Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. LOVE NEVER FAILS… (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, NKJV).
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Epic Success
Here's the thing: God loves me more even than I love myself, and that's saying something. He thinks of me more than I think about myself, and that's equally phenomenal because basically the only time I'm not thinking about me is when I'm asleep (He never slumbers or sleeps), or when I'm thinking that you might be thinking about me. His thoughts toward me are uncountable and unfathomable and are incomprehensibly good.
He is obsessed with me, inscribing my name on the palm of His hand. He watches every move I make and knows everything I say before the words enter my head or leave my mouth. He knit me together in my mother's womb and knows the number of my days. He is with me rising up and lying down and when I go in and come out. His love is everlasting. He will never leave me nor forsake me. He sacrificed His own magnificent Son that I might live with Him forever, and He loves me not because of me, which would be shaky ground indeed, but because of Him. God IS love.
The other thing is this: I know this about God because He has taken great pains to write these truths down and have them painstakingly preserved over millennia, gifting me with the means (teachability and faith) to read and believe them in a massive love letter that describes Him and can transform me. It is because of who He is that I am persuaded that neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing can separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord.
This leads to the most important question in the Universe: Is God?
And He has ensured, through the evidence of His Creation and the revelation of His word, that the askers of this question are provided the answer. For he who comes to God must believe that He IS, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
God's agape love is what powers existence. He did not need us but created us anyway, and did so in His image so that we could know Him and understand, in part at least, how great is His love for us. We do not deserve His love, but agape love can never be deserved, it can only be bestowed as a gift.
The point the Apostle Paul is making here in this last of 16 descriptive characteristics of agape is beyond mere human words or experience to convey. Of those three last words, LOVE NEVER FAILS, we have nothing really to compare to any of them except the last word, FAILS. We know failure and ending and the transitory nature of all things. We know that despite the most deep-seated desires of our heart for good things to last unchanging in this life, they just don't. They change. They end. Time destroys all things, eventually.
That's why our God, who is outside of time and the maker of time, has gone to such lengths to prove Himself to us. To let us know that existence in this realm of what we can see, hear, touch, and measure is not all there is. At one point, before the Fall, our ancestors knew this with the same certainty that we know death and taxes, but that knowledge was lost in the initial rebellion and remains lost in humanity's long war against God.
But God has not given us up for lost and Has not surrendered in His war to rescue us, because His love, the same love that propelled us into existence, NEVER FAILS. His unfailing love has provided us the only means of escape; His Son's death in our place.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16, NKJV).
*
Epic Success
Here's the thing: God loves me more even than I love myself, and that's saying something. He thinks of me more than I think about myself, and that's equally phenomenal because basically the only time I'm not thinking about me is when I'm asleep (He never slumbers or sleeps), or when I'm thinking that you might be thinking about me. His thoughts toward me are uncountable and unfathomable and are incomprehensibly good.
He is obsessed with me, inscribing my name on the palm of His hand. He watches every move I make and knows everything I say before the words enter my head or leave my mouth. He knit me together in my mother's womb and knows the number of my days. He is with me rising up and lying down and when I go in and come out. His love is everlasting. He will never leave me nor forsake me. He sacrificed His own magnificent Son that I might live with Him forever, and He loves me not because of me, which would be shaky ground indeed, but because of Him. God IS love.
The other thing is this: I know this about God because He has taken great pains to write these truths down and have them painstakingly preserved over millennia, gifting me with the means (teachability and faith) to read and believe them in a massive love letter that describes Him and can transform me. It is because of who He is that I am persuaded that neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing can separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord.
This leads to the most important question in the Universe: Is God?
And He has ensured, through the evidence of His Creation and the revelation of His word, that the askers of this question are provided the answer. For he who comes to God must believe that He IS, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
God's agape love is what powers existence. He did not need us but created us anyway, and did so in His image so that we could know Him and understand, in part at least, how great is His love for us. We do not deserve His love, but agape love can never be deserved, it can only be bestowed as a gift.
The point the Apostle Paul is making here in this last of 16 descriptive characteristics of agape is beyond mere human words or experience to convey. Of those three last words, LOVE NEVER FAILS, we have nothing really to compare to any of them except the last word, FAILS. We know failure and ending and the transitory nature of all things. We know that despite the most deep-seated desires of our heart for good things to last unchanging in this life, they just don't. They change. They end. Time destroys all things, eventually.
That's why our God, who is outside of time and the maker of time, has gone to such lengths to prove Himself to us. To let us know that existence in this realm of what we can see, hear, touch, and measure is not all there is. At one point, before the Fall, our ancestors knew this with the same certainty that we know death and taxes, but that knowledge was lost in the initial rebellion and remains lost in humanity's long war against God.
But God has not given us up for lost and Has not surrendered in His war to rescue us, because His love, the same love that propelled us into existence, NEVER FAILS. His unfailing love has provided us the only means of escape; His Son's death in our place.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16, NKJV).
