(C) Cheryl Howard 2008

“Let me give you a description of the Agape love-feast of GOD, let me tell you what HIS loving, benevolent affection is like – this love that is of HIM and from HIM:

This love has a long temper, not a short wick, it patiently endures and it suffers long – in difficulty and in duration. It’s longsuffering and it doesn’t lose heart; not only that, it’s slow to anger and to punish. It’s a long-spirited kind of love.

It’s also a love that is kind and useful – it shows itself to be useful to others and it acts benevolently.

This love from GOD doesn’t get all hot and bothered, all fired up with wanting what others have. It doesn’t envy and earnestly covet (selfishly and greedily) what others have or are. It doesn’t zealously seek or burn itself out trying to have or to be what others have or are. Nor does this love go around boasting about itself, it’s not a puffed up, self-inflated braggart, nor is it haughty and proud, vaunting itself over and above others.

This love will never be found behaving rudely or acting in any unbecoming or unseemly way. GOD’s love is always comely.

You won’t see Agape love plotting for its own benefit; it won’t seek and strive after its own conceits. It’s not like that, it’s not consumed with itself and it has no desire for, nor does it require ‘What’s in it for itself.’ And it isn’t the kind of love that gets roused to anger or exasperated or provoked by situations or people. It won’t get alongside you and then get all ‘sharp’ – all difficult and dangerous.

It is the kind of love that doesn’t count or number, or estimate and calculate the bad, the injurious, the worthless or even the evil that is done to it. Nor does it take an inventory or keep an account of the lack in others which reveals bad character; or of that which is ill or depraved. In other words this love doesn’t fill its mind and meditate on, or keep a mental list of all kinds of wicked things – even if it suffers as a result of these things.

This GOD-like love cannot be full of cheer, happy and calm, it can’t ‘be well’ and it can’t be glad about injustice and unrighteousness, or wrong being done. You won’t find it rejoicing in iniquity or being joyful over lack of uprightness or of not being right in character, act or life. But it can, and does, rejoice together with truth; and with sincerity and integrity of character. It sympathises in gladness with truthfulness – with the truth, unconcealed and manifest; that which is true, the veritable essence of a matter; this it congratulates.

And Agape love holds out and bears up against anything and everything with patience and forbearance. It protects and it preserves and it does this by covering and by keeping off whatever threatens the outworking and demonstration of this special kind of love. It suffers and endures patiently. It puts a ‘roof’ over whatever or whoever needs protecting, and it covers with its silence whatever requires its protection – it doesn’t shame or expose others, even if it has to be the one to endure suffering.

This love entrusts itself to GOD, its well-being to HIM, it is reliant upon and totally committed to CHRIST. This love believes in HIM and places its confidence in HIM – it credits Him with being completely trustworthy. This love also has faith, trust and confidence in others – it believes in them too. That’s the kind of love it is – the kind that believes in GOD, in ‘WHO’ HE is and is persuaded that it can depend and rely upon HIM and the kind of love that believes in the value of others – as GOD does!

And this love is marked by ‘hope’ – the people who love this way, with GOD’s love, are people of hope and expectation. They look to the future with assurance, anticipating it with pleasure and a favourable, confident expectation in all things, for that is what Agape love is like.

It is a love that perseveres and bears up courageously under suffering. You’ll find it staying put and remaining – it doesn’t run from trials and hardships, trying to escape or avoid them. Instead it abides, taking it all patiently as it undergoes suffering. It has fortitude and chooses to stay under the difficulty and burden of trials.

Finally, this love, this Agape GOD breathed love NEVER fails, you won’t find it dropping away, or being driven out of its course. It will NEVER be lost or become inefficient and it will NEVER perish or become powerless or ever be without effect. GOD’s love NEVER ‘falls out of’ love! ….

….So this is what I say to you – chase hard after this love, pursue it violently. Be given to this love, to follow after it and to press towards it always. Never give up, focus on it and be consumed by capturing it – this amazing love of GOD, and never let up in your pursuit of it; almost as if you’re ‘persecuting’ it!

….For GOD is Love – Agape – loving, benevolent, affectionate. A Love Feast!

thought for the journey ….

This is the heart of our SAVIOR - LOVE; powerful, self sacrificing, enduring love! So let’s heed the voice of our Great GOD - let’s pursue HIS love in all we say and do. Not the emotional, touchy feely imposter that often masquarades as love, but The FATHER’s love - a strong love that is not afraid to ‘take up its cross’ and lay down its own life, that is fearless, that serves, and a love that speaks the (sometimes) hard truth even if its painful to hear, because it cares more about the person than it does their ‘pride’!

1 John 4:7-11 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of GOD; and everyone who loves is born of GOD and knows GOD. He who does not love does not know GOD, for GOD is love. In this the love of GOD was manifested toward us, the GOD has sent HIS Only Begotten SON into the world, that we might live through HIM. In this is love, not that we loved GOD but that HE loved us and sent HIS SON to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if GOD so loved us, we also ought to love one another!”

Romans 5:5 “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of GOD has been poured out in our hearts by The HOLY SPIRIT Who was given to us.”