FAILURE. We have all experienced it through a missed opportunity, bad decision, angry reaction, or hurtful comment. Sometimes, those failures accumulate until we have people we pretend not to see in public, family members we never speak to, churches we will not visit, or maybe even a marriage that ends in divorce.
How does this happen? Don’t we know that Jesus prayed for His church to be united (John 17), that Paul told fathers not to discourage our children (Colossians 3:21), and that no one should separate two people that God has joined together (taught by Jesus in Matthew 19 and quoted by Paul in I Corinthians 7)? Surely, we do! Then why are so many of us here with incredible pain from our past relationship failures?
When Paul wrote I Corinthians, he addressed a church with many failures. They were divided, immoral, hurting each other, suing each other, and even arguing over who performed the best miracles! They had heard Christ proclaimed and were supposed to be washed, sanctified, and justified. So, what went wrong? They needed to learn the more excellent way of love.
As Paul would teach in I Corinthians 13, love is more than a feeling. It is a patient, kind, and truth-rejoicing action. It is a conscious choice to not be envious, boastful, arrogant, rude, demanding, irritable, or resentful. If you replaced “love” in I Corinthians 13:4-7 with your name, would it be true? Would your spouse, your kids, your co-workers, or your brothers and sisters at church describe you as patient and kind or as rude and irritable?
Paul wrote, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (I Corinthians 13:7-8). When we leave a church in anger, stop speaking to family, or have a marriage fall apart, love didn’t fail; we failed to love. If we are willing to let God – who is love – teach us how to love, we can get past our failures. Wounds can be healed. Barriers can be broken down. Obstacles can be overcome.
From Friday October 18 through Sunday October 20, we will have a series of opportunities to learn from God how to love and to enrich our marriages in the process. Don’t miss them: we could all use a little “more excellent” in our lives and relationships.