Get it for real. “Let love be genuine,” it says in the New Testament. Evidently there is spurious love, only pretended, and this does no good.
The love the Bible talks about is not something emotional. It is convicting. It is an attitude that leads to action. No doubt feelings and emotions will play a part because we are made up this way. But basically love is an attitude. It is to have God’s attitude towards all other people.
If love were merely an emotion or feeling it could not be commanded, for you cannot require a certain emotion in someone else. But you can demand that there be a particular attitude. And this is what God does when He tells us to love one another — even our enemies!
God is love and love comes from God, says the Apostle John (I John 4:7-8). The nature of this love is displayed in Jesus. It is merciful, forgiving, redemptive and healing. God acts this way, always, and His attitude and His saving deeds are called love.
I Corinthians 13 puts love, like light, through a prism and shows the beautiful spectrum of its matchless colors. “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous, or conceited, or proud; love is not ill-mannered, or selfish, or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs; love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth. Love never gives up; its faith, hope, and patience never fail” (verses 4-7).
Whatever you do, get love. Without it you had better not be a missionary. There will be burdens to bear, sorrows to live with, pains to suffer, disappointments to endure, sins to forgive, needs to fill, wrongs to make right. These are things only love can handle successfully.
You may be gifted to speak foreign languages; you may have great powers for preaching and teaching; you may have all knowledge and understand all secrets; you may have all the faith needed to move mountains; you may make great sacrifices of your time and possessions, even giving away all you have, even giving up your body to be burned; but if you don’t have love, says the Apostle, you are no more than a noisy gong or a clanging bell. In fact, you are nothing at all, and what you do is worthless (I Corinthians 13:1-3, paraphrased). So, above everything else, get God’s love until you are filled with it.