Love Never Fails

What do you do with it when you've been investing and teaching and listening and overlooking faults and giving--loving--and then you suddenly discover that the one you've been offering this all to has been taking advantage of your patience and love and has flown straight against all your expectations and their commitments?

What did I do with it? I labelled it. FAILED.

My goal in ministry is to give Jesus the opportunity to love and pursue people through my flesh and blood, and to give them the opportunity to be introduced to Jesus and be birthed into a new life and lifestyle. My days consist of weighing what that love looks like in the moment. I regularly run up against situations that call for a decision between mercy and justice, between tender and tough. Many times I don't know what's best, but I ask God for guidance, and I try...oh, I try.

So when the realization of this "betrayal" came, I was left grappling with a sense of failure. I'd been made a fool of. I was trying to be patient, trying to assume the best even when I didn't always quite believe what I was being told, trying to "speak straight" when I needed to...trying to love. But apparently I was being naive and blind and I should have caught on to all this and I blew it.

Then Jesus started talking. This happens to Him all the time! He loves and gives and has mercy and disciplines and forgives and is patient. He can't be deceived, like I was. But more times than not, people take the gifts and ignore Him completely. Or even receive the salvation He offers, but then make light of the commitment they made in return and pay little attention to His expectations for them.

Is He failing? No, that's impossible. He's loving big...loving God-style.

He led me to His definitions. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures (perseveres) all things.

Was I too patient? No, He said...that's what love does. Was I naive and blind to accept the stories given? No, love believes all things. Are some cases hopeless? No, love hopes. Should I give up on this one? No, love perseveres.

And then He summarized.

Love never fails.

Perhaps more than I've realized, I've looked at that as saying that love will always succeed in bringing about the desired results, and niggling in the back of my mind has been a doubt whether that can really be true. Or at the least, there's an assumption back there that if the results don't come, then I must not be loving well.

But no, He says. Love never fails. Whatever love I give succeeds. It can't fail, because God is love and love is of God. It might not bring the sum total results I want to see, but each "love wave" I send out succeeds, because that's all that love is capable of doing.

I can keep on loving if I can see it as following His model of risk, rather than fearing failure.

I want to learn to love more like Christ. I want to grow, to love more perfectly.

But underlying it all, He tells me, "That wasn't failing...that was loving, My style."