What Love Is Not (Part 4 of Love, what is it?)

What Love Is Not...

Love is not...irritable
                   ...provoked
                   ...easily angered

Irritable: Easily irritated or annoyed; readily excited to impatience or anger

Provoked: Angered, enraged, exasperated, or vexed.

Anger: Strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a wrong; wrath; ire.

When I get the feeling of being “offended” it turns out I’m not living out love.

When I’m easily irritated, I’m not living out love.

When I’m impatient, I’m not living out love.

When I’m acting out on feelings of displeasure, I’m not living out love.

If I’ve been wronged, reacting belligerently is not love.

This is something I need to actively meditate on.  When reading social media and seeing how easily “offended” others are, I get so “irritated” by their silly offenses that I’m not living out love on my part because of my own irritability!

For years when reading these verses from First Corinthians, I read them and held up these standards for other people.  Beginning with my parents.  My parents are not living up to these standards, they must not love me.  Later, I would hold my friends up to these standards and, in my mind, I would tell myself they did not love me because they did not measure up to these standards.  Then, when I got married my husband too fell short of meeting these qualities of love.

One day, the Holy Spirit impressed upon my heart that I needed to stop holding other people up to these standards.  I needed to look at myself as I read these Scriptures.  Wow!  I suddenly found the ability to extend grace to all of these other people.  Guess what!  I was not loving others either.  That was humiliating.  Even though I had not discussed any of these things with others, I sat humiliated before God because He knew my heart.  He knew I had held these standards to others even if they never knew.

Below you will find the verses once again.  Thank you for your patience in waiting for this blog entry as it has been two weeks since the last one.

Living grace-dependent,
Cindy

1 Corinthians 13:4-6New Living Translation (NLT)

4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.

1 Corinthians 13:4-6New King James Version (NKJV)

4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;

1 Corinthians 13:4-6English Standard Version (ESV)

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[a] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

1 Corinthians 13:4-6New International Version (NIV)

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.