Hi, there. My name is Patricia King. I have this absolute privilege of sharing with you devotions and little mentoring nuggets on the love of God. To help you get nurtured in the love of God. Today we are going to talk about love tests.
I know you probably don’t get all excited when you say you have to take a test. God has tests. He will put people in your life that you think, “Oh my gosh. I wish they weren’t in my life, I wish they were going in the other direction. I don’t need this! They are opposing me, they are slandering me, they are being mean to me, they aren’t being kind. They are not honoring me. I am going to go in the other direction and be in an environment where everybody will treat me great.”
The Lord said, “If you are going to fellowship with my sufferings, which are love sufferings, you need to learn what love looks like in the midst of horrific tests.” Now in James 1:2, it says, “Consider it all joy.” All joy. Say it, “All joy.” “My brethren, when you encounter various trials.” Now, the word trials there is actually meaning temptations. Temptations to what? To not love, right? So, “Count it all joy when you encounter various…” That means there are many of them. All different kinds, sizes, and shapes that will test your love, but for each one, the answer is the same. “Count it all joy.” “Knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”
Now, faith, the Bible says, works through love. Love, we choose to operate in with our faith. So, these two things work together. It says that knowing that “the testing of your faith.” In other words, the faith to overcome the resistance to not love is going to produce endurance in your life. It will make you a stronger love person when you can conquer that situation in front of you where the person is not treating you very nicely. You say, “I am going to love you anyway. I am going to pass this test, I am going to love well.”
That doesn’t mean you don’t confront things, or speak up to things. You are going to do it in a loving manner. Love always does it for the highest good for the sake of another. Then it says, “Let endurance have its perfect result so you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” Now, perfect and complete is actually in regards to maturity. That’s what it actually means. That in regards to maturity, you will be so completed, you will be so mature, you will lack in nothing. You will have everything you need to love perfectly. Isn’t that beautiful? At the end of the day, it is not going to be, how well did you sing, how well did you preach, how well did you prophesy. It is going to be, “How well did you love? Did you learn to love? Did you make that your greatest aim? Did you speak of my love? Did you activate my love? Did you exercise my love?”
Some of my greatest growth in the love walk didn’t come through all of the people that are nice to me all the time. It came from people who are cruel, and hurt deeply, who betrayed, who slandered, who abandoned. It was through painful things that I learned to explore the fellowship of His love sufferings. To see how His love was relentless, no matter how badly we treated Him.
So, if I get to know my Savior in that way, in the perfection of His love, I can then lose myself in that. Take up my cross daily, and follow after Him. If he laid down His life for me so perfectly, I should be willing to lay my life down for others. Did he lay His life down for those who were nice to Him? No. He laid His life down for His enemies. That is the love test.
Why don’t you take a love test? Maybe God sent you one already. If not, I am sure if you pray for it He will give you one. Then you can grow in love and be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. What a beautiful way to live your life. A life filled with love and for love. In His grace and in His glory, how beautiful.
Let me pray with you. Father, in the name of Jesus, I pray for everyone watching that they will be so filled with love and its power. That no matter what test they are in right now, or no matter what test you send to them, and I pray you will send some – they are good for us. They will learn to love and overcome. They will find out, “What does love look like? How can I love this person all the way through to their victory? Even when they are misbehaving and not giving me what I need? When they are mistreating others? What can I do to bring them into alignment so that they can enjoy the fullness of all that you are, Lord? So, perfect them in love. Because you have loved them, Lord, with an everlasting love. You really, really have. God bless you, thank you for the opportunity of opening the Word up for you. God out and love well throughout your whole life.