True Love

One of my favorite movies of all time is the movie “The Princess Bride.”  The movie is a major tongue in cheek flick that brings great truths about the power of “true love.”  All throughout the story true love keeps the young man, who has been supposedly killed, pursuing his true love, Princess Buttercup.  Their love started at a young age where he was just a servant boy who every time she asked for something he would say, “As you wish.”  When he said “as you wish” he was really saying “I love you.” They were separated because of Prince Humperdinck’s  desire to marry Buttercup.  The prince thought he had killed the boy, but the boy’s desire to see his “true love”, his first love, caused him to escape the clutches of the killer  and begin his journey of defeating one enemy after another.  Except one.  The prince had captured him after going through the fire swamp and his right hand man took him and hooked him up to the machine of pain.  It was a machine that would drain the very life out of him.  They hooked him up to the machine and proceeded to drain his body of all life.  It was over.  But, his two buddies snuck into the dungeon and carried him to a man by the name of Miracle Max. Miracle Max proceeded to tell the two that their friend was too far gone, and then it happened.  Westley gasped with one last breath two words, “True Love.”  Miracle Max then realized there was still hope and he brought him back to life to pursue the one he loved. Here is one of Miracle Max’s great quotes: 

Sonny, true love is the greatest thing, in the world-except for a nice MLT – mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe.

Except for the MLT advice, Miracle Max was right.  True love is the greatest thing in the world.  You think about it.  What drove God to send His Son, Jesus to die for our sins?  True Love.  What drove Jesus to carry the cross up Calvary’s hill and die for our sins?  True Love.  What drove a person to share the message of Christ with you?  True Love.  What is the only thing that will win in the end?  True Love.  We shape love into whatever shape we can to make it where we can give the least, believe less, and then bail out on God at the drop of a hat.  That is not love!!  At least not love of God.  It is love of ourselves, and that is the problem.  Love of ourselves causes us to be crude, selfish, haughty, petty, and many other wrong things.  1 Corinthians 13: 4 starts telling what love is by saying, “love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant.”  More and more characteristics are given but enough is said in just the first ones.  Let me pick one out; bragging.  As we raised our children we drove home the point of being considerate to others and not to brag.  To let your works do the bragging for you.  When we were teaching them we didn’t know those characteristics would be abused by others who were only out to build themselves up.  Others who bragged (even humbly bragging counts) would almost flaunt it in their faces and they would just take it and go on.  Not a whole lot of love in that!!  And those were the Christians!!  But True Love prevailed.  True Love of a Savior who knows what true love is and responds to the expression of it in His children.  We would tell our kids, God knows, and He sees, and He cares.  That is still true today.  Every time God would minister to our kids getting pushed around because of their kind hearts, as they cried out to God in need, He would say “as you wish.”  Then He would minister to them and bring them back to life again without scars.  Him saying, “as you wish” was His way of saying, “I love you.”  Our pursuit of our first love, Jesus, is an ongoing battle.  Sometimes we get so low and feel like everyone is draining the life out of us, but God brings us back to our first love by giving us a miracle cure.  His grace.  By the way, people still do it today.  You do have facebook don’t you?  Enough said!  If you really have true love, then the distortions of those pretenders around you will not stop you from pursuing your first love on this pilgrimage of life.  His name is Jesus, and He is our Prince or Peace.  If you are playing the game of love without a pure heart and you are attempting to build yourself up at the expense of others it might do you good to listen to what Paul wrote to the Romans in 12:9 where he said, “Let love be without hypocrisy.”  Wow!  Love without hypocrisy would change everything for everyone for all time.  How does that happen?  John wrote about Jesus saying in Revelation 2:4 to the church at Ephesus and said a mouthful when he said, “I have one thing against you, that you have left your first love.”  What’s keeping you from True Love?  Love without hypocrisy, love that is not bragging, but uplifting and considerate?”  Pride!!  You went on a journey down a path that seemed right and seemed to build you up, but it is the wrong way.  It led to disobedience and disguised itself in false humility and false righteousness and now even you are confused.  Turn around and run to the Savior and there you will find your True Love.  Need more grace from God?  He says to you, “as you wish!”

 The  Pilgrimage continues….

David Warren