Love Conquers All

Have you ever had the Lord be really obvious about something that He wants you to be working on in your life? Well, the Lord has really been showing me that I need to be more loving and less swordy.

Several of my favorite websites had postings on love and I had been thinking about it a lot but it took a close friend to say to me that I don’t always have to be wielding a sword, that I could concentrate on love more. She was right of course.

We have been driving a lot lately. There are a lot of miles between everything you may want to do in Wyoming so I have had a lot of time to talk to the Lord as I rode in the car. Yesterday we drove to Cody which is about an hour away. I told the Lord, I know I need to be more loving Lord. How do I do that Lord? Can you help me? Where do I start?

I realized that this is a giant in my life. And not the kind of giant you can just rebuke in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and it goes away. It was the 1st Corinthians 13 kind of love. Do I speak with tongues? Yes – but I don’t have love so I am sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Do I understand all mysteries and all knowledge? Well, maybe not ALL, but I don’t have love. Do have the rest of that stuff? Not quite but it doesn’t matter because if I don’t have love, I am nothing. I profit nothing. But most of all, without love, the Lord cannot use me.

We had Chinese food last night with my grandparents. My dad broke open a fortune cookie and put the fortune in front of me. “Love conquers all.” Yes Lord. I get it. I thought about the word study I did on the white horse rider a while ago. In Revelation verse 6:2 for “going forth conquering and to conquer.” That word conquer is actually the same Greek word that was translated overcomes all the times before. The text is actually saying “going forth overcoming and to overcome” and I never understood why they didn’t translate it that way. Love overcomes all.

Today my grandmother was making peanut butter cookies. She usually makes them twice a week because even now, they are my grandfather’s favorite. He yells from the other room, “Woman! I need to take another one of those pills.” My grandmother says, “Ok” and stops what she is doing to take a pain pill and some water to my grandfather. She pats him on the hand and smiles and comes back to putting little fork marks on the cookies. She never complains. She never gets angry. She never talks bad about my grandfather even though he is a difficult man. She is strong and steadfast.

That is love – the Lord says to me.

A man that I was close friends with at one point is in jail. He was in jail a while back and I wrote to him a couple times to send him words of encouragement and to let him know that I was praying for him. He had written me back to tell me that those letters really meant something to him. We have since had a fairly major falling out. For consciousness sake, we made up, but we never really talked to each other again.

Today, the Lord began to put on my heart that I need to write to him again in jail. I said, “Lord, we are not even friends anymore. I’m sure the last thing he wants is a letter from me.” Yet, there it was. The gentle insistence was there from the Lord for me to write him a card to let him know that I’m still praying for him. That is true, even though I felt I was praying for him as an enemy and not a friend – although I will not tell him that part. I said, “But Lord, he is a false prophet! I’ve even mentioned his false prophecies on my site!”

The Lord said, “Are false prophecies the unforgivable sin now?”

Hhmmm. No. Ok Lord, I will write him a nice card sending words of encouragement even though he probably hates me now.

That is love – the Lord says to me.

Love is laying down your life for the brethren. Love is forgiving and comforting the brethren so that they will not be swallowed up in overmuch sorrow. Love is reaching out without protecting yourself against possible rejection and betrayal. Love never fails.

Please pray for me to be more loving my friends.
Blessings in Christ
Linda