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Now let's jump in. Everybody wants to be loved and everybody wants to feel loved. But here's the problem: too few of us can even define what love is. And that's today's conversation on the Clear Vee Today Show. You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr.
Abadan Shah, a daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Ryan Hill. I'm John Galantis. Welcome to the Clearview Today Studio. We're here with our host, Dr.
Abadan Shah. Dr. Shah, welcome to the show.
Well, we're going to define love. That's right. That's right. I believe it was Foreigner who said, I want to know what love is. I want you, you specifically, Dr.
Shah, to show me. Yes, no, it's not. It was you and the lyrics.
Well, we're going to get into the word of God. We're going to let God's word define and show what love is. Do you remember when that song came out? Like, was that song super big? Oh, is it before?
No. This was in the 80s, I believe. Foreigner, I think it was 80s. 80s. I would say mid-80s, maybe.
You were probably still living in India. Still living in India. Yeah, I mean, I listened to Western music, but that wasn't like.
Something I was the one. There's a bunch of people listening to, oh, that was my song. I did love that song. I did. 1984, I believe, from what our engineer just said.
Very cool. Very cool. It was four years before me.
Well, wow, that's kind of crazy. Four years before you. I was born in 92. I don't even know how to do the math on that. Probably like.
Eight. Plus four. Yeah. Yeah, plus four years. Yeah.
Because we're four years. But Dr. Sha, you know, I think that is that is we're we're joking around and we're laughing, but I think a lot of people want to know genuine love, right? We think we know what love is. We we know how love makes us feel.
We know how we feel when we're in love, but to define what love is, a lot of times what we do is we try to use those feelings or use what we've seen on movies or TV, and we go everywhere but God. Yeah, and I think the middle part, what you said there, we turn to movies and TVs and books and novels. That's where we think, oh, that's what love feels like. And but what you're experiencing are some very good artists, very good writers, literary geniuses who know how to pluck your heart strings. They know how to do that.
So if you want to know how these people can make you feel, Then of course by all means go go. Read those novels or watch the notebook and all these movies. Again, I'm not against them. But I don't think that truly is is love. Hints of love in it.
But I don't think that's truly love. Yeah. I think it's interesting that that is common across the board. Like whether, whether you gravitate more toward movies or TV shows or books or whatever, or music, we all have that capacity within us to where our heartstrings can be plucked. Our emotions can be manipulated as a harsh word, but manipulated in that way.
They can bring those feelings out of us. Yeah, your feelings can be influenced, let's say, or impacted by people who know what your desire is. Especially, I think, maybe you can talk to this, Dr. Shah, with women. They flock towards romances and even rom-coms and all this stuff because people, writers especially, know what they're looking for.
They're looking for this connection, this thing that they call love. This monumental romance. But it's an incomplete picture. It is. It is.
If you want to have a true understanding of love, you have to go to God. And in order to understand what God really thinks about love, you have to go to the scriptures, the Bible. The Bible gives us the true definition, the true, not just definition, but also demonstration. Of what love is all about. John the Apostle says in 1 John 4:7, Beloved, Let us love one another.
For love? is of God. Means God is the owner, the copyright holder, the manufacturer of love. And so, if you want to love one another as a spouse, as a family, as a friends, or anything else. You have to go to God.
And in the Bible, several times it talks about that, and people typically jump to 1 Corinthians 13 or 1 John. But I would suggest go to Ephesians, because here you find out What love really looks like, yeah. Yeah, I think it's it's it's definitely a new way to look at it for people who are maybe new Christians or people who are not as strong in their faith. Because I think, like you said earlier, what we do is we take. What we think love is, and we try to map it onto God.
Right.
So I've seen love in movies and TV shows. And so I think that God is like that. But then I read other passages in the Bible and I'm like, oh, that's not very loving. But it's like you said, it's not that God is loving. It's love is what he is.
Yeah. You know what I mean? It's right.
Well, there's so many times that we get stuck on the feeling of love, feeling lovingly toward people. And certainly, you know, we would say that I love my spouse or I love my kids or I love my family, but it's more than just the way that I feel toward them. It's more than just this kind of hum in my heart or this warmness that I feel when I think about them. It's much more than that. And that points us back to a greater truth: God is the originator, the author of love.
