"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends…” [1 Corinthians 13:4-8b ESV]
Coming to terms with another loss, another failed attempt, puts my heart in a spin to ever want to try again. Incredibly challenged by Paul’s description of love, I press pause in the pain to press in a little closer and learn from Him. (…take my yoke upon you and learn from Me for I am gentle and humble at heart…” Matthew 11:29)
Love never ends…but what do we do when it does? Love wins in the end, but sometimes love feels like it loses in the battles along the way. Sometimes it just isn’t enough. Sometimes love is rejected, misunderstood, used, abused. Love should be the easiest thing and yet too often, love feels like the hardest thing. He steadies my heart with a reminder of the cross and I know my Jesus knows all about rejection and loss. He loved us to death. I wonder back then if His disciples felt like love won, or did they feel like love lost again?
We try hard to disconnect the feelings of love with the knowing of love, but here’s the deal, we need to start facing the fact that love isn’t a feeling, but where love is, there are feelings and where love isn't, there are feelings. Love doesn’t change its shape to conform to our feelings, but we need to start conforming our feelings to love’s form. There’s a lot at stake if we don’t get this straight.
God is love [1 John 4:8] therefore His definition of
love is encapsulated by His essence.
God is the set bar of what love is and what it is not. We all fail that bar without Christ, and some fail that bar even claiming to have Christ. If love feels insufficient and we feel like giving up, we have to ask ourselves, “did we really love, or did we just love the thought of love? Maybe we didn’t really know what love was at all.” How do we love when love runs out? Well, love can’t run out [Love never ends]. Maybe we were trying to love with a kind of love that wasn’t love at all. Maybe true love gets lost in the feelings and facades of self-centeredness and self-gratification. Maybe we get so consumed with self that we don’t have the ability to let love in nor let it flow out. Pain is a great love-leak that puts us in survival for our own heart…and sometimes the casualty of our survival is someone else’s heart. Ohhhh, there’s a lot of pain in this world. “Help us, Lord.”
This truth gets harder in this quest when we read a little
further about this God-Kind of love.
"We love Him because He first loved us. If someone says, "I love God," and 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." [1 John 4:19-21 NKJV]
Somewhere along the way, we have all missed the “must”. Sitting here for weeks tumbling over these thoughts and yes, these feelings, I am challenged to heart-ache thinking about how many times I’ve missed the “must”. I read Paul's list to the Corinthians again, with the caveat turned confession-“I wasn’t”: I wasn’t patient, I wasn’t kind, I envied, boasted, was arrogant and rude. I insisted on my own way, I was resentful. I rejoiced and justified wrong actions and believed lies more than truth sometimes. We all did. We did it sitting in churches telling God we loved Him. We did it behind their backs claiming innocence. We did it and didn’t admit it and let the damage steal and destroy and now the only one rejoicing is the enemy who always comes to kill, steal and destroy. We are all victims of this un-love and I shutter to think of the magnitude of pain that God sees when He sees us hurting each other.
Maybe the kind of love we need
is a kind we can’t easily perceive.
Maybe it isn’t our love at all,
but something received and then poured out.
Yes, right there in the center of this dead-end way, we have our Jesus guiding us back to His way, because He’s the only way. The One Who loves with the kind of love that lasts forever. The kind of love that overcame death so we could overflow life. His love endures forever…and His love He gave to us. Which means our love can endure forever too. It will never forfeit, never lose hope in the hard, won’t get offended when attacked or rejected. This Love sustains when feelings fade and people change. This Love is a constant in chaos. It’s a continual desire for good and blessing for others. This Love is an unending choice to forgive and an unashamed willingness to pursue. Maybe we don't understand His grace until we understand His love and maybe we need to receive some love-infused grace so we can start giving out some love-infused grace for each other.
As much as I want to give in to the pain and give up on the pursuing, I can't say I love God and desire to walk in His way while walking my own way, which is walking away. I have to choose to let love in and let it pour out and let it win now and let it win then, because
love never ends.
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