Love Intentionally
Be warned. I’m gonna say some hard stuff in this post. Don’t feel bad, we all miss this! It’s okay to mess up, and it’s okay to be wrong. God is still pleased with you, and He still delights in you! Don’t start thinking about your past and beat yourself up over it. Just hand it all over to God and say yes to what He is doing!
So I’m sure a lot of you have read 1 Corinthians 13. If you’ve been in church for a while, you probably call that chapter “Conviction Corner” where you go to see just how far off the mark you are. I know I used to look at it that way. But remember, God doesn’t tell us to do things that we can’t do. Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Religion has taught us in the past that it’s good enough to reach for the mark and never attain it, because it’s impossible to attain. In religion, this is a perfectly rational thing to say, because religion does not believe in a God that is active in your life, helping you and pushing you to attain things which you wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise. The life we are called to as believers is itself miraculous! We can’t do it without a living God taking our “yes” and using it to transform us into new creations. So let’s throw out the carnal thinking that we can’t love in the 1 Corinthians 13 kind of way, but that we must strive for it and never attain it. We can love that way. Just not in our own strength.
I want to say this even stronger, because this is very important. We must love in that way. 1 John 4:20 says, “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?” We all desire to love God. A big part of that is loving the people around us. And love is active and intentional.
There are a few things that we need to grasp that make this whole concept of loving people a lot easier. First, don’t tell yourself you can’t do it. You’ll never be able to do something you don’t believe you can do. If the Father says you can do all things, He means it. Second, it’s super important that you learn to receive love. Jesus said to love your neighbor as you love yourself. A proper, healthy attitude towards yourself actually opens the door for you to love others, because real love is not self-seeking; it doesn’t love in order to gain something (or even to achieve anything). In order to love in this way, you need to be receiving love, and that love comes from your Father. GET IN THE SECRET PLACE!! I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. The best way to love yourself is to spend time with God, because He’s the best thing that could ever happen to you and there’s nothing better out there, no matter what your flesh might tell you. He’ll renew your mind so that you see yourself properly. Third, allow the Lord to give you His heart for other people. Ask for that. Ask to see the world through His eyes. He will help you to see people as they really are, and He will show you how He feels about them. Then, you will be pushed to love other people out of your love for God; He cares about them, and you care about Him, so you’ll care about them too.
So let’s break down what exactly this kind of love looks like.
“Love suffers long and is kind.”
— 1 Corinthians 13:4 (NKJV)
Right off the bat, we see how selfless love is. It is willing to suffer for a long time, and it doesn’t allow this to affect its attitude towards the cause of its suffering. This is God’s will for us in relationships with each other! This is what He is inviting us into. It isn’t a standard that He is setting, then sitting back and watching us struggle to reach it. What He calls us to He also empowers us to achieve!
“... Love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil...”
— 1 Corinthians 13:4-5
Basically, love is not concerned with itself. It is already entirely fulfilled. If you aren’t in a place where you feel that way, it makes it difficult for real, true love to flow out of you. It is possible to feel totally fulfilled, right where you are. It comes from the secret place. The more you allow God to love you, the more you are able to truly love others. It doesn’t envy because it has everything. It doesn’t parade/promote itself because it is secure in its identity in Christ. It has already been affirmed by the Creator of all things, it needs no more affirmation. For this same reason, it doesn’t puff itself up, or try to convince everyone else of how awesome it is. It doesn’t behave rudely, because it cares about the well-being of others. It isn’t provoked; it doesn’t allow outside circumstances to dictate its response to a situation. It’s steady. It’s constant. No matter what happens around it, it continues to flow. It thinks no evil; it isn’t cynical. It isn’t pessimistic. It sees people as they are and loves the darkness out of them. It sees the potential in every person and situation. This is how we were created to think!
“... [Love] does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails...”
— 1 Corinthians 13:6-8
Now I’d recommend going back and reading 1 Corinthians 12 and the entirety of 13 together in context so that you get the fullness of everything that goes on in this chapter. Then you’ll see how love should be the driving force behind operating in the gifts of the Spirit. Your motive actually matters. Doing the stuff is great, but why you’re doing it will determine the fruit it yields. This is another reason why the secret place is so important (I'm just gonna keep saying it until everyone gets it XD). Maybe I’ll write another post about that some other time. But for now, I want to focus on the attributes of love.
