'Day One' Blog,  The Impossible Love List

The Impossible Love List – Love Never Ends

Eternal1

If you’ve taken this journey with me, you might be surprised to know it has lasted 3 days shy of 5 months. That’s a long time to sift through 55 words, (ESV trans.). This short passage, which for me is the explanation of what God means when He tells me to love my neighbor as myself, will never again be relegated to “those verses they read at weddings.” It has become a template for selflessness and perhaps the most potent, condensed description of how God has always loved flawed, egocentric humans.

It’s also worth noting, there is a very real sensation that while much has been gleaned, I have only skimmed the surface. That’s the nature of exploring eternal truths. There is no end, no bottom to the well, no arriving at the whole of it. But that is also the thrill of the pursuit. God reveals what He means to reveal. It always hits the mark. It’s always relevant. It always addresses the most pertinent point of need. That’s God’s way. As I find myself in this passage in the future, new things will surface and God will once again peel back the veil to expose the beauty of Himself and His love.

The bullets for me are these:

  • God loves, and has always loved in the face of anti-love.
  • There is nothing remarkable about loving unless it’s offered in the face of anti-love.
  • Love is a 100% self-LESS enterprise.
  • God’s says more about what love is not than He does about what it is.
  • The things that describe what love is not, are all very intuitive in my flesh.
  • The things that describe what love is, are utterly foreign to my fleshly nature.
  • If I move to love in my flesh, I will fail, thus the title of this collection of writings.
  • If I  stay very near God, open to His influence in and through me, these traits WILL manifest and God will love people through me.
  • Offering love to people is a command, part ‘b’ of the greatest commandment upon which EVERYTHING else hinges.
  • If I don’t fulfill this command I do not know God, because God is love.
  • Loving people in the way God describes, will run so counter-intuitive to culture, it will likely, as it has in times past, start a revolution.

As you read this list one more time, I hope you will linger a bit and let some of what God has spoken come to the fore of your mind again. With knowledge comes responsibility (that line’s for me). Until truth finds its way into action, I do not yet believe it. May God transform all of us to become the loving people He calls us to be, for the sake of His great name, for the sake of his Kingdom, and for the sake of desperate and lost souls.

Love is
patient

Love is
kind

Love does
not 
envy

Love does
not boast

Love is
not arrogant

Love is
not rude

Love does
not insist on it’s own way

Love is
not irritable

Love is
not resentful

Love does
not rejoice in wrongdoing

Love
rejoices in the truth

Love
bears all things

Love
believes all things

Love
hopes all things

Love
endures all things

LOVE NEVER ENDS ~

One Comment

  • Gail

    Thank you Anne Barbour for a terrific study on LOVE…..You are so right in saying “with knowledge comes responsibility”!! You have done a wonderful job of explaining God’s love for us and the joy it can bring to love others selflessly!!!! I love the reminder that “love hopes all things” and “endures all things”. Love you….but you are easy to love!!!! Hey girl……what’s next??????

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