Four Things That Love Does

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things.”

(1 Corinthians 13:7)

Today’s verse comes at the end of a very famous section of the Bible all about love. If you’ve been to a wedding, the chances are you’ve heard these verses—even if the couple aren’t Christians! Because of the familiarity, we can often miss the power of what Paul is writing, and so let’s just pause a second and look at these four things that love does.

• Love bears all things. Loving relationships often have to carry a lot of weight. The journey of any long-term commitment involves bearing with each other, carrying the weight of life and being a safe place for another person to unload their burdens.

In your relationships, romantic or otherwise, you have the chance to demonstrate your love through these four actions. Why not try to implement them today?

• Love believes all things. This doesn’t mean conspiracy theories. It means believing the best in another person. Often, I can assume the worst in people when they do something that bothers me, but they didn’t even realize that it would. Being slow to take offense is a sign of love.
• Love hopes all things. Often love involves waiting. You can be waiting for your wife to get ready to go out or waiting for your kids to put their shoes on. You can be waiting for marriage or just waiting to meet someone who might be worth marrying. Love involves waiting, and the key to waiting well is hope. Hope helps us wait because it gives us belief that the wait will be worthwhile.
• Love endures all things. Life is tricky. Sometimes things don’t go the way we want, and one of God’s greatest gifts to us, when we go through suffering, is to provide loving relationships around us—people who will endure things alongside us.

In your relationships, romantic or otherwise, you have the chance to demonstrate your love through these four actions. Why not try to implement them today?