Yeah. In Ephesians chapter one, he tells us. In chapter one, verse four, it says Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. In love. God chose us before the foundation of the world.
to be holy and without blame before him in love. And it's not just that we will be in love one day, but that he chose us because of love. Yeah. What do you think that means? Like, he chose us because of love.
How does that change the way that we see who God is and how we understand him? Means without us doing anything good, bad, and ugly, God loved us. Wow.
So when we talk about loving people, It's not performance that builds or creates love. It is none of those things. You love because you love. Yeah. It's not merit-based.
It's not what I can get out of this person or what they do for me. It's just simply, I love you because I love you. Right.
And that's Sometimes I would say, in fact, I should really say many times it is demonstrated in our human relationships. Yeah, I was going to say that I think when, like, you, when I got married, I wanna say that when I got married, it was that unrequited, but a lot of times it was us learning to love each other, but then having children. You know what I mean? It, like, what can my kids do for me? At like five years old, three years old to earn my love.
And I think before having kids, what you just said, Dr. Shaw, would have been foreign. Like, I love because I love. Right.
It's a weird, it's a weird thing. I don't know, but. It was very recently that I started understanding. I was really. There was a part of me when each of the kids were born that was nervous about like.
That kind of you almost feel like there should be an instantaneous connection with your kid. And, you know, as a father, you don't, you don't have the same kind of connection that a mother does.
So I remember when each of them were born, I would look at them and just kind of like, You are my child. Yeah. And I love you, but I, there wasn't that immediate, like overwhelming, just kind of overflowing of emotion. But over time, That emotion is there. And over time, I love them because of who they are.
I don't love them because of what they bring to the table. I don't love them because of what they do around the house. I don't love them because of their grades or their performance in athletics. I simply love them. Right.
I don't know. Maybe you can speak to this too, Dr. Sha. I don't know how it was for you when you first had your first daughter. But like I think with Ellie, and maybe with a lot of moms, it was this overwhelming need: I need to protect this baby, I need to nourish it.
I have all this huge, huge. Rush of hormones and endorphins and love and emotion. For me, it was more like, I've got to change. I don't I mean, does that make sense? Yeah, I think some of that may be reflective of God's love, but I think it's it's much more than that.
Yeah, I guess it's reflective in the sense that God has a sense of responsibility towards us.
Now that He loves us, He's going to create us, and then we're going to fall, He's going to pick us up, and there's some kind of a love there. which is not only not performance-based, But also It is a sense, not obligation, but a sense of responsibility behind it.
So, yeah, there is some truth to there. There may be a better example that I think you could speak to in your life, because you've said this, and it has always struck me as strange every time you've told the story of when you met Nicole's dad. And you said the first time you shook this man's hand, you'd never met him, but you could tell that he loved you. And I always thought that was not strange, like weird, but it's just something I'd never heard a man say about his at the time, his girlfriend's dad. What did you feel when you shook his hand?
Like, how could you tell he loved you? It was a sense of. Kindness It was a sense of compassion. It was a sense of non-judgmental Spirit And I immediately sensed it and I felt it and I was like, whoa This is different.
Now, am I saying that I've never felt that before with anybody else? I don't know. Maybe I did, but that stands out to me more than any other time in my life that this person. Genuinely is good. Nice.
And it touched me. And that's why I said I felt like he loved me. I love that story. I love you sharing that because ever since you shared that with us, that's something I've been praying for myself, not just about anybody I interact with, but for my kids' future spouses. Like whenever I encounter them, wherever they may be.
I want them to feel that for me. That's right. Had you felt that in an adult? like father figure other than your own father or was he was he the first one other than your father to have that? My role in your life.
Yeah, but my dad, see, there were never a situation where that could be a role. There was never a situation where I did not know him and then I knew him. You know, I kind of just grew up with my dad.
So that feeling did not come with my dad, not because my dad didn't love me, but it was never that opportunity to see it in that kind of a setting or dynamic.
So I would say I know, I never felt that feeling with my dad, but not because my dad didn't love me or I didn't feel that love for my dad, but it was different. Yeah, how did that introduction to your father? Yeah, because I didn't know Pastor Jerry Shedd from anywhere. And then to go, whoa, this person is really. good and kind and compassionate and Christlike and Non-judgmental and just has accepted me.
