Love is Patient
"Be completely humble and gentle; be patient bearing with one another in love." Ephesians 4.2
LOVE WORKS! It is life's most powerful motivator. It always does what's best for others and can empower us to face the greatest of problems. Relationships become meaningful with it. Marriages are unsuccessful without it.
Love is built on two pillars PATIENCE and KINDNESS. All other characteristics of love are extensions of these two attributes.
Love will inspire you to become a patient person. When you CHOOSE to be patient, you respond in a positive way to a negative situation. You CHOSE to be slow to anger. Anger is usually caused when a strong desire for something is mixed with disappointment or grief. It is often an emotional reaction that flows out of our selfishness, foolishness or evil motives. Anger almost never makes things better where as patience brings an internal calm during an external storm.
Patience is a CHOICE to cotrol your emotions rather than allowing your emotions to control you, and shows discretion instead of returning evil for evil.
Patience is where LOVE meets WISDOM.
What would the tone and volume of your home be if you tried this biblical approach: "See that no one repays another with evil fr evil but always seek after that which is good for one another." I Thes. 5.15
Few of us do patience well. None of us do it naturally. Resolve today to possess PATIENCE!
Today's Dare
The first part of this dare is fairly simple. Although love is communicated in a number of ways, our words often reflect the condition of our heart. For the next day, resolve to demonstrate patience and to say nothing negative to your spouse at all. If the temptation arises, choose not to say anything. It's better to hold your tongue than to say something you'll regret.
Tomorrow, before you start Day 2's challenge you can comment on how today went... If you succeeded in the challenge and what God may have done as you choose to Lead your Heart instead of follow it.
14 comments:
I already failed by telling my husband that his hooded sweatshirt didn't look good over his head....
this is going to be tougher than I thought!
This Love Dare is going to be tough. I need God to clean out the yuk that accumulates in my heart so the words I speak will be completely loving. I need to be healed of my selfishness and filled with the love of Christ--daily.
Wow~Great idea!
I will sure keep watching your blog!
I am going to try my best today, praying.
Joanne- I hardly believe you failed... but I love that you shared that with me. I kind of smiled because I can see myself saying something similar to my husband.
Elizabeth- WELCOME ABOARD! God is able and will do more than we can imagine as we commit this time and ourselves to Him. I'm excited to take this journey with you.
Tracy- Welcome to the 40 Day Love Dare. I'm excited to see a Pastor's wife here... Your presence verifies that we all need to work at our marriages, no matter our positions in and/or out of ministry. Thanks for stpping by.
Denise- YOU CAN DO IT. I'm praying fo ryou. And I'm so happy to see you here.
I'm praying daily for EVERYONE who comments regarding this challenge. MARRIAGES WILL BE STRENGTHENED!!!!
Until tomorrow...
Chelle,
I am so proud of you for doing this and for being so transparent about your marriage. We can all learn from your example. I loved the movie, and I think the Love Dare challenge is GREAT, no matter what shape your marriage is in. It is always a great idea to learn how better to love our spouses with the love of Jesus. Today was an easy one for me. My husband works all night and sleeps all day, so I only saw him for a few hours today before he headed out to work again for the night, and that made it easy for me to not say anything negative. I am looking forward to what the next 40days hold, and I am eager to see my marriage grow as a result.
Today wasn't to hard because I have the most gentle husband with a true spirit to honor our Lord and our marriage. But it does make one more consicous of what we say.
Chelle...blessings...I came over and read yours and ran back to write mine and well, if you look, you'll see that I learned something of why & how I failed in this area of Patience...So here's my 20 pt. question: Knowing all that 1 Corinthians 13 says about LOVE and the opening part of Ephesians saying "love is patient", if we do not show these qualities, such as patience, am I to then conclude we don't love? It's clear I have work to do! And Day 1 starts out with the toughest: patience...so where do we go the next 39...O Lord, I need lots of refining! I practiced on my 5 dogs and if you don't think that they are a good practice of patience, come and try it!!! Love ya' and I'm glad some folks are trickling in and joining! Thanks!
Hi Chelle!!
I'm just going to be starting today--with my son alone--since he seems to be the one most hurting now. So, I'll be a day behind everybody else.
I'll be posting on my warmharte blog about this. I'm in the middle of a prayer series on "The Power of Your Love".
I have some errands to run this morning, and this book is already on my "to buy" list!
Thanks for all of your love and encouragement!!
Beth
that's really interesting...and it would be a real difficult one for me to not say anything at all if tempted to, by frustration (which usually turns into anger.).
I love challenges though!
and God is slow to become angry...I will aspire to slow down in that department, tomorrow/or rather today, since it is almost 3 in the morning right now. Thank-you for the bed-time Godly wisdom story!
Hi I a friend of mine (Tracy at Our Journey) blogged about your Love Dare. This is a great idea, I would love to do this too!
hi chelle. i wanted so much to participate in this but i don't know how it's going to work because my husband is an absentee. but i'd read it just the same because this will help me be a wife after God's own heart when my hubby returns.
I'm a little late (your on day eight and I only just found your challenge!) But better late than never! Thanks for these challenges they are sure to enrich lots of marriages!
I loved this day! I wrote down what you wrote "Love is built on two pillars...Patience and Kindness. I thought a lot about that and it even encouraged me to be more patient and kind with my children. I also put 1 Thes. 5:15 by my kitchen sink.
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