How to practically apply LOVE & weave it into the fabric of your Family
“ONE OF THE GREATEST GIFTS PARENTS CAN GIVE THEIR CHILDREN IS THE CONFIDENCE THAT MUM & DAD LOVE EACH OTHER”!
And we know ‘love never fails’!
HOW do we truly LOVE one another?
WHAT does LOVE really look like?
HOW do we teach our kids to love one another? And others?
The Bible tells us ‘God is love’. God is the Author of love!
The Bible explains what LOVE is in , ‘The Love Chapter’ ( 1 Corinthians 13).
LOVE IS………………………………..
LOVE is patient.
Love never gives up,
love endures long
LOVE is kind.
Love cares more for others than for self.
LOVE does not envy.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have,
love is not jealous,
love is never envious
LOVE does not boast.
Love does not strut,
love is not boastful,
LOVE is not proud.
Love doesn’t have a swelled head,
love is not arrogant
love is not inflated with pride.
LOVE does not dishonour others.
Love doesn’t force itself on others.
LOVE is not self-seeking.
Love isn’t always ‘me first’,
love does not demand its own way,
love does not insist on its own rights
love does not insist on its own way.
LOVE is not easily angered.
Love doesn’t fly off the handle,
love is not irritable,
love is not rude (unmannerly),
love does not act unbecomingly,
love is not touchy or fretful or resentful.
LOVE keeps no record of wrongs.
Love doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
love takes no account of a wrong done,
love pays no attention to a suffered wrong.
LOVE does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
Love doesn’t revel when others grovel,
love takes pleasure in the flowering of truth.
Love does not rejoice about injustice,
love rejoices whenever the truth wins out.
Love does not rejoice at injustice & unrighteousness,
love rejoices when right & truth prevail.
LOVE always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love trusts God always,
love always looks for the best & never looks back.
love keeps going to the end.
Love never gives up,
love never loses faith,
love is always hopeful,
love endures through every circumstance.
Love bears up under anything & everything that comes,
love is ever ready to believe the best of every person,
Love never fails,
love never fades out or comes to an end.
v13…TRUST steadily in God, HOPE unswervingly, love extravagantly!
It’s an interesting test to put your name or your kids’ name in the sentence & try it on for size.
Over time, the aim is, that the sentences, & the garment of LOVE, fit our lives & our actions more & more!!!
REFLECTION SPOTLIGHT
I have come to the understanding that in order for other parenting tools to be most effective it is necessary to have love as the initial foundation of our family relationships. To build our family relationships on the foundation of love is to build a home on solid ground.We can practice love at home amongst our family. We can train our kids to love one another by practically applying the characteristics of love; by consistently pointing them to the model of love. In practice we can remind them that love is being patient & kind with one another. Love is ‘not flying off the handle’ easily. Love is recognizing when we are irritable with each other that it’s not practicing love.
As parents a lot of focus is on us as ‘role models’ to get it right before our kids. My experience is that we often fall short in this area & beat ourselves up, especially with the many & constant demands of young children. God’s truth is that His ‘love covers a multitude of sin’. His love covers! If we can lead our families to the ‘model’ of what real love is as represented in 1 Cor 13 it serves to take a lot of condemnation from us as parents who fall short often. We can take the spotlight from our human failings as parents & rightfully direct the spotlight to God’s love. In the process it’s possible to have a generation of kids growing up who understand what love truly is….& isn’t, beyond their family failings.
Let’s practice LOVE, receive God’s grace, & build a firm foundation of love into the fabric of our family lives.
THE CHALLENGE of LOVE
The challenge comes in the form of the question ‘how well do I know the Author of Love, personally’?
To receive His love is to be able to give His love to others! It’s almost impossible to give away what you don’t have in the first place!!! To give love is to have received it in the first place. To give mercy is to have received mercy in the first place. To give a hand of grace is to have first received grace!
God’s plan is that we, firstly, have His love in us so we can truly love others according to 1 Corinthians 13. Loving others in our own human strength & without God’s help will always leave us coming up short in our attempts to love others!
‘This is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us & sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins’. 1 John 4:10
‘God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that whoever believes (trusts in, relies on, clings to) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life’. John 3:16
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