Is it Infatuation or is it Love?

How will you know if you are really in love or if it is just infatuation? Love is an action and infatuation is a feeling. Love, unlike infatuation and lust take commitment and devotion to a person. This is because when we truly love someone it takes self-sacrificing behaviors and attitude .

When you love someone you wouldn’t do anything to hurt him or her. If you’re not married you wouldn’t try to incite passion within her and she would not flirt with and excite him. These actions come from the feelings that infatuation creates. If we constantly obsess about a person we are in a relationship with, morals will take a backseat and we will get our lustful desires met through sexual relations.

Having sex outside of the “one flesh” of marriage creates delusion and wrong attitudes within a couple and keeps the relationship from developing into love. They may truly think they are “in love” and this misconception can create havoc later on when one of them decides they are not infatuated any more with the other. Unbeknownst to both of them, they have already disrespected each other through the sexual act because there is no love and commitment. When a relationship is supported only by feelings of infatuation, it won’t last. Once infatuation dissipates the relationship dissipates along with it.

Its important to note, that we are human and we will have feelings of lust and desire but we also have been given self-control to not harm ourselves and those we care about in our relationships. God has given us the free will to choose self-discipline or lack of it. He is not going to stand over us with a paddle telling us what we can and cannot do because He already has. Where is our faith to believe that what God says for us is true? By the way, the paddle comes later, maybe much later, but it will eventually come.

What we think about in our attitude and how we view life and what we believe in precedes what we will do and act on. If we constantly dwell on lust desires, we’ll eventually act upon them. Infatuation urges us to have sex, while loving someone would put desires and lust feelings aside so we can truly get to know the person we are in relationship with. Two unmarried people should not incite passion and lust within each other. God made fornication a sin because he knew it harms people emotionally, spiritually and sometimes physically.

Jesus says to not even look at another with feelings of lust because it is emotional adultery—it is adultery of the heart. For the unmarried it is lust that when not controlled becomes sin in our lives. Fornication, adultery and lust addiction controls the people we are intended to be for God. Having sex before marriage actually keeps us from maturing emotionally and spiritually in God’s love and forgiveness . We cannot have a personal growing relationship with Jesus and commit sin at the same time—its impossible.

“It is God’s will that you should be sanctified; that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sin. (1 Thessalonians 4:3-7)

Love, on the other hand, waits. Love is patient and kind. Love is NOT self-seeking, which is what sex before marriage is. (1 Corinthians 13:4) If a guy or gal continually wants to have sex with you then it is not love but infatuation. Love does no harm to others. Intimacy and sex are both a beautiful part of life, in marriage . But anything else brings on spiritual and emotional problems for people in subsequent relationships.

As Christians we should never entertain or compromise with sinful ideas and practices just because everyone else is doing it. Christ Ones are to not blend in with people around them. Christians are the spotted lambs who stand out from the crowd in their action beliefs. If we are a part of God’s family in His kingdom of heaven we need to live up to God’s standard of morality and not condone immoral behavior even if society accepts it. How are we serving God if we are one with the culture?

To sum this up: Hebrews 13:4 clearly lets us know that marriage is the only honorable way to have sexual relations, and that any other way, whether it is through adultery, fornication, or lust addiction , is condemned by God. How are we pleasing God in our relationships when we are disobeying God’s moral precepts for our relationships?

“Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and the sexually immoral.” (Hebrews 13:4)