SCANDALOUS
June 10th, 2022
LOVE…Does Not Traffic in Shame and Disrespect,
Nor Selfishly Seek Its Own Honor (v. 13:5)
1 Corinthians 13:8, 13, ‘Love never stops loving. It extends beyond the gift of prophecy, which eventually fades away. It is more enduring than tongues, which one day will fall silent. Love remains long after words of knowledge are forgotten…Until then, there are three things that remain: faith, hope and love—yet love surpasses them all. So, above all else, let love be the beautiful prize for which you run.’ (TPT)
Love isn’t always “me first”. Huh?! That is an unknown concept today!
I think humility is a big thing in God’s book. In fact, I know that it is, because often His Word focuses on aspects of humility that humanity just never seems to get. Love seeks what is in someone else’s best interest not my own. Love puts others first and takes a backseat when possible and certainly when it is necessary. Love doesn’t play hide-n-seek with people’s emotions nor pursue itself above others. Love does not shame someone it claims to love, nor does it play games with the respect of others. Love is not color blind. It is not racial. It does not build up itself to put someone else down. Love is equal. It sees beyond the outside and gazes upon the heart. Love never traffics someone for its own profit; in fact, it doesn’t traffic at all.
We have all recently come through touring, and even stopping and vacationing a while, next to the wild love affair and sordid relationship between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard since it was televised for the whole world to know about all its slimy little details. What a perfect picture of exactly what love is not. Yet these people professed to love one another once upon a miserable time ago. It kind of reminds me unfortunately of my own broken relationships, especially the one that birthed four children. Once upon a time, we too professed to love one another, and yet we forgot things like putting one another first and not shaming or disrespecting each other and honoring the vows we swore we’d be committed to. It causes me to realize I didn’t know the first thing about love and honor, and I don’t believe that the celebrities who paraded all of their disrespect and loathing toward one another this past month did either. And so I wonder, do many of us really know what love is and what love isn’t.
We see God the Father send His only unique Son into the messy of this world because of such great love for His children…that’s us, you and me! But its not what the world calls love. Can you imagine if God the Father loved us the way we love others? If He did, there would never have been an only Son sent to this world, willing to die for us to rescue humanity. God wouldn’t have thought that way, just like our type of love doesn’t think that way. We don’t give like that. Our thoughts are generally centered around ourselves and what’s best for us. If God thought like us it’s even likely that He wouldn’t have created mankind, He wouldn’t have dreamt us into existence because of all the trouble we would cause. Or rather, He would have programmed us like robots to do His bidding, or manipulated us like we control others. If God were like us, He would have kept all the world for His own pleasure, the wide open inky wet vastness that He hovered over kept just for His enjoyment and use. If God loved like us, He would have left us a long time ago, divorced us, shamed us, smeared us, humiliated us, profited off us while we slaved for Him, driven us into places of guilt from where we would be unable to return.
Aren’t you glad God doesn’t think like us, but instead made us in His image?!
Isaiah 55:8-9, ‘”For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”’ (NKJV)
So many weddings happen every year during the month of June; so many ‘I do’s’ are spoken that eventually become ‘I don’t’s’, because we understand so little about love, God’s love, and the humility of it, the respect of it. What would happen if we too loved like that, by honoring others, by building someone else up instead of flattening that person down?
