Week 15. Love Always Endures

We begin with patience (Week 1: Love is Patient), and we end with something really close to it: Love Always Endures. There is a journey shown in this small sentence. It shows a beginning and an end. It shows a suffering, a beautiful hand-crafted story encompassing great loss and great joy. This is life. And this is how LOVE lives life. It always endures.

There are endless ways we all have to ‘endure’ in some form or other in our lifetime. From an infant enduring his 2 minutes of panic before he eats, to the mother enduring her desperate need for sleep. These are basic and survival ways to endure. Then there are harsher things we endure that spark some emotional endurance, like a fist fight between students at school, discipline from a parent, or harsh words spoken by a close friend. Worst of all are the things that we end up enduring for a lifetime, like physical trauma, adultery, or the loss of a loved one. Some things we endure for a short time and are necessary for normal and healthy living, but others we endure every minute of every day. These pains never leave us, but Love shows us that there is still a light at the end of the tunnel.

Without hope, how could anyone move on from a traumatic event? When you lose a loved one, there is a time of grief where you can’t even think about moving on. This is completely acceptable and even healthy. But there seems to come a day, or maybe months or years, when you have a choice to walk out your life in “patient endurance” and choose love. Love always endures. Love endures all things.

A lot of people have heard, “God will never give you more than you can handle.” It’s supposed to be an encouragement, it’s like saying, “you can do it, you got this, you can handle it.” But I have to completely disagree with this line of thinking. First of all, it’s not biblical. The verse that most people are referring to when they state this is 1 Corinthians 10:13: “…God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.” Temptation is referring to sin. The bible isn’t saying here you won’t face things more difficult than you’ll be able to endure. The bible is saying that you won’t be tempted to sin beyond what you are able to control, but God will give you a way out of the temptation. This is a huge distinction. The point is that God isn’t laying traps for us to see if we fall into sin and fail. He’s actually rooting for us. When something sinful and destructive falls into your path, He’ll offer a road around it. He’ll offer a door when you feel trapped.

It’s important that we understand the bible is NOT saying here that God won’t give us painful circumstances beyond what we’re able to endure. We know that ignoring or walking around something painful only makes it worse. We can’t ignore our problems. So why would God be offering a way to “escape” from an emotional struggle?

Does God bring unexplainable peace and joy and comfort in painful situations? Yes! But He isn’t saying He won’t allow these things to happen to us. Just look at your life. Look at the life of those around you. Have terrible and painful things happened? Do you really think it was within your ability to handle it?

The truth is, life brings many circumstances that are beyond what we can handle. But the truth doesn’t stop there, we have another truth to follow it. When we are weak, He is strong. When I can’t do it, God can through me. When I’ve had enough, He is there to pick me up and carry me THROUGH it. Not around it. Through it. Will we suffer? YES! Jesus promises suffering. Will life be crazy hard? Absolutely! But I have a Love in my heart that can bear and endure anything that comes my way. It’s not MY love. This is another important distinction. I can’t get through these difficult times by tapping into my own love that I’ve worked so diligently to practice or “put on”. I can only get through these things by tapping into the Love of my Creator, who has a bottomless barrel of love that flows through me so that I “never thirst again.” This conversation between Jesus and the “woman at the well” has always confused me. If Jesus is really like water that will make us never thirst again, then why am I always thirsty? And isn’t it healthy to be thirsty for God? But I think I am starting to understand it. The point is that you never have to go thirsty again. The water is always there, the Love inside of me is always ready to be drunk. But unfortunately, I forget about it over and over again, until my own love runs dry.

Love is patient, love is serviceable, love is not jealous and it does not boast. Love is not proud or rude and is not self-seeking. It is not easily offended and doesn’t keep a record of wrongs. It doesn’t delight in evil but rejoices with truth.  Love never gives up, never loses faith, always hopes, and always endures.

I am probably able to love like this (if I try really hard) about 2% of the time. This is my own judgment of myself and not a scientific calculation. I have a little bit of patience, but when I’m tired I have none. I’m good at not keeping a record of wrongs because I have a terrible memory, but there are some things I’ll hold onto. I’m not typically jealous, but if my husband is talking to a woman I don’t know I’ll have some interesting things to say. I could go on…

But I’ve learned that when I come to a place where I realize I have no love left, I cry out to God and all of a sudden, I have an infinite amount of patience, or kindness, or rejoicing. Do you see why God allows us to go through things beyond what we’re able? Because then we get an even greater gift! We get to tap into a resource that never ends. If I were able to endure all things in my own strength, I would never need God. Humans would never have had to reach out to God in the first place. We would have no tool for evangelism, and there would be no need for us to help anyone else. We go through things in life obviously stronger than ourselves, which help point us to something obviously greater than ourselves: Love. Love is greater. It is always there, and it never runs out. It endures all circumstances, even beyond what I’m able.

Thank God that He is Love, and that He offered Himself up completely for me, so I could learn how to Love like He loves.

How can God be called ‘Jealous’?

