More on Love and Relationships

After a 6 month break and major crazy life chaos, I am returning to my challenge to help myself - and hopefully you - learn to love like the bible commands in I Corinthians 13.  I urge you to reread my January post On Love and Relationships.  I had to reread it myself.  

In the first post, I challenged us to pray for God to show us ways to show patience to our loved ones.  I must admit, that though I daily feel like I am failing, as I look back I see overall progress.  I feel as though I am I offering my children more grace when they frustrate me, hurrying them less and in general losing my temper less.  If you have been working on patience in relation to the I Corinthians model of love, please comment below on your successes.  Encourage one another, you may well find it encourages you.

After "Love is patient", we find that "Love is kind."  What does that mean? I honestly can't say I know.  Today's challenge is to seek God in how He wants us to show kindness to the person you have challenged yourself to show more love toward. (If you feel lost, you really want to read or reread the previous article.  Go to the Archive button in the left column and click January.)

According to an online dictionary, the following are synonyms for kindness: benignity, benevolence, humanity, generosity, charity, sympathy, compassion, tenderness,  good turn.  A person who is kind is described as being of a good or benevolent nature or disposition.  Reading the synonyms still didn't help me a lot, so I looked up the antonyms.  The opposite of kindness is malevolence or cruelty.  Malevolence is defined as hatred.  So the opposite of kindness is essentially hatred. 

 

Wow.  Now THAT spoke to me.  So I began to wonder, is there a middle ground, a neutral?  Something between kindness and hatred?  The best I can find as a word that is neutral, somewhere between kindness and hatred is indifferent.  

I'm not sure being indifferent toward your loved one isn't equally as bad as hating them.  Honestly, who among us want to think our parents, our spouse or even our best friend is simply indifferent about us?  Would you care if your parent didn't hate you, but was simply indifferent toward you?  As if your very existence means nothing, good or bad, to them?

That may sound really harsh, but it seems to me you have 3 choices as to how you behave toward this person you have chosen to love better:  with kindness, with hatred, or with indifference.  Looking at it that way, I pray please Lord help me show kindness to my children each day.  Help me to never cause them to feel as though I either hate them or that I am indifferent about their existence.  Help me, today, to be the mom they need and You have created me to be.

On Love and Relationships

"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing." - 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

God gave me a plan for encouraging myself and others to use the 1 Corinthians 13 model of love to strengthen one particular relationship (or in my case 5 - my relationship with my kids). I was amused by the idea as it struck me during my drive to church. I was thinking "how might I" as I sat and listened to my pastor's inspiring message. That is when I knew it was God's idea. When I realized the pastor was preaching very much on what I was planning, I knew God was behind this. God wants you to read this, and God wants me to write this. I believe God wants all of us to do this.

I've developed my own version of the "Love Dare". It really isn't intended to be taken from that movie, but the term fit so well that I decided to borrow it. I want to encourage, even dare you to walk with me over the next days and weeks. Try each of the things with an open mind and an open heart. Listen to what God is whispering to you. See if these things help, if even in some small way. I can't imagine any way in which they can hurt.

First, I want you to identify a person (persons) with whom you feel your relationship needs strengthened. I've chosen my children. It is important to identify a specific relationship to work on. In the end, I believe all your relationships will benefit, but you must focus on one. I decided to consider my children one relationship since what I am really doing is working on how I relate to them more than their individual personalities.

Let's look at what the bible says about love. It is one of the most famous passages in the bible. "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."

Boy, that's a lot. It is too much to try at once. We are going to take this one item at a time. Today: Love is patient. There is an old saying in the christian world "Never pray for patience." What we are going to pray for today is that God will, in his infinite grace, show us what patience is, what it looks like in this particular relationship. For example, my prayer for today is "God, please grant me the grace to see and understand how I am to be patient with my children today." It may be your spouse, your coworker, your sister or your best friend. Ask God to show you today how you can demonstrate patience in that relationship. If you mess up once, don't feel like you blew it. Take the next opportunity to do it right. Keep praying.

A note, if you know your spouse has read this and is working on their relationship toward you, pray for God's guidance on how to receive. Even if you feel things are perfect, it is possible your spouse feels that he or she is not fully demonstrating the love God calls him/her to show.