Love Succeeds at Everything
By Jon Walker
Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy. 1 Corinthians 14:1 (NIV)
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Love succeeds at everything.
Paul described it from the other direction, saying “love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:8 NIV).
In the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus abandoned his will to follow the Father’s will, he was placing his faith in the One whose love always wins.
And the resurrection validated Jesus’ faith.
The love of God always gets the final word.
When we practice loving one another, it doesn’t mean we practice until we get it right. That kind of practice just puts us back in the cycle of “I ought; I should; I must.” And then, if we do get it right, we applaud ourselves; but if we don’t get it right, we beat up on ourselves. And the cycle continues.
When we practice love like Jesus practiced love, then we base our love in the faith that God’s acts of love always win. What this means is that, guided by the Holy Spirit, we intentionally “keep right on loving others as long as life lasts . . .” (Hebrews 6:11 LB).
And this enlarges our capacity to know and to then express the win-win nature of God’s love.
It moves us toward an other-centered love that changes the question from “Am I looking for love?” to “Am I looking with love?”
If you’d like to receive these devotionals regularly, you can sign-up at www.gracecreates.com/subscribe/. Jon Walker writes from www.gracecreates.com. He is a Zondervan author, and the former writer/editor of the Purpose Driven Life On-Line Devotionals. This devotional is copyrighted 2009 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.
