Bible Studies for Life Series for March 16: Looking for love in all the wrong places

Posted: 3/04/08

Bible Studies for Life Series for March 16

Looking for love in all the wrong places

• John 3:16; 1 John 3:16-20; 4:15-18; 5:2-5

By Gary Long

Willow Meadows Baptist Church, Houston

There is a hunger for love in our electronic age, and you don’t need to go very far to find the evidence. At this writing, there are more than 1,000 websites to help you find your perfect mate and the trend shows no signs of slowing down.

The online dating business is booming as corporations capitalize on people’s need for companionship. The cost to subscribe to your average online dating site is between $24.95 and $54.95 per month, according to one web source.

Or take a look at the number of ads on the popular website www.craigslist.com in the personals section—people are online looking for everything from a long-term relationship to a one time “no strings attached,” hookup for sex only.

Wired magazine reported two years ago that, “Twenty years from now, the idea that someone looking for love without looking for it online will be silly, akin to skipping the card catalog to instead wander the stacks because ‘the right books are found only by accident.’ Serendipity is the hallmark of inefficient markets, and the marketplace of love, like it or not, is becoming more efficient.”

While the methods of modern amore may be more efficient, that doesn’t make love any less messy. Divorce rates are high, even among Christians. Some estimate that as many as 70% of single people are sexually active before marriage and—even worse—as many as 1/3 of married people have cheated on their spouse. You and your students likely have been touched by some of these statistics in painful ways.

From a theological perspective, it would appear one significant reason for these trends is that while humans recognize the need for love in their lives, they lack a clear sense of what love really looks like. This isn’t to say that using online dating is wrong, but the Bible texts for today suggest the reason we don’t know love when we look it in the face is that we have not fully experienced the love of God.

The manner and degree of God’s love is well-framed by John 3:16, and it serves your students well to discuss the significance of God’s love as displayed in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. Until we can come to the understanding that God’s love is total, complete, perfect and ultimately fulfilling, humans will continue to rove and roam in search of that perfect love.

In popular culture, this notion is best illustrated in the movie Jerry McGuire, when Jerry exclaims to his gal that he’s trying to woo back to him, “You complete me.” The prevalent view is that we are able to find love that satisfies our every yearning (“completes me”—in other humans. But the reality from a Christian worldview is that only God can offer us that kind of love. Or, in the words of Augustine’s prayer, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”

And then what?

Once a person understands these principles of love, these ideals must be converted to action. Part of what feeds the cultural obsession with the sexual aspects of love, as mentioned above, is a second fallacy about the nature of love in us. That falsehood rests in the belief that love is something we feel rather than something we do. The agent of God’s love is action that shows us God’s love.

When it comes to giving gifts at Christmas and birthdays, it may be that “it’s the thought that counts.” The common feeling we call love can be easily simulated by chemicals such as mood altering drugs or the euphoria we get from eating chocolate. But love is substantiated by what we say and do, not by what we think or how we feel. Love is not implied, it is displayed.

When we truly understand God’s love for us, we must realize we also are to act in loving ways toward other believers, especially toward any who are in need. The lesson for this week highlights this appropriately with a good look at another 3:16 passage—and 1 John 3:18 summarizes this well: “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”

Are you looking for a cultural tie-in for this lesson?

Some of your learners may appreciate the old Waylon Jennings song “Looking for Love.” The heartache described in this song really does tell the tale of loneliness and isolation in our age. This song gives you the opportunity to discuss how we often confuse the various kinds of love in this life.

Lookin’ for Love

I’ve spent a lifetime looking for you

Single bars and good time lovers, never true

Playing a fool’s game, hoping to win

Telling those sweet lies and losing again.

I was looking for love in all the wrong places

Looking for love in too many faces

Searching your eyes, looking for traces

Of what I’m dreaming of …

Hopin’ to find a friend and a lover

God bless the day I discovered

Another heart, lookin’ for love.

I was alone then, no love in sight

And I did everything I could to get me through the night

Don’t know where it started or where it might end

I turned to a stranger, just like a friend

I was looking for love in all the wrong places

Looking for love in too many faces

Searching your eyes, looking for traces

Of what I’m dreaming of …

Hopin’ to find a friend and a lover

God bless the day I discovered

Another heart, lookin’ for love.

You came a knocking at my heart’s door,

You’re everything I've been looking for.

No more looking for love in all the wrong places

Looking for love in too many faces

Searching your eyes, looking for traces

Of what I’m dreaming of …

Now that I found a friend and a lover

God bless the day I discovered

You, oh you, lookin’ for love.

In all the wrong places

Looking for love in too many faces

Searching your eyes, looking for traces

Of what I’m dreaming of …

Now that I found a friend and a lover

God bless the day I discovered

You, oh you, lookin’ for love.