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Love, Lust and Other Stuff
Good Morning! Good Morning!
The other day was Valentine’s day, and I guess I should have done this piece then instead of today, but….oh, well…..it ought to still work for today.
Coffee’s just about ready. I’ve got a lot on my plate for today and have to get out the door early, so let’s sit down at the table and get this discussion under way. Mmmmmm…..that smells
goooooooodd !!!!
Bet you’d agree with me that the most overused word in the English language is “love.” Brother! What passes for “love” in today’s society doesn’t even come close. More often than not we transpose “lust” for “love” because our hormones are going crazy and we don’t know how to define the difference.
In a minute, I’ll share some personal experiences with you, but let me first take you to some definitions of this word, “love,” that exist in Scripture.
Three words occur in our Greek text of the New Testament: agapé,
phileo, and
epithumia.
Agapé is used of God’s love for us, through us and with us. J. H. Thayer, in his Greek-English Lexicon defines it in part as, "to take pleasure in the thing, prize it above all other things, be unwilling to abandon it, or do without it (at any price)." There is a companion Greek word,
agapéo, which describes the “love feasts,” Jude made reference to in his epistle.
In Dr. William Smith’s, A DICTIONARY OF CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITIES, Dr. Smith points out that the love feasts --
agapae -- were held prior to each celebration of the Lord's Supper, in which the poorer Christians mingled with the wealthier.
The wealthier provided all of the food, and all partook alike. It was an occasion in which status in society, position within the Ekklesias, and financial or material resources were set aside.
Everyone fellowshipped together on the same plane, expressing their love for one another.
Hence, the love expressed at the "love-feasts" totally ignored custom, culture, doctrinal differences and/or spiritual age, or maturity, in favor of sharing that life that each possessed in Christ Jesus.
Agapé, (ah – gah’ – pay) therefore, was a love that transcended human emotion.
It was love expressed from a spiritual perspective. It was a spiritual affection that originated in God’s heart, His desires and His purposes for a people He was preparing.
Phileo was the most commonly-used word to describe love. It was the love of human affection. It was brotherly love. It was the love between family members. It was the kind of love a husband expressed for his wife, and a wife expressed for her husband.
Phileo (fil – lay’ – ohh) is the root word in Philadelphia – the city of brotherly love.
Epithumia is a word that we see in the Greek text of the New Testament, rather than the more common Greek word, eros. Epithumia (ep-ee-thoo-mee'-ah) is a word which translates out to “desire, a longing for, passion.” It is the word which more accurately describes the feelings and passion aroused between husband and wife.
Ancient Greek non-Biblical texts use a word, eros, to describe human passion, but it more accurately translates to “lust.”
Eros is animalistic in nature. It demands self-gratification without regard for anyone or anything else. Hence, the Scriptures never use this word for love.
OK, now that we have our definitions out of the way, let’s get on with our discussion.
Maybe I need to call this a confession instead of a discussion.
Like every young person in their teens and twenties, I used to think I knew all about love.
It was easy to explain. If you were strongly attracted to someone, you were in love with them.
When I was in my mid-to-late teens, I met a girl in Portland (we were at a church meeting) that I was strongly attracted to.
Of course, I didn’t live in Portland, and in order to maintain any kind of contact with her, it had to be by way of the Pony Express – you know, snail mail.
For two or three years, we corresponded. By the time I was nearing nineteen years of age – and in the Army – I had decided that this girl was the one I needed to marry.
My correspondence with her began leading our conversations in that direction, and when I had an opportunity to see her just before going into my basic training, I began strongly hinting at the idea that we should plan on getting married.
A couple of months later – as I was getting out of basic training – I received a “Dear John” letter from her.
She had accepted a proposal of marriage from someone whom she had known for several years, a nice young man who attended the same church with her.
I was crushed. Why, how could she? I mean, she had never let on that she was interested in some other guy or anything like that!
Terrible! Terrible!
It took me all of 48 hours to get over it – if that.
So much for that relationship! We never saw each other or talked or wrote to each other again.
