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12 Lessons on the Lord's Love

Brothers and Sisters,

On Sunday I shared with you 12 lessons on love that I have learned in 12 years of marriage. I thought that it might be useful to reprint those lessons here, for those who were either unable to attend or who be helped to consider them again. I hope and pray that they are beneficial to your faith in Christ.

Before we dive into our study of Psalm 100, I’d like to do something that I rarely ever do. I’d like to take a moment of pastoral privilege and share with you twelve lessons that I’ve learned about God’s love over the last twelve years. Please know that I am genuinely willing to receive correction from my fellow elders and even more generally my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ if these comments are unhelpful or fail to edify the body. My aim in sharing these twelve lessons on God’s love is primarily for the purpose of instruction and edification.

So what is the occasion for these twelve lessons on God’s love in the last twelve years. Well, today is a special day. Twelve years ago today Lisa became my wife and she committed herself to loving me for better or worse. I share these things with you as an assembly of children, singles, married, and widowed people not because they are unique to marriage, but because they are lessons about God’s love and one of the means that God has been pleased to teach me these lessons is through marriage. God can and does use other means other than marriage to teach these lessons to his people. What is more, our loving God, I believe, has ensconced these truths in his Word, and therefore these lessons are equally accessible to all of us regardless of what season of life we are in. Enough with the caveats. Twelve lessons that I’ve learned about God’s love in the last 12 years:

1. Love is generous. Love does not find the most economical way of communicating, but the most generous way of communicating. God did not spare his one and only most beloved Son. The Father gave a generous gift that was infinitely precious to him.

2. Love is patient. Or as the older translations use to put it, love is long-suffering. Love waits in faith and hope. God patiently waited until the fullness of time, the right time, to send his Son. He suffered with his people for a long time, until it was the right time.

3. Love is humble. Love does not seek its own glory, but seeks the glory of another. Jesus always sought the glory of the Father.

4. Love says no. Love sometimes means saying you may not, you cannot, you will not. No. The Lord’s prohibitive commands are loving and good.

5. Love rejoices. Love rejoices in evidence of grace, maturity, and growth. The Lord is delighted, he rejoices over his people with singing when they honor his name.

6. Love forgives. Love honestly says, “You were wrong. You sinned against me, and I forgive you. I will not hold your sins against you. I will not use them against you. I will not bring them up in order to make you feel guilty.”

7. Love chooses to believe the best. When there is misunderstanding, miscommunication, and hurt feelings, love is not tempted to believe the worst, but the best. Love chooses to believe that when someone confesses unintentional hurt due to misunderstanding and miscommunication no malice was intended. Love recognizes that we’re finite and fallible, therefore these things happen in life and not on purpose. I think our Father knows this about his children too.

8. Love moves toward brokenness. God so loved the world, the dark, sin-filled wicked world, that he took on flesh and entered into our experience to bring healing and restoration.

9. Love commits. Love says, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Where you go I will go. Where you die, there I will be buried. We need to only think of Ruth’s love for Naomi to remember that she was merely en-fleshing the love of God to Naomi.

10. Love persists. Love that reflects the love of the Lord is stubborn. It says I will not give up when it is hard. I will keep going. I will keep loving you. God kept loving his people century after century, and he keeps loving us day after day, year after year. He loves us too much to let us go.

11. Love is kind. Love pays attention to the seemingly small insignificant details, listening so as to display kindness at the next available opportunity. Our Heavenly Father is watching over our lives from day to day, and his small providences are surely a mark of his love.

12. Love keeps teaching. Even when faced with a difficult student, love keeps patiently teaching its recipient about its true nature, and goal. Jesus kept teaching his disciples day after day. They were hard of hearing, but he never tired of teaching. He loved them, and he loves us, so he keeps teaching us.

I am thankful for these twelve years of learning loves lessons. I am certain that however long you have been following the Lord, whether that is 12 minutes, 12 days, 12 weeks, 12 years or more you are learning lessons about the Lord’s love. At some point you should probably stop and contemplate those lessons and give thanks to God for them.

Warmly in Christ,
Mike