Love Never Fails

What is failure? One dictionary says to fail means “to fall short of success or achievement in something expected, attempted, desired, or approved.”  Another definition is “to be or become deficient or lacking; be insufficient or absent; fall short.”

When 1Corinthians 13:8 says “Love never fails”, it means God’s Love can never become deficient or lacking.  God’s Love can never fall short of success or achievement. Within in God’s Love is everything sufficient to cause your marriage to succeed.  In His Love is everything needed to achieve success in any area of your life.  God’s Love can never fail!  We can fail, but when we are in God’s Love and when we represent God’s Love in our everyday life and in the way we speak to our husband and others, we cannot fail or fall short.

  Like clothes after a few washings or things left out in the sun or thoughts – they all fade.  But God’s love never fades. He is the same.  He is Love.  His love never fails to wash over us and make us new.

God’s love never becomes obsolete like fashion or last year’s technology.

There is nothing on earth that could compare to God’s love because everything on earth is created for man to use.  We use it up and it’s gone.  God never fades, becomes obsolete or comes to an end, therefore, neither can His love.

Romans 8:35 says “Who shall ever separate us from Christ's love? Shall suffering and affliction and tribulation? Or calamity and distress? Or persecution or hunger or destitution or peril or sword?” 

Don’t let your mouth separate you from God’s love by speaking against your husband or letting impatience overcome you.  Because, to do so, means you do not believe God's Love will never fail.  He will not separate from us, but with our mouths, we separate from Him in our disbelief.

Ephesians 3:17-19 says:

¹⁷May Christ through your faith [actually] dwell (settle down, abide, make His permanent home) in your hearts! May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love,  ¹⁸That you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints [God's devoted people, the experience of that love] what is the breadth and length and height and depth [of it];  ¹⁹[That you may really come] to know [practically, through experience for yourselves] the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge [without experience]; that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]!

This is a prayer from Paul to the church as Ephesus.  He is telling them what he prays for the members of the church.  It’s important to note that we can have this, by faith, without anyone else’s prayer for us.  We simply need to confess this over ourselves.  “Christ, through my faith, dwells in my heart.  I am rooted deep in love and founded securely on love.  I have the power and am strong to grasp what is the breadth and length and height and depth of His love in me.  I know and experience for myself the love of Christ and it surpasses any head knowledge.  I am filled with all my being the fullness of God and am fully flooded with God himself!”

So as we renew our thinking and our hearts with this Word, we become more rooted and grounded in His love.  At the same time we are renewing ourselves with this Word, begin to pray this same prayer over your husband, , just as Paul prays it over the church.  You don’t have to wait until you have fully renewed your mind because it is a continual process.  You will start to see a drastic transformation in yourself as you get this Word in your heart.  It is then that you will start to really see how His Love never fails. It is then that you will start to see your husband as God sees Him.  God doesn’t see your shortcomings or your husbands.  He only sees His children, whom He dearly loves.

When a full-grown, mature tree is rooted, it takes a lot of force to uproot. But notice a baby tree, a sapling, will not take nearly as much force to uproot.  That’s how we need to be in His love.  We might be babies in Him right now, that’s why it seems hard to walk in love now.  But as we continue to do His Word and as we continue to renew our minds with His Word, it becomes more established in our hearts. We become more rooted in His Word and His love. That way, the next time your husband does something that would normally bother you, it won’t take you out of God’s love.

Don’t get discouraged if it seems it’s not working.  God’s power is doing a work in you and your husband as you speak this prayer over him.  But it’s a process just like babies aren’t born walking.  It takes time.  As the child desires to walk in order to reach something previously unobtainable, they start trying harder to walk.  They try more often.  It doesn’t matter that they fall and even if they get hurt. They just get back up and try again.  Why?  Because their desire to “obtain” something is greater than the pain that it may take to get there.

            What is your desire for your marriage?  Is it strong? Strong enough to keep trying?

© 2011 Michelle Serna

Love Endures Without Weakening

Colossians 3:12b:

Clothe yourselves… [in] patience [which is tireless and long-suffering, and has the power to endure whatever comes, with good temper].

You are a representative of Christ.  How long did God endure until it was time for His Son to come to save us? We have His nature.  Endurance and patience is a part of His nature and so therefore it is in us.

We are tempted to give up.  Have you ever worked really hard for something that wasn’t easy? In fact, it was more difficult than you have ever worked before?  You might have been breathing hard and sweating.  But the hope of getting to the end gave you enough strength to finish.  That is how it is with God. When it seems we can’t continue walking in love with our husband, remind yourself you have hope!  Your heavenly Father.  He gives you strength.  “I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.”

