God’s Couples: Love & Suffering

God’s Couples: Love & Suffering. Love Never Fails!                                           Kelly Durant   2-9-14

I Corinthians 13: 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.8 Love never fails.

2. This time of year people think about flowers and chocolates. It can be a time that is beautiful for some and frustrating for others. Love is powerful! It is a fact that love is the principle need of man (and woman)! As humans we will die without water and food after a few days or weeks, but what happens to people without love? They dry up inside and die slowly! We all need a family of friends you can trust, depend on, and lean on in hard times. This describes the Christian friends I know!

The very first commandment of God is to love. Genesis 1:28 “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it”. Love, and the desire for intimate love with your mate, is God created. He wants people to enjoy each other and have children. But if you are single, don’t feel left out, Psalm 68:6 “God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land.” Are you loving or in the desert?

Adam and Eve, the very first couple, were probably in love at a level beyond what we can understand today! Imagine having the perfect body and mind and all the time in the world for just each other! They were beautiful but soon their world was shattered, not just by disobedience having to leave the garden but by other heart breaks. Think about how much love it took amongst their selves to recover from the loss of their murdered son Able by Cain killing him? Cain was banished, so they lost him too! Couples that have gone through a lot of suffering together usually become more united in love and closer to God, than those who suffer less! And never allow suffering to cause you to play the blame game!

Why do love and pain seem to always cross paths? In all couples it is almost certain some sad event of some kind will happen between them. So you and your mate, or someone else close to you, will face a few big challenges one day. Love will go through the fire of testing! But real love overcomes any test, any trial, and any difficulty! To prevent even more pain amongst yourselves, do not bring up the wrongs and offenses of the past and accuse one another. Love forgives and is kind. God’s love never fails, but what is yours like?

3. Today we see many people disillusioned with love from frustrated relationships. But some people without love may be not the victims at all but instead the ones at fault for not giving love because they choose to shut out another one.  A person’s sins creates pain, barriers, and separations from others. Here is the great misunderstanding about love: Everyone wants to get love, but few know how to give it!

Love is like the mechanics of the sun: it must re-feed itself like converting hydrogen to helium and back in order to stay energized. Love must reciprocate back and forth and communicate and serve with a give and take, if not, it’s warmth and light goes out! It is not God’s fault if we coldly die out without love, He has always loved us and always will, and He never fails!

All the time we hear people say, ‘I need someone who will love me for myself, for who I am!’ What we forget is love is like a plant that grows, but if it is in toxic soil, it will not grow but rather die! The toxic, self-centered, ‘I-am-who-I-am love-me-anyway, prideful, unrepentant, unforgiving, faithless, cruel stance is what kills love relationships! Half of all marriages today end up in divorce, and these stats are about the same for Christians or non-Christians. We live in the time period ‘that the love of many has turned cold.’

4. Today we are studying I Cor. 13, which is often read at weddings, but here is the problem with people, it does not matter what they hear, or what they say they agree to, what matters is how much they have absorbed so that their behavior is strictly governed by their love for God to obey every detail of His Word. God is love, so if there is no love for God, then love for another person is impossible!

Let’s look at ‘love is patient, love is kind’ first. How much patience and kindness do you have really?

There are certain couples in the Old Testament we will study today and the depth of these words will take on a new meaning. Let’s look at the situation of Abraham and Sarah, what was that strange situation that happened after Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed and they had to travel south.

Gen:20 Now Abraham moved on from there into the region of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur. For a while he stayed in Gerar, 2 and there Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” Then Abimelek king of Gerar sent for Sarah and took her. 3 But God came to Abimelek in a dream one night and said to him, “You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken; she is a married woman.” Want your patience tested? Try lending your mate to the king!

5. It was the custom of kings to take for their selves any of the women they desired that came into their lands. Maybe Abraham and Sarah feared that if they said they were married that King Abimelek would just kill Abraham so he could have Sarah. It seems as a couple they agreed to this deception in order to be able to live on the land to supply for their animals and family. Imagine your wife going to live in the harem of the palace of a king and she might be there for quite a long time, would you agree to that? What a trying time! So Abraham, the man of faith, had his difficult moments as well!