Love doesn’t rejoice in iniquity. It isn’t happy when someone is caught slipping. It doesn’t enjoy watching a person fall from grace. At the same time, it does rejoice in truth, and in things being brought to light in a proper manner that is healthy for all parties involved. So love isn’t out here covering things up. Love loves the truth.
And here we get into the hard stuff. Love bears all things. Nothing is too hard for love. Nothing is too big for love. This requires connection with God. It is necessary to be in relationship with your Father for you to love this way. But if you are in relationship with your Father, you can do this. You can properly, unconditionally love everyone around you.
Love hopes all things. Love is pretty optimistic. It knows the will of the Father is good, and it believes that He is faithful and able to do exceedingly more than we could ever ask, think, or imagine. Love isn’t expecting the worst. A lot of times we feel like we need to expect the worst so that we don’t get blindsided when it happens, but that is not the mindset of love. Romans 8:28 says that all things work together for our good. To expect the worst is not to be in the mindset of heaven. It also makes life pretty sucky, so let’s kick that to the curb and always expect good from every circumstance we enter into, no matter how bad it looks at the onset.
Love endures all things. It never gives up. It always perseveres, and always presses on. It’s steady and constant. We see this constantly in God’s attitude towards us. No matter where we are in life, He steadily pursues us, and steadily draws us towards Him. And nothing we do causes Him to stop that pursuit. Now he invites us to treat the people around us the same way.
Now, here I feel like I should put in a qualifier. If you’re in an abusive relationship, you can distance yourself from that. You aren’t the only one who can love that person. Follow the leading of the Holy Spirit on that and don’t insist on your own way. There is a sense in which you don’t want to cause your brother to stumble, and in some toxic relationships, the first step to reconciliation and restoration might be distance. At the same time, I do say this cautiously. I don’t want to instruct you guys to extrapolate that to a safety-first mindset, because that isn’t what we see in the Kingdom. The apostles went into situations knowing that it would end their lives. Jesus gave himself over to the Pharisees, knowing it would end with Him on a cross. Our mantra isn’t safety-first, but obedience-first. If you’re in the wrong place, God won’t let you stay there. Be filled with wisdom on this. Let God lead you to love people in the way He wants you to love them, not in the way you want to love them. Surrender every part of your life to God, not just the easy, obvious parts. His ways are higher than yours, and He can see the whole picture while you can only see part of it. I trust Holy Spirit to lead you into all truth, and I trust you to seek Him and hear from Him on these sorts of things.
Lastly, love never fails. It always works. For every problem you have in your life, love is the answer. It’s never wrong to love someone. On the contrary, it’s always right. Love every person around you, whether they agree with you or not, whether they like you or not, whether you think they’re worthy or not… because at the end of the day, they are. God loves them. Don’t ever hate the things God loves. We want to have the same attitude as God towards every thing in this world. That means loving the ones we think are unlovable, in the situations we think are unforgivable.
And this love is active. A lot of the time, I think we settle for, “Well, I’m not mean to them. I don’t feel malice towards them. I don’t hate them. But I’m definitely not going to go out of my way to bless them, tell them how great I think they are, and do nice things for them.” If God loved that passively, we would be in big trouble. What right do we have to act any differently than Jesus did? He actively loved the people who were killing Him by paving a way for them to be with Him forever! That’s the kind of love we’re called to. It’s intentional. It’s a decision we make, followed by action. The Holy Spirit constantly reveals ways that we can move in love towards the people around us. Let’s take advantage of this opportunity and start stepping into this! We’re supposed to be known for our love. Not for our theological accuracy, or our cool churches with cool people wearing cool clothes, with cool lights and cool fog machines, or even for our insane miracles (even though this love is a miracle in and of itself). Everything flows from love. Everything comes from love. So believe that you can love, step into love, do it with everything that you have, and watch as it transforms everything around you.
Love you guys!
- Kaleb