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 13:4-8
She was always asked why she didn’t have a boyfriend and why she isn’t looking for one, as if life evolved around boyfriends and girlfriends. She understood that life without love is meaningless, because the one who redeems us is LOVE Himself. And the two greatest commandments that we are given involve only that one word: LOVE.
The lawyer had asked Him what was the greatest commandment because perhaps he wanted to live this life right? Perhaps he wanted to know how to make this life meaningful? And because of all the laws they had in the Torah/Old Testament, the answer was quite unexpected. “And Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22: 37-40
Love as the Lord commands and you make your life meaningful.
We live in a generation where people confuse love and lust. Lust is everything that love isn’t. Lust is impatient, it always looks for what it can get, and always insists on having its own way. So many folks are lustful and they think it’s love. They go from relationships to relationships; they look for attention from all the wrong places. These folks are looking for a girlfriend or boyfriend to “complete” them. And here is a problem with that: if a person “completes” me, what happens when he is gone? Do I sink into depression because now I am “less complete”?
The truth is: Only Jesus can make you complete. He died to make you whole. “He was beaten so we could be whole”. Isaiah 53:5
When you know you are whole and complete in Jesus life becomes easier. When a person comes along, you will not make them “your life” but instead you will share your life with them. See the difference? When I make a person my life I am turning him into an idol, but when I’m sharing my life with a person I’m loving him the way God intends.
But why do people throw themselves into lustful relationships? Is it simply because they don’t want to wait? They don’t want to wait for real love? You know how we sometimes say to the Lord “I surrender all to You” when we don’t really mean it? In reality we think we mean it but we don’t, because we still want to control some parts of our lives. God tells us to stay single for at least two years and we think that’s the devil talking because God “doesn’t want man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). But the thing is, how do you share your life with a person in a godly way, when you don’t know who you are or whose you are? How do you share your life in a godly way, when you don’t know that you are complete in Christ? A lot of us, if we were really honest with ourselves would say that God has no saying/control over our love life. No wonder there are so many heartbreaks and promiscuity nowadays.
“But God I love him/her”, that’s our excuse to God. We think that our hearts can’t get it wrong, right? But do you know what the Bible says in Jeremiah 17:9? It says “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9
God is telling us: “Trust Me, I know better than your heart”.
“But God, don’t you want me to be happy like other couples?”, we always ask. “Yes, I do; but only if you do it My way.”
God may want to work on your heart for 10 years before He brings anybody your way. Will we trust Him then? Trusting Him enough to not go around “searching”, but simply keeping our gaze totally fixed on Him?
Instead of always searching for the right person, we should master first how to love the Lord with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and to learn how to keep Him first in all we do.
“But Lord, how would I know you have brought the right person around”?
You will know because your love for that person will be patient and will endure all things.
Lust wants things done as soon as possible and it doesn’t endure. First sign of any problem, it wants out; that’s how you know lust. A famous story of lust can be found in 2 Samuel 11. King David is walking around in his palace and when he looks down from his palace he sees a beautiful lady taking a shower, and he lusts after her. Then “he sent messengers to get her” 2 Samuel 11:4. Long story short, she comes up to the palace, David sleeps with her and she becomes pregnant. This is a big problem because Bathsheba (the beautiful lady) is married and her husband was at war. To cover up his act, David arranges the husband’s death. The point is, if David loved Bathsheba, he could have waited for her instead of selfishly dragging her into sin. Or better yet, he could have asked God for her; that’s why the Lord tells David, “I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. And I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in His sight?
Real Love waits and endures and is worth the wait.
One of my favorite love story in the Bible is the story of Jacob and Rachel. Jacob was in love with Rachel, so he told his father “I’ll work for you for seven years if you’ll give me Rachel, your younger daughter, as my wife”. Genesis 29:18
Jacob knew that the pain he was going to go through was worth the love of the woman He loved. My favorite part is Genesis 29:20, “So Jacob worked seven years to pay for Rachel. But his love for her was so strong that it seemed to him but a few days”. Breathtaking and simply beautiful.
Real love is worth the wait.
My heart needs to get this: Real love, the love that God can only bring in our lives is worth the wait. There is this book called When dreams come true: a love story only God could write by Eric and Leslie Judy that beautifully shows that dreams come true when we wait on the Lord.
Here is what they write:
“We have found the pain that inevitably comes when you choose to walk a road less traveled, but we also found the prize. We found the troubles, but we also found the God who turns ours troubles into glorious triumphs. We found loneliness, but we also discovered the wonder of sincere and tender relationships. Along the way we stumbled across an amazing story-the secret to unlocking dreams. Believe me, true love is worth all the pain that patience and perseverance can inflict.”
Real love is worth the wait and pain.
In light of this, we need to understand that not everybody is destined to be married. God calls some people to a life of celibacy like Paul. “Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am”. 1 Corinthians 7:8. And Paul tell us the awesome benefits of being single. “I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 7:32-35
The best verse for me to turn to?
“For your Maker is your husband—
the Lord Almighty is his name—
the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer;
He is called the God of all the earth” Isaiah 54:5.
I so love this verse.
Lord, I simply pray for patience in everything. I pray for complete trust in You even if everything around me feel like chaos. I pray that we be the generation that honors You in everything we do. Father God, we want to completely and totally surrender our lives to You, nothing here is hiding. Bring everything to light Lord, and have Your way in us. In the precious name of Jesus I pray, Amen.