Many of us are familiar with the words about love recorded in 1 Corinthians 13. Those verses about love being patient, kind, not easily angered, not envying or boasting and always protecting, trusting, hoping and persevering are even written on my office wall. I keep coming back to this passage, because it is so incredibly challenging. I know those words absolutely describe how Jesus and our Father love us. I also want them to be true about me--but too often my own attitudes and actions are the exact opposite.  

I once drove 800 miles to visit my former father-in-law in a nursing home. Sounds like love—doesn’t it? After my initial visit, I awoke in the morning with these words running through my head from a song written by Phil Everly and performed by Linda Ronstadt: 

“I’ve been pushed down

 I’ve been pushed round

When will I be loved?”

I realized almost immediately that God was revealing to me that my father-in-law simply wanted to be loved. I also instantly recognized that I did not know how to love him in a way that could meet these deep longings in his heart. There he was, captive in a body that no longer adequately performed, dependent on other people to wheel him around and change him. How could I actually touch his heart, when he felt so helpless and alone? 

All I could do was turn to the One who does know exactly how to love others in their private places of personal desperation. All I could do was admit my deficit and ask for guidance from our Father who patiently waits for someone to be His arms, heart, and legs. All I could do was ask for His compassion, and trust that He would generously provide what I lacked on the following day, and the day after that, and every time I admit my need for His perfect love that never fails.

I sincerely believe that every time I am honest and humble enough to tell the Lord I just don’t have His perfect love for the person in front of me, the Holy Spirit is just waiting for me to admit this truth. When I do, He energetically and delightedly moves into my place of deficit with a flood of genuine affection that cannot fail to bring life. His love is the only real antidote to fear and it’s freely available to all of us because we need it. We must have it. 

This is the way Jesus lived, and He makes it available to us. He told us in John 15:9-10, 12, “I love each of you with the same love that the Father loves me. You must continually let my love nourish your hearts. If you keep my commands, you will live in my love, just as I have kept my father’s commands, for I continually live nourished and empowered by his love. So, this is my command: Love each other deeply, as much as I have loved you” (The Passion Translation). If this was true of Jesus, it must also be true for me…and you!

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