Read: Heb. 11:1–6
This week we’ve talked about a kind of love that is considerably more demanding than simply liking and getting along with people. We’ve talked about loving people who disagree with us and disappoint us, loving people who may never reciprocate, and sometimes choosing another person’s good without any guarantee that the situation will turn out the way we hope.
But, that kind of creates a problem.
If we love this way because we expect other people to respond correctly, we are eventually going to quit. If we forgive because we are certain the relationship will immediately be repaired, sometimes we’ll be disappointed. If we serve because we expect gratitude, somebody’s eventually going to forget to say thank you. If we pray for an enemy because we expect them to become our friend by next Tuesday, we might be waiting awhile.
Christlike love often requires act faithfully while giving up control over what happens next. We might have to act in faith that someday things will be made right.
And that means love may require something else underneath it.
Trust.
We have to trust that doing what Jesus asks is still good even when we can’t see the outcome. We have to trust that God is at work in ways we cannot control. We have to trust that faithfulness is important even when it doesn’t immediately produce the result we wanted.
Which raises another question: when Christians talk about faith, do we simply mean believing that God exists, or is faith something much deeper than that?
There is more going on in that word than we often realize.
That is where we are headed next.