The bible definitely talks about envy and jealousy in the way we understand it. Psalms and Proverbs are constantly telling us to not envy the wicked and their riches. Ecclesiastes talks about our envy of others causing us to strive in achievement. There is no mystery about what this word means when it was translated from Greek to English. So how can the bible say “Love is not jealous”, and yet say that God’s own name is ‘Jealous’ (Exodus 34:14)? Not to mention the hundreds of verses where it says ‘God is jealous’. The bible even mentions a few times when God provokes jealousy in His people because He wants their hearts to turn back to Him. Even Paul writes to the Christians that he wishes he could make the Israelites jealous so that they would want Jesus. Why would God want us to be jealous, but then say, “love is not jealous”. Isn’t God Himself Love?

Confusing. But I think there’s so much here we can learn. I think it would help if we looked at it the way we look at…sex. (Sorry, PG-13, but hear me out.) There is healthy sex and there is unhealthy sex. Healthy sex brings life and healing and joy. Unhealthy sex brings pain and longing and damage. There seems to be a “healthy jealousy” in the bible. When God is jealous, His desire is for us (mostly after we’ve turned away from Him.) He is angry with His bride, Israel, because she’s broken her covenant with Him and whored around to whoever would sleep with her. His jealousy is a healthy jealousy that invokes Him to fight for His bride. What woman doesn’t want to be chased by the man they love?

I recently watched How to Train Your Dragon 2 with my kids and was blown away by a scene where the main character (Hiccup) finds his long lost mother (thought to be killed by a dragon 20 years ago) reuniting with his father, the ruler of the Vikings. He’s a big, scary, stubborn kind of guy. When he sees his wife for the first time in a long time, he is serious, yet full of emotion, and he is…gentle. He loves her, and welcomes her back to be his wife again even though she wandered off without looking back.

I love this scene because it reminds me of God’s heart for us. It doesn’t matter what we do. He always desires for us to come back to Him. He just keeps trying, keeps waiting, in patience (week one), and kindness (week two), for us to love Him back. He is jealous for us, because we are His bride, and He’s supposed to be jealous for His bride, just like we are supposed to be jealous for Him.  This is healthy jealousy.

So what is unhealthy jealousy? 1 Corinthians is saying that love is not jealous for the wrong things. Love isn’t jealous for a nice house, a good job, a better personality, a smaller nose, quiet children, or a helpful husband. Love is jealous only for the Lover of our souls! Our jealousy can not be aimed at anything but His heart and loving Him. That is what Paul meant when he wrote “Love is not jealous”. He means love doesn’t look around and see all the things it doesn’t have.  Love is being so committed and connected to God’s heart, that we just want more of Him, and all the other stuff we want fades away into the distance, because Love realizes nothing comes close to the Lover's embrace.

Am I really going to be more patient?

Two nights ago, the first night of the Campaign and Day One of “Love is Patient”, I had one of those nights with my kids. Or I should say, ‘my kids had one of those nights.’ I have twin 5-year-old boys. That sentence in itself is supposed to tell a whole story, but you have to read between the lines.  In any case, they’ve never been good sleepers.  They were up every night for at least the first three years. After that, once in a while we’d have a night where we actually slept through until morning.  It very slowly got better, and now we’re mostly sleeping straight through the night.  Surprisingly, this did not come in handy for my practice in patience.  I have gotten used to sleeping all night! So let’s just say I was…not happy to be woken up 6 times out of the blue.  

Sometimes, when my husband isn't working, I can pretend I’m asleep so I don’t have to get up. He does it too, so I don’t feel bad.  It’s okay, I know when I can’t handle something.  I know when I’m not going to have the patience that I need to help them. But when I’m alone, I don’t have a way out. If I can’t find the patience, I yell. I cry. “Why are you doing this to me?!” might come out of my mouth in there somewhere. I know it sounds childish, but when you’re desperate and honestly just need sleep, strange things happen to you.

I had to stop and think. I couldn’t figure out why my son was so upset. I asked him. He said he didn’t know. Of course he doesn’t, he’s 5.  This isn’t a parenting blog, so let’s just assume I already tried everything that could be suggested. Nothing was working. And my patience was wearing thin. In fact, it was gone.  Then I got mad. I got mad at my little, precious 5 year old because he was crying for no reason in the middle of the night.

“God!” I cried out, “I have no patience! Give me your patience!” I was desperate. How can I teach others to be patient when I literally couldn’t find a string of it left in me? Jesus is in there somewhere. He said He lives in me. So I’m going to tap into that. I’m going to need some patience when I literally don’t have it. I’m coming up short. But with Him, all things are possible. He can even teach this old dog some new tricks.

Did I instantly feel better? No. I still felt helpless. I still really didn’t know what to do. But I asked God to come, to fill me up with His Spirit and give me the things I did not have.  I went back to my son’s room and spoke quietly to him for the third time. I told him I loved him. I don’t even remember what happened after that. But somehow the night quieted down and we all got some peaceful sleep.

I’m not sure I learned how to be more patient that night. But I learned to stop and cry out to God when I needed His help. I think for Day One, maybe that’s a good start.