Longsuffering part 4
Love never fails. Because love endures. When Jesus said He would never leave us nor forsake us, He was talking about the power of love. He was talking about patience. He was talking about longsuffering. And, in a very real way, He was talking about mercy and grace. Mercy is not getting what you deserve, and grace is getting what you don't deserve. It is in this state of perpetual rightness with God that we can truly flourish. We don't have to worry about our actions, or mistakes, or bad choices, disqualifying us from His love or His purpose. We don't have to pluck flower petals and say, "He loves me, He loves me not," and hope and pray that we end up on "He loves me." We can know, with a knoweldge that passes knowledge, that He loves us, He loves us, He can't stop loving us. What else could the God who IS love do? Love isn't just what He does. Love is who He is. And love is patient. Love is kind. Love never fails. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Because--again--He IS love. So in order to be separated from His love, we would have to be separated from Him. And we know that even in the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve hid from the presence of God... He was still right there with them. Now here's where this gets really exciting: Because nothing can separate us from God's love... we can love no matter what! God and people. Loving God and loving people. Loving God BY loving people. That's what this life is for and that's what this life is all about. It's all about love. Letting people be who they are--even letting them be who they think they are when they have no idea who they really are--by having patience with them. Having mercy and grace for them. If you take deserve out of the equation, you can just love people no matter what. You can put into practice what the Bible says in Matthew 5:44 (NLT), "But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those that persecute you!" When you're not judging by appearance, but judging righteous judgment, that's when you are truly receiving and releasing the love of God. That's when you can truly experience what you've got by giving what you've got. That's when you can truly let what's inside come out (by knowing and believing that it's in there). What you believe is inside you WILL come out. It has to. It's too big not to. And that fact that you believe it makes it too powerful to stay hidden for long. If you've every tried to bottle your emotions up only to have them explode, you know what I'm talking about. What's inside--what you believe is inside--WILL come out. So let it be love. Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word of God. Knowing and believing that God loves you is what gives you the patience to endure. To suffer long while knowing that it came to pass, not to stay. To be able to get through what you need to go through in order to get to the other side. And once you've gotten throguh it, that's when you can help others through it. Because we all go through the same things. We're all in this together. And we can endure more when we have people in our lives who will support us. We can suffer for as long as needed when we have people around us who will help us bear our burdens. And never forget that that's a two-way street. Never forget that if I look after you, and you look after me, that's when neither one of us have to worry about ourselves. We can both be Christ-centered (or people centered), and we can both still be covered. Because we're covering each other. Enduring each other and enduring WITH each other. Giving what we've got and in that way experiencing what we've got. Sharing it and in that way making it more real!