Don't confuse

In a recent conversation with an acquaintance, the term 'love' came up. I immediately responded with, "Love is not an emotion", with which he wholeheartedly disagreed. But alas, as is often the case, people don't think through and carefully articulate their terminology.
The way one may feel about love is an emotion. But love itself is an action and a state of mind. If we are faithfully following Christ's command to love our neighbor, we do so regardless of how we feel about him. Our feelings, in this case, are irrelevant. We love because it's the right thing to do. And no one dislikes love, giving or receiving.
But there are two other terms here to consider. One, "like", is completely an emotional response. We may hear a beautiful piece of music and because it emotionally moves us, we like it. We may really like to be with a particular person, because of the feelings we have when we are with them. That's all fine and good, but it not love. It is a focus on ourselves.
Two, "romance", is closer related to love, but still distinct from it. You may feel madly "in love" with someone, but it is really just an amplified "liking" of them. And if our marriage is built on romance, it is doomed to fail, for romance is fickle.
Our marriage shouldn't be built on liking someone either. For sure, we should like the person to whom we are married. But that will fluctuate as well, depending on our mood, on their mood, depending on the weather, or even depending on how our day went. But none of those things have any bearing on our love for someone else.
We love others because it is right and because it is a manifestation of who we are, as Christians. Jesus said it, let them know you by your love (John 13:35).

Love for the other

We must not love, simply for the benefit of ourselves but instead we must love for the benefit of the other. The Christian life is defined as love of God and love of neighbor. But why? We love others because God loves us first. God loves us first, not because we were loveable or because we deserved love but because perfection is defined as love. God is love. To love unconditionally is easy when one loves for the other. To love that which is lovely and loveable is easy and intuitive. But to love in order to build up and restore the other is what we should be. This kind of love should define the Christian.

We love for the other because love is the only thing that will restore that which is damaged and distorted. Without love, we are nothing.

Emulating Christ

Our emulation of Jesus Christ is not in merely copying what he did, for this would be foolishness. For Jesus lived in the period of the old covenant, with all of its cleanliness laws, it's food laws and it's separation laws. Jesus lived as a faithful old covenant Jew. We, on the other hand, live in the new covenant. We are not forbidden pork, nor mixing our fabrics. We are permitted to eat dinner with gentiles. We are permitted to shave the sides of our heads, if we wish.

So what does it mean to emulate Jesus Christ? We are to do so by practicing his summation of the law, which is, to love God and to love neighbor. If we do this, we are fulfilling every aspect of the law, in total.

We should love those people in our circle of influence. We are to love where we live.

Feelings and prayer

How we feel about things, usually has its place and that includes our prayer life.  But at the same time,  our feelings during prayer is really irrelevant.
If we feel that God is far away from us, we can typically account for this by our own lack of devotion.  But because we know God is a God of love, we know he is never far from us.  Even when it feels that way,  we should be that much more aggressive in our prayers, as our hearts need to change.
When we don't feel like praying for a particular person or situation, again that is the time when we should be praying most.
When we feel angry, jealous, depressed or otherwise, we as followers of Christ, should know that God is with us. Regardless of how we feel,  There is always the good, the right and the true. And those are the things that should direct our thoughts and actions,  not our feelings.
At the same time,  when we have feelings of love and devotion toward God and neighbor,  that is a good thing,  for this is what we are called to.
Fickleness should not be the driver in our life.

Happiness defined

What does it mean to be “happy”?  There is the unselfish answer of “knowing that we have made others happy”, but that only pushes the question back one level.  Who defines “happy”?  We can say “the church”, but then the first answer of “knowing that we have made others happy” breaks down.  We would only then be happy if the happiness of the other was defined by the church.  If someone else’s “happy” is self-centered and passion-based, then we will have failed.  We will then not be happy, as the happiness of others is false and we have not achieved.  Nor should we want to achieve that which is contrary to what the church believes and teaches to be true.

But maybe achieving “happiness” is not actually the goal of the Christian life.  Happiness may be a short sighted and selfish goal.  If we are, instead, supposed to achieve holiness, regardless of how we feel, then our lives will be one of struggle, repentance, tears and suffering, as the world will not understand us, support us, or care for us.  Even those closest to us will probably not understand, as the pursuit of holiness seems to be a rare occurrence.

Sin

Every person, every community, every situation has its sins.  This somewhat falls into the “grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” category.  We can live in a particular context and seeing the sin therein be disgruntled and desire after something else.  Seeing the sin and being grieved by it, is a good response. But in doing so, we must realize that all situations and persons after afflicted by sin.  We cannot escape it.  While it is true that some sins are more or less grievous than others (on both a personal level and a corporate level), the sin is still there and is still problematic.

Wisdom requires that we respond rightly to the sin that is in us and surrounds us.  There is something very right about fleeing from the potential influence of sin.  But we should never use the sin of others (either individuals or community) to justify our own sin.

Again, it’s about love for God and love for neighbor.  Our response to sin must be motivated by love.

Fruit

We read in Galatians 5:22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."
For many years, I understood this passage to mean that we were supposed to do these things.  But not too long ago, the  meaning  of the words really jumped out at me.  These things are the "fruit" of the Spirit. In other words, when we see living a life, directed and controlled but the Spirit, we will see this fruit.
An analog works really well here. Do the apples that grow on the tree make the tree an apple tree, or do they reveal that it is an apple tree? I think it's pretty clear that it's the latter.
So too with our lives.  Living a life that manifests love, joy, peace patience, kindness, etc does not make us a Christian, it reveals that we are part of the body of Christ.
The next question then is, what is being said when we do not see these things in our life?