Day 1, The Love Dare: Love is Patient



As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, I am embarking on a 10-day love project with the end goal being that God will soften my heart to be able to unconditionally love all people.  As I explained yesterday, this would be the clearest example of God’s miracle-working abilities in my life. I am excited about the possibilities!

As you can see, I survived Day 1, even though it cut me all up.   In the book, The Love Dare, Day 1 is entitled “Love is patient,” and requires the participant to: 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.

As I mentioned yesterday, since I don’t have a spouse and am working on strengthening my relationship with Christ, I resolved to demonstrate patience and to say nothing negative to anyone, today.  Let me tell you, the temptation arose.  But, I am happy to report that meditating on the scriptures put me in the right spirit to persistently ask God to grant me patience.  As Stephen and Alex Kendrick wrote in The Love Dare:
Love is built on two pillars that best define what it is. Those pillars are patience and kindness.  All other characteristics of love are extensions of these two attributes. And that’s where your dare will begin. With patience.

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 are slow to anger. You choose to have a long fuse instead of a quick temper. Rather than being restless and demanding, love helps you settle down and begin extending mercy to those around you. Patience brings an internal calm during an external storm.

[...]
Patience helps give permission to be human. It understands that everyone fails. When a mistake is made, it chooses to give them more time than they deserve to correct it. “More time than they deserve.”  I’ve been internalizing that in every situation, God gives me more time than I deserve everyday, and I hope He never stops!

 You know how hard it is to live with an impatient person. We all know how it feels if someone overlaps on the road and cuts you in, or someone jumps the queue (unless she was aged, sick or expectant). We wonder what is wrong with that guy. In some situations unprintable words can be hurled at him or her.
You also know how it feels when you have queued to order your Pizza then a guy shouts from behind, ‘Chicken periperi , medium size!’ and the cashier goes ahead and serves him.   Now imagine living with such an impatient person. Huh! Now imagine for once, that you are that impatient person (as described above). 

1 Corinthians 13: If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

This was exactly what I was dealing with.  It doesn’t matter if the words you speak are true, if God gave you the words to say, if you’ve sacrificed everything to get the message across, if you speak without love, it means nothing and it profits nothing.

The truth is, love is a decision and not just a feeling. It is selfless, sacrificial, and transformational. And when love is truly demonstrated as it was intended, your relationship is more likely to change for the better.

One day down, nine to go! Day 2: “Love is Kind.”

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