Love’s Attributes (16) Love Never Fails
Love’s Attributes (16)
(#170 from Suffer Well Devotional Series©)
www.sufferwell.org
“Love never fails!” (1 Corinthians 13:7)
Love never fails, and therefore, Yahweh never fails!
This final pillar of love is the one upon which all others lean. In Hebrew reckoning, sixteen (one-six) is seven, and seven is “completion.” The true and complete essence of love, the only love, is that it never fails.
And so now, or once again, shall we say, we face the crux of the matter. We could sum it up with a simple question. “Have you told someone that you love them, and yet failed at any one of the sixteen attributes of love?” The sixteenth itself leaves no room for failure, and so the answer to the question for everyone becomes obvious. We teach others that love can fail because we profess to love them, while at the same time we are failing them. It is imperative you grasp the magnitude of this, thus we will repeat it! We teach others that love can fail because we profess to love them, while at the same time we are failing them. The effect of our fatal error is that we all mature with a sinking mindset about what love is, and then we sail that brokenness right into our relation-ship with the only One who ever truly loved.
Does it seem so difficult to understand why all of us have such a hard time trusting Yahweh? We spend our lives (conscious awareness) believing that our broken standard of idolatrous “love” is the real thing, only to have failed at love at every level. And because this love has always been unfulfilling in some way, our preconceived subconscious and conscious thoughts are that Yahweh’s love will also fail us. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that “His love will not be any different than everything else we called love, all of which have failed us in the past.”
We have never been, nor have we known a love that never fails, so the perception of it is far beyond us. To bring it closer, we must come face-to-face with our years of desecration of His love. “Father, forgive me for high-jacking Your created truth of love, and trying to use it to fit my own personal standards of love. I confess that I have never loved, nor have I learned to receive Your perfect love. Will You help me learn to be a true lover, so I can first love You Father, and then love others?” This is the prayer that will transform your own image of love into His image of love. This prayer of repentance, deeply embraced in your renewing conscience, will remove the flaming sword from the Tree of Life, and give you access once again to the abundant life that was always intended for the children of Yahweh! You are His child, His child whom He loves beyond your ability to perceive. And He is coming soon! If you have not experienced love by then, you will. But heed this admonishment; when you reflect on your life, you will consider every single moment that you did not live in true love wasted!
I give you a new commandment: that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you too should love one another. By this shall all [men] know that you are My disciples, if you love one another [if you keep on showing love among yourselves]. (John 13:34-35)