But God revealed to the king he was in danger for doing something unethical, and that was of having someone else’s wife! God told the king that he and his family would die if he continued with that relationship and he was wise to give her back to Abraham! Imagine, a pagan king had more morals than many people today! Sadly, today many people live cursed by God because they are in a relationship that they should not be in and they cannot understand all the mishaps that come to them. Even in churches, some Christians think dropping one mate for another is fine by God?! Certain principles of respect within love relationships are expected within the universal laws of God, no matter the time period, culture, or race.

So, couples, would your love be that strong that you would give each other up for the greater good and survival of your family if need be? This is patience on a whole new level!  What couples out there have to endure long separations and risk losing the other? Missionaries, military personnel, immigrants who work travelling back and forth and dozens of other life situations put stress on the patience of couples who endure being separated. This is only an example of one type of trial, thousands more exist!

A requisite for love: It has patience! To know all will heal (even after a separation, or any other circumstance).

6. I Cor. 13: 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking.  In my life I have meet many couples where one was betrayed and dumped for another for some reason: usually for another whom they could use because they believed they had more money, better looks, or status. People who think love relationships are just to satisfy their needs may not have a maturity greater than that of an animal.

Love should never boast either. People in relationships often want to show off who they caught. I was all proud one time that my bar tending girlfriend was so pretty that she had had 2 husbands and been widowed twice?! But I was short sighted to realize that soon I would be ex-boyfriend number 5!

I hate love betrayals with a passion, they are acts of whoredom. Gold-digging, betraying, selfish heart breaking ‘users’, have been a horrible scourge on vulnerable humanity since the beginning of time! Since the beginning of time unfaithful law breaking love abusers were not tolerated by most cultures and the sentence on a guilty person was severe (even death by stoning, which is still practiced in some Arab countries!)

How many people today have had their broken spirits totally shattered by an unfaithful love who never loved, but only used you? ‘Love is kind’ (should be), but obviously some people in this world never practice kindness nor do they ever love anyone but their selves. They are self-seeking and their self love is no love at all but darkness. The world calls these unloving, un-natural dishonoring people psychopaths, rapists, and perverts (and more), but actually they are just Godless heathen or demon possessed abusers! Sadly they are condemned to insanity and hell now and hereafter. (Unless they repent, change, and obey Jesus way of a life of love, of course!)  

7. This brings me to the next couple in the Bible that suffered. This couple, Samson and Delilah, was never meant to be, he disobeyed God. He loved her, but she didn’t love back. It is a pity that Samson was not attracted to some woman of his own people, to a woman who obeyed God’s commands of love and respect. He could have been loved but he paid dearly for choosing to love the wrong pagan worshipping person! If you see a person in too much pain, maybe God did not ordain the relationship because a loving forgiving Godly person can never unite as one in heart with a cruel vindictive one.

There is a verse, 2 Corinthians 6:14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? The sad part is many Christians never obey this command and they get blinded in love, as Samson did, and they make of their lives a total failure! Don’t fail God, it is never too late to make things right with God!

Samson loved Delilah too much to the point he broke his promise with God to keep his secret. She only loved herself and her cruel Philistine people. Imagine Samson was the one she lied down with in bed every night, the one she shared food with year after year, but she was cold not caring that he would be caught and tortured, blinded, mocked, and made to walk in circles to grind the mill as an ox. What a betrayal of love! Judges 16:15 “And she said unto him, How canst thou say, I love thee, when thine heart is not with me? thou hast mocked me these three times, and hast not told me wherein thy great strength lieth”. What deceit! What a lesson as a warning for the men of God to never be involved with a woman that has no respect for God! Or vice versa with a godless man! With no Jesus, there is no love, and pain will afflict you over and over!

So another requisite for love is: It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking.

8. Let’s look at Moses & Zipporah. I Cor.13: 5b “It is not easily angered”. Anger at times is justified, but it must be controlled and applied for the right motive. Moses married a woman that was from a tribe that was of a much darker colored race. With this choice, God’s man illustrated that love has no discrimination of race. Thank God for that! She must have been respectful to him and of course we all imagine Moses was kind to her, he was God’s valiant man of his era but he still had a fault.