Psalm 107:1 says “O GIVE thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever!”  Remember, we have His nature.  Let our mercy and loving-kindness endure forever as we choose to love our husbands.

James 5:11 shows us there is Hope in enduring.  We endure and we ultimately see the purpose and just how richly we are blessed as we endure.

You know how we call those blessed (happy) who were steadfast [who endured]. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the Lord's [purpose and how He richly blessed him in the] end, inasmuch as the Lord is full of pity and compassion and tenderness and mercy.

Our Heavenly Father has nothing but compassion, tenderness and mercy towards us.  He will not leave us alone to endure.  He is ever with us.  Let us pray and make this same compassion, mercy and tenderness available to our spouse.  Let us thank Him and praise Him continually for the help of the Holy Spirit to endure and thank Him that His nature of mercy and loving-kindness is seen in everything we say and do and that it is visibly seen by our husbands and that it ministers to him.  Not only that, but he receives this mercy and love.  That power of love and mercy is working in his heart.  Praise the Lord!

© 2011 Michelle Serna

Love Believes the Best

“I am ready to believe the best of my husband.”

There are two parts to this.  One is the obvious and seemingly the most difficult.  When we are full of hurt and pain – “believe the best in my husband? But you don’t know what he does behind my back!”

But the other part is really the most important – “I am ready!”  How do I get ready? How do I prepare to believe the best of my husband?

We “ready” ourselves with the Word.  As we begin to get the Word in us and the love of God, it causes love to bubble up in our hearts.  But we have to let that love bubble up and all over our husband.  As mentioned before, what do we say over our husbands?  How do we talk to our husbands?

“My husband is strengthened in his inner man.  My husband makes right choices.” We can’t magnify his faults and imagine all the things he could be doing or secrets he could be keeping.  No, we say “Greater is He that is in my husband than he that’s in the world.”

“I make tremendous power available to my husband to choose the Word, to choose life!” Pray in the Holy Spirit as you lift him in prayer.  You don’t know what he may be going through at work or how the enemy may be attacking his mind.  Are you going to join sides with the enemy and attack your husband too with your own words and a spirit of anger?

Colossians 3:12 says “Clothe yourselves therefore, as God's own chosen ones (His own picked representatives), [who are] purified and holy and well-beloved [by God Himself, by putting on behavior marked by] tenderhearted pity and mercy, kind feeling, a lowly opinion of yourselves, gentle ways, [and] patience [which is tireless and long-suffering, and has the power to endure whatever comes, with good temper].”

This is great news! While the above instruction from the Word may look impossible, God said it and He never gives us instruction that is impossible.  We only need to realize it is not in our ability that we can be tenderhearted.  It is not in our ability that we can give mercy and have gentle ways.  It is not in our own ability that we have tireless patience and a good temper.  No.  These things all come in   His ability. 

We need to remind ourselves of Philippians 4:13, “I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me [I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency].”

I can be a doer of His Word not in my own strength but in His.  As we continually look to Him and remind ourselves where our strength comes from, that His nature is in us and as we develop that nature by reading His Word and praying in the Holy Spirit, it becomes easier and easier to be a doer of the Word.  But if we approach His Word as if it were impossible, you will be right and you won’t have that change in you or in your marriage that you desire.

© 2011 Michelle Serna

Love Bears Up

What does "bear" mean?  Uphold, sustain, shore up, strengthen.  There is no weakness in bearing up.  It takes strength and stamina to bear up. 

You might say "My husband knows the bible and he knows better!"  This may be true, but we are human and we have off days and weaknesses.  When we express our love by bearing up, we reinforce the existing foundation he already has.

Ephesians 4:26 says "…but bearing with one another and making allowances because you love one another." We must be willing to make allowances for each other.

When you see someone in trouble, like a heavy weight is falling on them, you would go assist them in "bearing" that weight so all of it doesn't land on the person and hurt them.  You would endeavor to lift that weight off them.  It is the same when your husband seems to be angry or rude to you.  It's not as obvious, but they are bearing a heavy weight.  Maybe it is the weight of worry or doubt.  But it's up to you to walk in love with him by " bearing" part of the weight (making allowances for his behavior and praying for him).   Walking in love is not adding to the weight by responding back with anger and doubt of your own.

Yes, it's going to take some renewing of your mind with the word of God to walk in love.  Yes, your old man is not completely out of the picture.  It does not automatically disappear when you got born again.  It takes a continual renewing of the mind and meditating on the Word of God.  As mentioned before, He will never tell you to do something you cannot do.  We now have His nature.  His love nature.

