bend your fingertips together, and let your joined thumb tips drop a little downward, your hands create a heart.
How you formed this heart with your hands is what Heart Love is all about. It joins together and bends a little to meet the other. Heart Love is a love that gives of itself to another person then forgets the favor rendered. It is a love that finds something to love in the seemingly unlovable. Heart Love states, "I love you and I want you to be happy and to achieve the fullest stature of your being." Heart Love is what God has given us, and Heart Love is what we are called to give the world.
The challenge before us is to continue to look at the world and people around us through our Heart Love perspective in order that others might know and experience God’s Heart Love through us. Remember, we’re not necessarily called to like everyone, but we are called to love them. It’s the choice to love others and give love away that matures and perfects each one of us as Christians.