Guess that wasn't love, was it?
I hadn’t been particularly interested in dating girls before then, anyway.
I was too much into my books, my lab experiments, my music….things that otherwise occupied my mind and my interests.
So it was pretty easy to dismiss the whole thing and return to my interests.
The Army had me tied up for awhile, but just after my 21st birthday, I got an early discharge so I could go to Bible College and prepare for the ministry.
One of the unfortunate concepts that I grew up with was one with origins I’m not sure of.
History, of course, tells us that back in Jesus’ time, the Pharisees had to be married in order to be accepted into the sect.
A young man could not become a Pharisee unless he was married.
The KJV New Testament translates out Paul’s statement to Timothy that
“a Bishop must be …. the husband of one wife.”
That presupposes that if one wants to be in the ministry, they must first be married.
In the denomination I was a part of at that time, one could not be ordained or become a pastor unless one was married.
Ergo, I needed to find a wife.
Bad decision! One of my classmates in Bible College was a young lady to whom I was attracted.
She had been a model, and so – naturally – she had some physical attributes that made her desirable.
You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?
We met the first day of second semester. We got married the day school let out some four months later.
I knew within the first week of marriage I’d made the worst mistake of my life.
It doesn’t take any genius to figure things out. It wasn’t love that brought us together.
Well, if you are hard-headed, stubborn, and afraid of what your peers in ministry will say and do, you tough it out.
I screwed up my will-power screw, gritted my teeth, and determined I was going to make this thing work.
There was a problem, however. Another problem.
God’s call on my life was destined to take me into physically dangerous and highly controversial places.
If your wife doesn’t share that call and hasn’t heard the voice of God herself, there isn’t any way she can endure the attacks, the pain, the emotional upheavals – you name it.
It gets worse. In Bible College, I was given the opportunity to work with David Wilkerson and his Teen Challenge ministries.
When he found out about the marriage plans, he called us in to talk with us.
“Buddy, this isn’t God!” he said to me. “The call of God on your life will create such problems between you, your marriage will end up in divorce.”
He turned to my fiancée and said, “You don’t share Regner’s call into the ministry.
If you do this thing, you’ll mess up God’s plans and purposes in your own life.”
Anyone who knows David Wilkerson knows he is very strong in the way he comes across.
He is powerful. He minces no words and cuts no slack when it comes to the things of God.
This time wasn’t any different. He said to my fiancée (who happened to be also working with him – but only because I was), “I’m going to assign you to the San Francisco ministry.”
He turned to me and said, “I forbid this. I’m sending you to Los Angeles.
You two will stay apart from each other for six months.
If this is really what God is doing, your love for each other will survive.
If not, you will be spared the coming disaster that I see.”
That made me mad! I wasn’t accustomed to folks taking that kind of strong stance, and I was young enough, dumb enough, and too wrapped up and self-absorbed in my own plans and purposes to listen to what was obviously wise and Godly counsel – not to mention the strong hand of leadership.
I shook my head in disagreement with what he was saying.
He stood up and looked me straight in the face. “Regner Capener, if you ignore what God is saying to you in this, I can promise you that you will see nothing but disaster for this marriage.
This is not the will of God!” I walked out of that room shaking, both in fear and in anger, having turned off my spiritual hearing so I couldn’t hear the Lord say, “NO!”
In the days that followed, the pastor I’d been working with in San Jose – James Merwin – called and asked me to come to his home.
He and his wife both said to me – a whole lot more gently than David Wilkerson, but just as firmly – “Don’t do this, son! The Lord is not in this marriage.
He has designed someone especially for you – someone who will share your call and anointing for ministry.
Just wait and see what the Lord puts together.”
That same week, the president of the Bible College called me into his office.
At the same time, the Dean of Women called my fiancée into her office.
Both of them counseled us identically to what we had already heard. The Dean of Women said to my fiancée, “Regner is not ready for marriage, and neither are you.
You have no business getting married. You two are not compatible.
