By: Steve Wilmot
A British newspaper published the following story: “A Brazilian man, Enrique dos Santos, 35, was trying to look like [the] superhero character, The Hulk, but used a paint reserved for ballistic missiles and nuclear submarines.
The comic book fan tried to scrub off the glossy green paint in the shower, but the substance stained his skin and left him green.”
What started as a prank turned into an impossible situation where the superhero wannabe didn’t have the power to get the stuff off.
Maybe you think loving others the way Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13.7 is impossible, too. Challenging, yes. Impossible, no. “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1.37).
Someone said, “The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person’s determination.”
If you’re determined to eat an elephant, you’ll do it no matter how long it takes. If you’re determined to learn how to love, you will stick at it regardless of how hard it is and how often you blow it.
Are you determined to learn to love your spouse, your children, your friends, and others like God loves you? Everything rises or falls on how resolute you are.
Here are a few ideas to help you become a person who loves like Jesus does. Remember, love is an action, not a feeling.
Love does something. Don’t wait until you feel like expressing love to someone. If you only love when you feel like it, you’ll never become the lover God knows you can be. In the middle of an argument, you don’t feel like doing the loving thing. So what? Do it anyway.
Love is always tested. Disagreements arise. You get stabbed in the back by your closest friend. Your spouse tells you he/she wants a divorce. Someone storms out of the house.
In those moments, it’s up to you whether you’ll love or not because love is a decision, not a feeling. You make up your mind to throw in the towel or to love. To get even or to love. To win the argument or to love.
Always do the loving thing even when you don’t feel like it. Remember, it takes time to love like Jesus does.
Loving like Jesus doesn’t come naturally. We are all born selfish to the core. We want what we want and couldn’t care less what anyone else wants. Babies want to be fed the moment they’re hungry.
They don’t care you’re at the crucial moment of the TV mystery you’re watching, or that it’s the middle of the night after an exhausting day. Your needs don’t matter, only his.
Funny how we don’t grow out of that easily, or quickly. It’s a process accomplished when you practice the right ways to love. Because it doesn’t come easily because of our fallen nature, it will be easy to give up.
But don’t. Stick with it, apologize when you fail, correct your mistakes promptly, and recommit yourself to learning how to love like Jesus does.
Sabrina Osland determined she was going to lose weight. She weighed 266 pounds, and she vowed to take a bunch of that off. But unlike most weight-loss programs that participants quit after a while, Osland focused on taking small steps to create consistency.
“Don’t try to go all in and change 20 things that you’re doing,” she said. “Break it down into smaller habits you want to focus on. Once you’ve mastered one or two, move on to the next habit and work on becoming skilled at it.”
Throughout her weight loss journey, Osland lived by one simple motto “I focus on progress, not perfection.” (By the way, she went from 266 pounds to 135.)
Great advice as we strive to become godly lovers. It’s so easy to get discouraged and stop trying when you focus on your failures and how far you still must go. Don’t do that. Focus on progress, not perfection.
Pick one quality of love and work on it until you are consistently loving like that. Celebrate your progress… then move on to another quality. Finally ask God for help.
Here’s a great prayer to pray based on Jesus’ words in John 17.26 — God, put your love for my family and friends (you might even want to name them) in my heart so I love them like you love them. That’s a prayer God will always answer.
If you found a spouse who loves you with the characteristics of 1 Corinthians 13.7, wouldn’t he/she be the person you’d want to spend your whole life with?
Isn’t this the kind of parent you’d like to be, and the kind of kids you’d like to raise? Wouldn’t you stay fast friends with someone who treated you like this?
Of course you would, so… let’s be those people.
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Steve Wilmot is a former Edgerton, Ohio area pastor who now seeks “to still bear fruit in old age” through writing. He is the author of seven books designed to assist believers to make steady progress on their spiritual journey.