I am a poor lover.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

I Corinthians 13:4-6

I am a very poor lover, at least by these standards. All my life I’ve been learning this love. And I want, in Christ, to love this way. The one thing the church, that Christians, SHOULD do well to get the attention of a love-lost world is to love just like this. I mean, we have scripture teaching us to do so, we have Christ’s perfect love to transform us, and we have the Holy Spirit to enable us to do so as God lives right within us! Why is it then such a challenge to love like this?

I know that I often get in the way of this love. My impatience selfishly demands recognition, often wanting to get from more than give to the people who care about me the most. I can get selfish and inconsiderately unkind when I feel I am not getting what I want. I can covet what other people have, jealous of their relationships. I can boast about what I can offer to another person in self-inflating pride. I have a problem with arrogance and superiority and judging others to see if they are “worthy” of my love. You push my buttons the wrong way and I will be very rude. I often want my own way, and can charm my way with sweet talk and promises in order to get it. I can hold onto mistakes of others with bitter resentment. Unlike all this “love character” I can sometimes be everything God says love is not. I’m sorry to those who have seen this in me.

So I need to surrender to Christ’s perfect love. I need to be one who readily, consistently repents of my selfish wants that corrupt Christ’s love and keep it from being made mature in me. I want to be a mature lover, equipped to be all these things to other people. And if by chance a few people see glimmers of these things in my life, it will be only because of God’s work and not mine. 

Yet I cannot gauge these things solo, which is hard right now. Only those who are loved by me, and who might still by chance also love me despite all my challenges to love them well can confirm this in me. So I need deeper commitments in the Body of Christ. I need to open up to others. I need to be close. I need to dive deep in vulnerable and accountable conversations and commitments with other Christians. And so I pray that by Jesus’ work in me I might truly love others with the character, conviction, and care of 1 Corinthians 13. And I pray for relationships that confirm where I do, and counter where I do not. God, make me one who loves in this love, for I am by nature a poor lover.