You weren’t made for each other. This just won’t work!”
It was pretty clear we weren’t going to get the kind of backing and moral support we wanted, so we did what all young and rebellious kids do: we eloped.
We didn’t call our friends, our family – anyone – other than two classmates to serve as witnesses.
I quit my R&D position at Lockheed, we got married in a private ceremony in a home and headed down the road to Los Angeles.
In case you’re wondering, I’m giving you a guided tour in stubbornness, rebellion and stupidity – all of it passing for the determination of love.
It wasn’t love that brought us together. It was lust.
It was a lot of other stuff, too. I “needed” a wife in order to fulfill God’s call on my life…or so I thought.
Hogwash!
My fiancée needed a husband so she could escape an abusive home.
It was all psychological – mostly psycho, very little logic.
Believe it or not, we made it hang together through sheer will power, grit and determination for
almost eighteen years. Stubbornness sure played a part!
I was determined to prove David Wilkerson’s prophetic utterances wrong.
“Hang together” may be the wrong way to express it.
As I’ve shared with you in previous coffee breaks, we went through hell with persecution and attacks.
With no real love as the glue to keep a bond of marriage together, my wife left three times during those years.
Each time, I did the “proper” thing. I went after her and tried to make things better.
The problem was my motivation. It wasn’t to fix the marriage and to correct the wrongs that existed: it was to ensure that we “looked OK” to our friends, brothers and sisters in the Lord.
It’s called the Fear of Man.
Let me tell you, where there is fear like that, there is no love.
The Scripture makes clear that where there is love, there is no room for fear.
If you allow yourself to be contaminated with fear, you also contaminate your faith.
Some eighteen years and four children later, the lack of real love in our “union” brought everything to an end.
Whose fault was it? That’s easy. Mine!
I had the foundations laid in my life to know better.
My wife had not had those foundations laid in her life, and she had made a decision to get married as a self-defense mechanism.
None of that is love. That doesn’t mean we didn’t have some pretty good years and some good experiences together.
We did. We were able to get past our own personal lack of real love for much of the time.
We even had fun. But fun and neat experiences together are no substitute.
I’ve heard it said that you can will yourself to have agapé love for someone – that you can overcome the lack of
phileo – brotherly or human love – by determining to love.
Nope, it doesn’t quite work like that. You don’t screw up your willpower screw and determine to love someone.
There has to be a foundation for agapé to work.
Agapé is predicated in one’s life on being obedient to the will of God.
It is predicated on hearing His voice and following it.
One cannot agapé in disobedience.
One cannot love with that kind of love and overcome all obstacles when the foundation is predicated on disobeying the expressed will of God in your life.
I fasted and prayed for my wife, and for our marriage on numerous occasions.
One day – just prior to our third separation – while at the end of a three-week fast, the Lord spoke to me and said, “I’m not going to say, Yes, to something I’ve already said, No, to.”
So what kind of relationship was it? It certainly wasn’t
agapé.
There was precious little phileo.
What started the whole thing was eros – something that isn’t even love.
Could those foundations have been corrected? Sure.
It they hadn’t begun in direct disobedience.
God says that He hates divorce! And He does. With a purple passion!
But I found something He hates even more: unequal yoking between believers and unbelievers, between people who are called and people who are not called, between those who are heirs and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ and those who are not.
Sorry. Guess I should have warned you to fill your cup this morning with a triple or quadruple shot of Expresso.
Didn’t mean to lay some “heavy revvy” on you. Today, I’ve shared with you just how much of a disaster you can get yourself into when you don’t have agapé in your life and marriage.
Love is all it’s cracked up to be – as long as the foundations are right.
Tomorrow, I’ll show you the other side of this equation.
I’ll share with you how the Lord brought together agapé,
phileo, and
epithumia
in my life.
All in one.
Wheww !!! What a difference!
How’s that for a way to begin your day? So finish your coffee, already.
We’ll talk more tomorrow.
Blessings on you.
Regner
A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
700 South 6th Street
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
(509) 837-4657
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