How is that possible? How did that love go from making you feel really good that one day to growing you into a better Christian, a better man, a better leader?
Well, I mean, Once that happened. Prior to that, I was already making my way back to God. That that ship had already turned. I hadn't made a U-turn.
So I Hours. Saved when I came to America. I was very active in my church. I was very active in my school. I was top of the class.
I was top in my youth group, doing things for the Lord. All those things were there.
Okay. I come to America and I saw things and I felt behavior that was completely contrary to the behavior of Christians. That's why I understand when somebody says there are hypocrites in the church or I went to church and I felt judged and mistreated, I get it because I went through that.
So, when I went through those experiences, I sort of backed away from church. I stopped going to church. And and then I b went back to church, but not for the right reasons. And then things happened. My life sort of fell apart.
This is going back to 1993. My life fell apart, And in those moments I knew that I had to surrender my life back to God. And I did. And after I surrendered my life back to God, I made that covenant, that promise with God that, God, I will serve you as long as you keep your hand upon my life, as you lift me up, as you guide me, I will do whatever you call me to do. This is before you met Nicole and herself.
Before I met Nicole. This is going back to December of 1993. There was a big change in my life. And I turn back to God. You know, trials in life have a way of doing that.
Mm-hmm. When the bottom falls out, that's a way of knowing that, hey, God just caught me.
So, God help me. January I went to NRB. This is January of 1994, NRB convention, National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Washington, D.C. And it really touched me. It gave me a huge boost.
So I was already making a turn. This gave me a boost. And now I was like, okay, all right. Life goes on, but it's much more than that. I have a new Direction and focus in life, which is to love God, to keep Him first, and to see what He has in store for me.
I don't know where I'm headed. But God's in control. And I have him back at the center of my life.
So already had made that turn. I was beginning to go to church again, so so it was it was all okay at this point. And then I met Nicole. And one of Nicole's conditions was, you have to meet my dad if you want to keep dating me. I was like, oh, okay.
So I stood her up one time. And then the second time around actually I met him and that's when This moment of man, this this person really loves me. took place. That's when it happened.
So already I was making a turn. And then God brought Pastor Jerry into my life. It's a fantastic story. It really is. And it's.
It's encouraging to think that everybody has that moment. But I'm willing to bet that there's a lot of listeners right now who are listening to that. Man, that would be really nice. I don't think I've ever genuinely felt loved by another person in my entire life. Could you speak to that person?
Well, just know that God loves you. I know this sounds like a cliche, but it's not. God loves you, He loves you before the foundation of the world. His love is eternal. It says in Jeremiah thirty one, verse three, The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love.
Now that's quite quite a love. Everlasting means before time began. Before eternity started, which is like never ending on the other side, God already had you in his mind. You did not exist as a pre. Pre-incarnate spirit, like Origin and others were, you know, suggesting.
None of that. You were not there.
Okay. You were not there.
Other than in the mind of God. And in his mind, he loved you, and he was waiting for that moment when. He would create the heavens and the earth, and he would make Man in his image, and he would do all those things, and down, down, down, down through the ages. You will come. And you'll be born.
And he already knew and he waited for that moment. And you were born, and he was there delighting over you. He was there, excited to see you finally here. That's how God thinks of every single human being. Who is conceived in this world?
Wow.
Every single one. That's why abortion. It's such a sin. Yeah. Because it's taking the life of the unborn.
That's why it is wrong because as God loves that soul. and he has brought it in his timing which he loved forever. And then brings him. into this world, you snuff the life out. Mm.
So, not only is it killing, yes, it's a murder. But you're also Interrupting This Everlasting love of God. And so I want the person who's listening thinking, man, nobody loves me. God loves you infinitely, not infinitely as in quantity. But infinitely As in chronology.
Yeah. Chronology. He has loved you since before time began. Before time began. before eternity began.
For ever and ever he loved you. Wow.
That's you were always in his mind. That's so amazing. I mean, just to really sit and kind of sit with that thought is unbelievable. I mean, it stretches your mind to its limits to think about even before there was time for God to love us, God loved us. God has always loved us.
