Perfect Love

Such was God's original love for man that He was willing to stoop to any sacrifice to save him; and the gift of a Saviour was the mere expression of that love.  Albert Barnes

Perfect love drives out all fear.  The only perfect love is God’s love.  When you figure that out you have won the biggest battle of your life. 

I was thinking about some of my past relationships.  These were relationships I had before I met my husband.  You can look back on your life and see a lot of mistakes that were made throughout your life if you are willing to look at the relationship from a “realistic perspective” instead of an “I am in love” perspective. We often mistakenly call the heart racing, quiver in your liver attraction “love.”  In reality it is not even close. 

When I think back on my first long term relationship I laugh because I was so in love with love that I didn’t even realize the person wasn’t good for me. I was young, impressionable, naïve and a people pleaser.  So if you throw all of that into a relationship it spells “DISASTER”.  At the time I had moved to Dallas from a small town in Louisiana, and I had to leave my long term boyfriend behind. 

So picture a young woman thinking she is in love, leaving the first serious boyfriend she ever had and moving away from friends to live in a city where she knew no one.  Then picture this same naïve young woman experiencing the person of her dreams breaking up with her.  Then, being naïve, she is heartbroken when the guy tells her they need to date other people. 

This same young woman even goes so far as to write a sappy poem called “Time Wasted”.  She sits in her room alone and listens to every song they ever listened to together and falls apart.

Fast forward 6 months later.  This same young woman meets another person at work and decides to accept a date.  She is not yet healed from the disaster relationship she was in before, so she starts dating this new person.  Still being naïve, out of the blue she receives a call from the previous boyfriend who tells her he “loves” her and she believes him.  Here is where it gets really complicated.  The old boyfriend decides he wants her back and the new one decides he wants to marry her.  You want to talk about messed up. 

So the old boyfriend decides he is losing the naïve young woman, so he decides to move to Dallas to be near her.  The young woman becomes even more confused so she breaks up with the current boyfriend who wants to marry her and as soon as she does that the old boyfriend moves back to Louisiana. So she is left with no relationship and more heartache.

This is a true story and I am embarrassed to say that sap was me.  The thing is God helped me, during a time when I was not close to Him, to dodge two bullets. That experience made me tougher and not as trusting of others.  What I didn’t understand at the time was that God is my first love and should always be.  If we put Him first above all others, He will show us what perfect love really is and He will never forsake us.

After many years of learning and growing in my faith I finally met my husband.  God really chose well for me.  He gave me a man who loves me unconditionally.  A man I can trust who has my back and is there with me even when cancer invaded my life.  God knew what he was doing.  When that same husband told me I was beautiful when I had no hair it reinforced for me God’s perfect love. 

I will leave you with this last thought.  I was reading a devotional by Rick Warren last week and he wrote about an older preacher who sent a wedding card that he never forgot.  It said “God always gives His best to those who leave the choice to Him.”     

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I am so thankful for You and Your perfect love.  It took me many years to understand what perfect love really means.  Perfect love is willing to sacrifice a son on a cross for a sinner like me.  With my focus on You I can have perfect love.  You will never forsake me and what a comfort that is to know someone loves me like I am the only one.   

Scripture: Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.   And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

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. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.  For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:1-13