Yesterday, we began this series on love. Now let’s look at some of the attributes described by the apostle Paul concerning what genuine, true love looks like and check our own love-o-meters.
1 Corinthians 13: (AMP)4 Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily.
How are you doing so far? Are you willing to endure long–even in those seasons when your mate or loved one becomes critical, distant, and stops meeting your needs? Or what if some accident or illness left them completely unable to meet any of your needs and required you to sacrifice everything to provide their care; how long would love endure and remain patient and kind? And even if you went about the steps of their care or the outward appearance of forgiveness for the critical mate; how long would it be continued out of genuine love for the other instead of a motivation of self-pitying and self-exalting (for one’s tremendous capacity to love) at the same time? These are tough questions that I still must ask myself everyday as I care for Mom? Do I ever find myself grumbling because she has made one more demand of me and that seems impossible with my schedule? What about "never boils over with jealousy?" How often have I even thought, "I wish for one day that someone would take care of me and provide for me like I do mom." Ok, I just admitted my failure and even more so if you continue on to "not boastful, vainglorious, nor display itself haughtily" How are you doing on this love meter? Well, we are not done with this evaluation as next Paul continues with the next verse.
5 (AMP)It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong].
Have you ever spoken a harsh word to your loved one? Have you ever said, "But you don’t understand what they did or said?" How are you doing now with this love meter?
6 It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail.
What if right and truth prevailing means you must accept that you are wrong?
7 Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening].
We are forever given opportunities to change our natural ability to love (which is lacking) into a love which is more resembling of perfect love which is only found in God. Too often we try to explain away our inability to love perfectly as C. S. Lewis points this out in his book "The Four Loves" " "If only I had been more fortunate in my children (that boy gets more like his father every day) I could have loved them perfectly." But every child is sometimes infuriating; most children are not infrequently odious. "If only my husband were more considerate, less lazy,” the wife says, to which her husband replies: “If only my wife had fewer moods and more sense, and were less extravagant…But in everyone, and of course ourselves, there is that which requires forbearance, tolerance, forgiveness." Yet in each of these instances God is working in us to recognize our own inability to love perfectly, thus our need of Him to learn perfect love.
8 Love never fails [never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end]. As for prophecy ([d]the gift of interpreting the divine will and purpose), it will be fulfilled and pass away; as for tongues, they will be destroyed and cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away [it will lose its value and be superseded by truth].
Created within our nature is a need to love and to be loved. Yet, we are incapable within or very nature to love perfectly. The only perfect love is that of God Himself. So, is there any hope for us outside of God? Are our natural need for love and inability to obtain on our own a means by which God draws us to Himself? There remains a void within us that only God can fulfill. Yet, we seek it with all our hearts. We desire to give love; yet, are without Him incapable of achieving this. In fact, the more I know of His love; the more I realize my own inadequacy of loving God as I should. All Knowing God, did not have to create man, He needed nothing of us; yet, He did so that He might have a someone to share His Love with (share like one who shares with a pauper his food and his wealth). Without free will we could never understand His Grace nor fully understand the depth of His Love. A love that as pointed out by C. S. Lewis again in his book The Four Loves "He creates the universe, already foreseeing — or should we say "seeing"? there are no tenses in God — the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves,the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath’s sake, hitched up." Knowing the depth of depravity that would occur in man and the price that must be paid so that His relationship with man be restored in order that He give of His Overflowing Love to Us, He still created man. I John 4: "8 God is love.9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
Our only hope of truly loving anyone is by the empowering work of Perfect Love-God. We need first to learn of God’s love, seek to know His love, and with His help to lift us up learn to love Him better; then, the love of God will fill our hearts and overflow to those around us.
Marriage gives us an opportunity to learn of this kind of love, to learn a little more of God’s love and to truly point out our own inability to love perfectly without the help of God’s love within us. It should always point us even closer to God. Two imperfect people learning to love, forgive, hope, and endure through everything; always seeing only the good in the other while at the same time helping them to see that good themselves, dying to self so that the beloved is Glorified, and always praying that God teach us more how to love while we seek Him first, knowing He is our only Hope.
To this day, I can never thank God enough for all the lessons of love learned with my belated husband, Pedro Barba, Jr. How often he forgave me for all my inadequacies and how much I learned of unconditional love as I forgave him his. In the midst of that love between Pete and I, I learned so much of God’s love and one day I will see Pete and finally we will be perfected in love. Still, that reunion will pale in comparison to seeing Love Himself (God).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mXAtFvnibc
Amplified Bible (AMP)
Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation
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