Love Never Fails...

Those are three powerful words that seem to be etched in my brain right now.  Does love ever fail you?  Do you ever fail at love?  Well, when the question is put before me like that, I can answer "yes" on both accounts.  However, there's a key element that needs to be added.  The love of Christ never fails.  Christ-like love can only come from...Christ.  Through the power of His Holy Spirit, we can love like He does; unconditionally.

I can't love like that on my own.  I fail.  I get rude.  I get impatient. I am unkind.  This all happens when I try to love with my human heart; my imperfect, selfish, deceitful heart.

To some, that might sound like self-abuse.  "Don't be so hard on yourself!  You're a good person!"  Am I?  Don't I roll my eyes at my husband?  Don't I snap at my children?  Don't I get annoyed at the person in front of me at the grocery store checkout?  Where's the love!

Sure we all have bad days, but we can overcome the excuses for our behavior when we just realize that we can't love unconditionally...not on our own.  We need Jesus!  I need Jesus!

I leave you with this:

The Greatest Gift

1Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

4Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

11When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

13And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13