Love That Does Not Insist on Its Own Way

Paul's description of love is read at so many weddings that a man can stop hearing it. Love is patient and kind, Paul writes, it does not insist on its own way, it bears all things and hopes all things and endures all things. Set that beside pornography and the contrast is hard to miss.

Lust is impatient, it demands its own way immediately, and it endures nothing and bears no one. It is love turned inward until only the self remains. A husband who has lived this way for years may look at Paul's words and feel he is being shown a country he has never visited.

The good news buried in the passage is that this love is describing God's own posture toward you, patient and kind toward a man who has insisted on his own way for a long time. He is not out of patience with you. Ask him to work that same patient, self-giving love into you toward your wife, a little at a time, until the man she lives with begins to resemble the love Paul wrote about rather than the appetite that has ruled you.