But in the end the character flaw of anger which Moses had from time to time cost him his privilege of entering into the Promised Land. It is a pity that Zipporah suffered the consequences of this fault as well. God puts people together to learn from one another and to correct one another in love. I can imagine she tried to reason with through the years, as all couples usually discuss each other’s faults. What we learn is you had better tell your mate their faults and you must listen to your mate when they tell you yours! Consider the consequences: Both suffer when one sins! Especially with anger!

Vs.6 “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth”. When you are told the ugly truth about yourself it can often hurt, but as we are learning. ‘Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth’. Without truth in a love or friend relationship there is no love! The absence of truth is a life of confusion, lies, and pain with one lie after another; and if you have dealt with a person who tells you one lie after another it becomes so painful you never want to see them again ever! Liars curse their selves with insanity and they separate their selves from God in heaven, who is absolute truth, and He cannot support un-holiness and liars in his presence!

9. So now the final verses of love today are, 7 ‘It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres 8 Love never fails.’ Do you want to do a litmus test to know if your love is real? Ask yourself these questions, ‘Does this person close to me always seek my good to protect me? Can I always trust this person? No matter the hardship, does this person keep on keeping on with me giving me hope? Does this person reveal a perseverance that is of absolute loyalty and faithfulness?

Any person can say, “I love you’ to another but for that to be meaningful, real and not a lie, it must be backed up with the money in the bank of character and acts of kindness coming from a sincere mature person in God who has evidence of time endured trust, hope, perseverance and a faithfulness that never fails!

Love never fails! God always comes through for you and me in one way or another: in the way He knows is best. His love is unfailing and his love endures forever! What a challenge it is for us to act the same way with God and with those closest to us.

10. For love to continue to live on we must try not to make the other person be perfect but we must make ourselves to be the perfect person. Answer this question, Am I loveable? Most people think they are and they really have a lot to work on! Also, to think one can get any love they want just because one is attractive is very faulty reasoning. Plastic surgery does not exist for the beatification of the heart! The pride of the flesh fades and wrinkles over time. The flesh is just the outside, the inside attitudes and qualities, if they are Godlike or Godless are what you have to live with from day to day. If the character of a person is aligned in holiness with God, then that person (you) will overflow with love!

So the Bible reveals to us stories of couples whose experiences is one that is full of challenges or failure! It tells of enduring love while in suffering, and of a love that should never have happened, showing the consequences for choosing the wrong cruel Godless mate. Even with the right love in our lives we still always will be faced with painful situations and only a strong connection to God can give you faith, hope, and love that will help you survive and keep on going! Love will never fail! God’s love never fails to take you back, and our love must never fail others either!

You may not ever have to be in the situation Abraham was in, but you might be faced with another type of challenge if someone tries to flirt with and conquer your soul mate for their selves. Do you always make yourself attractive? Do you have a good attitude, and always appear desirable for your soul mate? Never take them for granted! People get tempted by others when they are ignored, put down, or not cared for! Love has to be maintained like a fire in a chimney, you have to keep putting wood in!

11. As Christians we love everyone! But the special love you have to live with intimately needs to be one that is compatible with your faith, values, attitudes, and unquestioning sacrifice. If not, you will end up like Samson, broken and punished, and too many men live like him today going in circles with no love because they chose wrongly. They can let Jesus change it all, or if they chose poorly and are suffering they may turn to drugs, alcohol, and other sins for comfort. But these things will serve only to destroy them before their time and shame them before God and others! Too many millions have fallen into this trap! Women, as well, must not accept defeat but rather hold on to Jesus first who will fill up all their emptiness if they spend time with Him and seek to serve Him by staying busy serving others.

Basic old school Christian theology says that the purpose of man is, ‘To love God and enjoy Him forever!’ How do we enjoy God’s creation? By loving love each other and serving one another in love! Married or not we all have the same ability to live life loved, fulfilled, and happy! So never give up on love! Love practiced as in the context in I Cor. 13 is a formula that is time proven. Do you want more love in your life? Purge yourself of your own ways and become pure practicing these I Corinthians 13 values of love; then you will live happy and healthy giving and receiving more love that will just keep on growing!