Love Is Patient

SYNOPSIS: In a season filled with division, anger, loss, confusion, and sadness, take a moment to reflect on John 3:16. This single verse reveals the whole Bible; a simple reminder that God transforming love is available to you through Jesus Christ: “God so loved the world” — God so loves you! Today, let God’s love lift you out of your sadness, flood your soul with inexhaustible joy, and set you on a path to the most amazing experience of life possible, which is being an uninterrupted, inextinguishable conduit of God’s love through you to those around you.

Making Love Work // John 3:16-17

“For this is how God loved the world: He gave[a] his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

Someone has rightly said that love is the most powerful force for good in the universe. Since that is the case, shouldn’t there be a lot more of it floating around these days? Sadly, that is not the case. Oh, there is evidence of love here and there, but much of the world is not saturated in it. And frankly, that can be quite discouraging.

For that reason, I would encourage you to take some time this week to reflect on the highest, most dynamic force of love in existence: God’s love. In this season filled with division, anger, loss, confusion, and sadness, take a moment to reflect on the greatest proclamation of God’s love ever made—John 3:16-17,

This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. (The Message)

This single verse reveals the whole Bible; a simple reminder that God transforming love is available to you through Jesus Christ: “God so loved the world” — God so loves you!

Today, let God’s love lift you out of your sadness, flood your soul with inexhaustible joy, and set you on a path to the most amazing experience of life possible, which is being an uninterrupted and inextinguishable conduit of God’s love through you to those around you.

But let’s take it a step further and describe what the Bible says God’s love flowing through you to others ought to look like. Nowhere is there a clearer, more compelling description of what God expects His love to look like as it is translated through your life than in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7,

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Once a week over the next several weeks, I want to break Paul’s description of love down word-by-word, beginning with this: Love is patience.

Have you lost patience with difficult people in your life lately? Are you fed up with what’s become of your church in these exhausting days of Covid-19 regulations? Are you discouraged by godless and incompetent leaders ruining your nation? If you are, then join the very large and growing company of the impatient.

But listen, God’s plans for the people in your life, His purposes for your church, and His timing for dealing with this evil world are in His control—not yours. If for no other reason, that’s why you need to practice patience. It’s really a matter of your trust and obedience to God. Paulo Coelho notes, “The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.” Yes indeed—trust and obedience is the secret sauce to gaining and maintaining patience. Said another way, Luc de Clapiers observes,

Patience is the art of hoping.

So put your hope in God (Psalm 42:5) by making the deliberate choice to be a continual conduit or His patient love.

That will not be an easy assignment, but the God of love is counting on you to be patient love’s exemplar.