Ephesians 1:7-8 has something to say about God's nature.  And since we have His nature, we have the ability to be this way with our husband.

⁷In Him we have redemption (deliverance and salvation) through His blood, the remission (forgiveness) of our offenses (shortcomings and trespasses) in accordance with the riches and the generosity of His gracious favor, ⁸which he lavished upon us in every kind of wisdom and understanding.

And Colossians 3:13 says "Be gentle and forbearing with one another and, if one has a difference (a grievance or complaint) against another, readily pardoning each other; even as the Lord has [freely] forgiven you, so must you also [forgive]."

Let us be generous in our mercy and forgiveness towards our husband.  Let us be constantly believing the best about our husband.

© 2011 Michelle Serna

Proverbs 31 Confession for wife and mother

           
                   My Confession                                                                     Amplified Bible

10-12  I am a capable, intelligent and virtuous woman. My husband trusts in me confidently and relies on me and believes in me securely, so that he has no lack of honest gain or need of dishonest spoil. I comfort, encourage, and do him only good as long as there is life within me. 13-14 I seek out work with willing hands to develop it. 15 I rise while it is still night and pray over my household making tremendous power of God available to them to choose. 16 I do not accept more responsibilities and duties by neglecting my present duties. I am prudent with money and sow my savings. 17-19 I gird myself with strength for my God-given tasks. I taste and see that the gain from my work with and for God is good. My lamp does not go out, but it burns on continually and drives out fear and doubt. 20 I open my hand to the poor and reach out my filled hands to the needy, whether in body, mind or spirit. 21-22 I clothe my children in love, kindness and tenderness. I am always building myself up in the Word and developing my "God clothes" so I can give them out to my family. 23 My husband is known and respected in the city, in the land. 25-26 Strength and dignity are my clothing and my position is strong and secure. I rejoice over the future, knowing that me and my family are ready for it. I open my mouth in skillful and godly Wisdom and on my tongue is the law of kindness, giving counsel and instruction. 27 I look well to how things go in my household, and the bread of idleness, gossip, discontent, and self-pity are not entered into or tolerated. 28-29 My children rise up and call me blessed, happy, fortunate, and to be envied. My husband boasts of and praises me and says that I excel in virtue and strength of character and that I am steadfast in goodness.

10 A capable, intelligent, and virtuous woman—who is he who can find her? She is far more precious than jewels and her value is far above rubies or pearls. 11 The heart of her husband trusts in her confidently and relies on and believes in her securely, so that he has no lack of [honest] gain or need of [dishonest] spoil. 12 She comforts, encourages, and does him only good as long as there is life within her. 13 She seeks out wool and flax and works with willing hands [to develop it]. 14 She is like the merchant ships loaded with foodstuffs; she brings her household’s food from a far [country]. 15 She rises while it is yet night and gets [spiritual] food for her household and assigns her maids their tasks. 16 She considers a [new] field before she buys or accepts it [expanding prudently and not courting neglect of her present duties by assuming other duties]; with her savings [of time and strength] she plants fruitful vines in her vineyard. 17 She girds herself with strength [spiritual, mental, and physical fitness for her God-given task] and makes her arms strong and firm. 18 She tastes and sees that her gain from work [with and for God] is good; her lamp goes not out, but it burns on continually through the night [of trouble, privation, or sorrow, warning away fear, doubt, and distrust]. 19 She lays her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. 20 She opens her hand to the poor, yes, she reaches out her filled hands to the needy [whether in body, mind, or spirit]. 21 She fears not the snow for her family, for all her household are doubly clothed in scarlet. 22 She makes for herself coverlets, cushions, and rugs of tapestry. Her clothing is of linen, pure and fine, and of purple [such as that of which the clothing of the priests and the hallowed cloths of the temple were made]. 23 Her husband is known in the [city’s] gates, when he sits among the elders of the land. 24 She makes fine linen garments and leads others to buy them; she delivers to the merchants girdles [or sashes that free one up for service]. 25 Strength and dignity are her clothing and her position is strong and secure; she rejoices over the future [the latter day or time to come, knowing that she and her family are in readiness for it]! 26 She opens her mouth in skillful and godly Wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness [giving counsel and instruction]. 27 She looks well to how things go in her household, and the bread of idleness (gossip, discontent, and self-pity) she will not eat. 28 Her children rise up and call her blessed (happy, fortunate, and to be envied); and her husband boasts of and praises her, [saying], 29 Many daughters have done virtuously, nobly, and well [with the strength of character that is steadfast in goodness], but you excel them all.