We've always been, always been on his heart, always been his cherished children. I mean, it makes you feel like. Yeah. It makes you feel like you matter. It makes you feel like you are important to someone, and you're important to the most important.
Can you talk for a little bit, Dr. Shaw, about how even before we were there, God was there and his love, even for himself, it's a weird kind of thing that Christians, I think, don't talk about how God's love is also rooted in himself and his own glory. And we don't talk about that a lot.
Well, God was, in a sense, absorbed in himself.
Now, if we become self-absorbed, there's a problem. We become. vain. We are self-centered, selfish. But when God is loves himself.
This is not Vainglory This actually is that God is taking glory in Himself because He has perfect glory. He is not doing this because he lacks something, but because there is nothing greater than he can aspire. Than himself. Yeah. Yeah.
Like, what else can he love? What can he else love? What is the greatest object? For a mother, it is a child. For a A young man is his beautiful Why for g girlfriend, I mean, this is my greatest you know, love.
Something like that. But for God, the greatest is Himself. And he loves himself. And he wanted to share that love with someone outside of himself. Hence, he created man in his image.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think about when Jesus talks about how the thing that you love, right? That's what you're always going to look for. That's what you're like, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
I think a lot of times we fool ourselves into thinking that we love the things of God when really we're just kind of in it because the things of God benefit us. Yeah. When, Dr. Shah, do you think that as Christians, you really start to get it? Like you start to get.
This is why I love God. You know what I mean? When do you think that happens in a Christian's life? That how much I love God back? Yeah.
I think it's a growing process. When I first got saved, It was, oh, yeah, I love God because He died on the cross for my sins. Thank you, Jesus, and all that for blessing me with a great family, with a great. Mind with a great church and school and home and all that. But in time, I began to grow.
And I still am growing. in my understanding of how much He truly loves me. How much he has thought of everything in my life.
Now, I don't do that perfectly because there are many days I Don't think about it. I am absorbed in My mistakes, or I'm absorbed in my work or I'm absorbed in other people's Mm-hmm. You know, behavior or attitude or whatever they're trying to accomplish.
So there are many times I'm not focused on that. But when I do stop and focus, I see how much he loves me and how much I need. to focus on that love. and come to him With the knowledge that he loves me and petition to him, knowing that he loves me. He's not.
Just this detached being, he's like, Oh, here we go again. What do you want? This little problem, child. Yeah, here you come again. What do you need now?
Or you messed up and I'm not going to love you. No, he is love, and he loves me. And my coming to him is not a burden for him. It's not an obligation. It's not you know, some interruption in his in his Daily schedule.
No, he is welcoming me in.
So I want to encourage our listeners and our viewers to start seeing God. As this loving Parent. Who looks forward to the opportunity for you to come to him? Yeah. And I like what you said about it's a learning process, it's a growing process, even with me.
And I think with all of us. You know, we want that West Side story moment where you see the girl of your dreams and everything just unlocks. And in that moment, I'm complete. I'm wise. I get it now.
But I think with all of us, whether it's our parents, whether it's our family, our spouse, our kids, we have to learn to love them. We spend our lives learning to love them. But we feel guilty that we have to learn to love God. We feel guilty, like, or at least I do sometimes, where, like, the moment I got saved, I should get it. I should be completely changed, and now I'm sold out for Jesus, but it just wasn't that way.
The love of God, I mean, it's interesting that we're talking about this. The love of God was really what kind of. Redirected the trajectory of my life. When I was seven, it was when I got saved. And I understood that, you know, Jesus died on the cross for my sins, and I want to be forgiven.
I want to go to heaven.
So I was saved, baptized at seven years old, grew up in church. And from seven to about 15, just kind of like going to church, going through the motions of Sunday school and eventually going into youth group and all those things. No real big hiccups in life. Just kind of had a wonderful parents did a great job taking care of us. But when I was 15, I went to my first youth camp.
And so there was it's youth camp, so there's crazy games and all this kind of stuff. You're staying up late. I remember specifically at 15, the speaker of this youth camp, I have no idea what he's doing now. But he was, I remember him. He was, he was Hawaiian, so he had long dark hair, and he would wear his hair back when he was preaching from the stage.
