The Love Challenge

God's been teaching me quite a bit about love lately... what it is, what it looks like, how to give it, how to receive it.  But I was especially challenged by a section from Crazy Love.  I'm going to post it here and hope it speaks to your heart as it did mine...

So God assesses our lives based on how we love.  But the word love is so overused and worn out.  What does God mean by love?  He tells us,

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.... faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13 ESV)

But even those words have grown tired and overly familiar, haven't they?

I was challenged to do a little exercise with these verses, on that was profoundly convincing.  Take the phrase Love is patient and substitute your name for the word love. (For me, "Francis is patient....")  Do it for every phrase in the passage.

By the end, don't you feel like a liar?  If i am meant to represent what love is, then I often fail to love people well.

I was so convicted by this.  But also hopeful that God is faithfully changing me to be more and more like Him.  And since God is Love, becoming more like Him means becoming more and more like Love.  That's another prayer I'm adding for this year: to be made more like Love.