Love Never Fails (Post 5): The Complex Infrastructure Known As Love Part Quatre

Hey everybody! It's finally time for a brand new (and the last part of the Complex Infrastructure series in a series) post! I'm happy to be back at it, and ready to get going with the rest of this series. If you haven't read the other posts in this series (or have forgotten them because of my lack of activity) then please check them out before reading this one. So, far we have talked about what love is, what it isn't, and even how it is supposed to look. This week will some it all up with the perfect description of love.
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I Corinthians 13:4-7
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."
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I Corinthians 13:4-7 is without doubt the perfect explanation of love. It is heard at weddings, in cards, and is one of the most popular verses in the Bible. However, the most important part, and a part that is often left out, is at the beginning of verse 8 where it says..."Love never fails." It is such a simple statement, but it has been so overlooked recently that it has become irrelevent to people that are "in love." As teenagers we fall into this trap alot. I know I did. We meet somebody and they just seem like the perfect person. Everything about them is "everything that you have ever dreamed." Everything seems so sweet and romantic, and it all jsut seems perfect. Then, everything just seems to fall apart, you break up, and it seems like love is a lie. I've been there and done that. What we haven't realized is that while everything may seem perfect, and while everything in those first 4 verses is true, it is the little fact that love never fails that we need to remember. TRUE LOVE NEVER FAILS. True love is something that is rarely experienced. We often think that we have it, but do we really? How do we know?
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"I love you." Those are the words that we often say to eachother. Teenage girls dream of a guy saying that to them, and teenage guys get scared as they let them go. They are magical words that mean you really like eachother, and that you will always be together. I'm going to be straight up with you, it rarely happens. I dated the same girl from 8th grade until the end of my senior year, and whenever anybody said that, I said they were lying. It's not that I think dating is wrong, because it is somewhat necessary to growing up, but you have to be aware that most of these teenage relationships have an expiration date. My parents were lucky to find eachother in high school, and the same goes for several of your parents and some of the readers. However, it's a rare thing. I graduated with 120 people, and there were probably about 20 couples in the class. 1 of those is still together. It seems as if we date a few months then we are required to say I love you, but I have an idea. If love never fails, and we can't really know it until marriage, why do we say it? The idea of not saying I love you until marriage isn't my original idea. I have heard it tossed around, and one of my best friends is actually doing it. It seems hard, but how special would it be to hear those words for the first time as that guy proposes to you, or at your wedding? The reason we can do this is because Love is more than a word, it's a feeling, it's an experience, it's something that doesn't even need to be said if it's for real. In I John 3:18 it says, "Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." It's always great to hear somebody to say it, but it shouldn't be needed. I'm not saying that it's good for everybody, but it's something to think about. Right?
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What this all boils down to is that TRUE love never fails. As I said, it's something that we rarely experience. Some people even feel that they don't have love from anybody, but that's not true at all. From the moment that you were born, actually before that even, until you die, and even after that...there is ONE love that has never and will never fail you. That is Christ's love. 1 John 3:16 says, "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us..." We are loved so much, and so unconditionally, that Christ took all of our sins, pain, and suffering upon himself. He DIED for us. You can't get much greater love than that.
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So what do you think? Let me know in the comments! Also, I here's some extra reading on love:
-Proverbs 17:9, 17:17
-John 15:13
-I Corinthians 13:13
-Colassians 3:14
-I Peter 4:8
-I John 4:8
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Thanks for reading and bearing with me for the last month! If this is your first time reading, I hope you will go back and search through the archives. As always, feel free to comment on this post and any other post that you would like to comment on. We start a new part of the Love Never Fails series next week, so get pumped! Big thanks to the Reds for playing some great baseball, and to David Crowder* Band for being extremely awesome! See you next week!