He preached in sandals. Oh, man, he was cool. But he talked that night. It was the middle of the week. He talked about how God loves you.
And he kept saying it over and over again. But he would elaborate on it each time. God loves you specifically. God knows you inside and out. God loves you.
Not in the sense of like, I made a Lego creation and I love all of my Legos. No, he loves you. He knows you and he has planned you from before the foundation of the world and he loves you and he has a plan for your life. And I can remember in that moment, it was like I heard that for the first time. I remember vividly at 15, I remember just kind of.
Sinking down in my chair, just tears streaming down my face because I grew up in church. I knew that God loved me, but it was like in that moment, I heard and understood it for the first time.
So, talking about like, I got saved, I should get it. I've been saved for. Half my life at that point. But it wasn't until that moment that I really understood what it means that God loves me and what, what then I should do. That really was a turning point in my life: understanding more about the love of God.
Yeah. And the more you grow in the Christian life and the more you focus on the cross. And see that. And I think sometimes we get a glimmer of it, a hint of it here and there. But overall, we are so busy with life.
And even when we study scriptures or try to do a Bible study or grow in our faith, we're focused on something that we need, some wisdom that we need, some direction we need in life.
So we're not thinking of this. Like, wow, God loves us so much that He gave His Son on the cross for me. That's a lot of love. In 1 John 3:16, by this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And I know it's a cliche.
I know this is just words we've heard all are Our lives. But think on that by this we know love, because he laid down His life for us. Wow.
Yeah. Yeah. That's love. Yeah. Not only the fact of just a person laying down their life, but think of what his life is worth.
Think about what the life of God. Is worth worth infinitely, infinitely more than any like me laying. Even if I lay down my life for one of you guys, it's like, wow, what a guy. But think of God doing it. That's right.
I mean, you really, I wish I had creative words to put it in to make it have the impact, but it the words fail. Words fall short. The God who knew us. Before eternity passed. The God who made us In time and space.
is the same God who two thousand years ago, as promised, as prophesied, gave his Son to die on the cross for my sins. And John three sixteen is so real. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son That whosoever will believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. That's right. So God has loved us and then demonstrated that love in the greatest way possible.
On the cross.
Someone, we got maybe four minutes left, Dr. Shaw.
Someone's listening to this right now, driving to work. Maybe they're in the gym. Maybe there's some, who knows where they are. But they've they've heard that like you said they've heard John 3 16 all their life And I want that everlasting life, but I'm waiting on a feeling. I'm waiting to feel that love before I make that commitment.
What would you say to him? I think the last word he used right there, commitment. Love is a commitment. Love is not a feeling. Love is a commitment.
A feeling may follow. But facts come first. Faith follows facts, and then feelings follow. Fate.
So don't wait on a feeling. Commit your life to Jesus Christ. By faith believe that He is the Son of God, He died on the cross for your sins, commit your life to following Christ. And now begins the journey. And there may be times that you will be overwhelmed with.
That love? There will be times that you will see that love demonstrated, maybe in a sermon, maybe in your Bible reading, maybe in a song, maybe some story of God's faithfulness and goodness and God's plan of salvation or hope for us or somebody else. But overall, you don't wait for that feeling, you step out In fai in faith. in commitment. You because You love him, you seek his glory.
Because you love him, you obey him. Because you love him, You need to love like him. That's also very important. In 1 John 4, it says: if someone says, I love God and hates his brother, Hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
And this commandment we have from him that he who loves God must love his brother also.
So. It's a prerequisite, or I wouldn't say prerequisite, as much as it's a direct result of you loving God, you love others like He loves us. That's right. It's so important that we understand that, that we understand how God loves us so that we can then show that love. To others around us.
That's right. Guys, if you enjoyed today's episode or if you were impacted by it, I want to encourage you to head on over to Abadanshah.com. Lots of important updates, lots of ways that you can stay connected with the Clear Vee Today Show. One of them is by joining our mailing list.
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That's right. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clear Read today. You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I'm Ryan Hill. I'm John Galantis. Welcome to the Clearview Today Show. We want to hear from you. If today's your first time ever joining into the show, text us today to TO I'm so sorry, guys.
Let me tell you. In those moments. You just need to smile. It's gonna tell you. Beautiful bro.
