Love Clears the Fog

1 Corinthians 13:12-13

¹² We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

¹³ But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love. The MSG.

God is love—we have heard this statement many times. Some say it to explain God’s nature and the fact that His love has seven layers that go from forgiving our sins as He welcomes us into His family all the way to chastising us when He wants to correct us and remove things in us that are in the way of showing His nature to others in His family or others in the world He’s drawing to Himself through us.

Our love walk or lack thereof shows what is in our hearts. It also shows what it is we are making strong in us as days go by, but it mostly shows how we see God and ourselves because in this way we will see others as well. The passage above highlights the state of a person that fails to walk in love toward God and others because even though we love God, but don’t love others, we are demonstrating that our love is still mixed with the ways of the world that says that we come first. This demonstrates Satan’s nature instead.

The passage above emphasizes that a walk short of demonstrating the love of God toward others makes us walk in a confusing fog where we cannot see clearly where we are going. It also demonstrates that we do not trust God enough and His power to fulfill His promises to us in His time and in His way and also causes us to revel against His process for us and others. In addition, it keeps us from hoping in God for us and for others and closes our hearts from receiving from Him in the ways He chooses to pour out His love and wisdom as well as understanding of our circumstances because in many cases, the very people we are turning against, could the very ones that could help us walk in the fulfillment of our destinies.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 states in The Message Bible that if we are able to accomplish things that glorify God and bring His name to a demonstration of faith and power with eloquence, revealing mysteries and teaching His word and His ways to others in ways that are plain to them, if we help the poor and even give up ourselves to the cause of the Kingdom of God in extraordinary ways, but don’t walk in love, we do it all in vain. It is in vain because we didn’t fulfill His one commandment given to us in the new covenant that Jesus died on the Cross to give us. This commandment says that we are to love God and love others as we love ourselves.

There is a measuring stick found in verses 4 to 8 of this chapter that can tell us where we are in our love walk toward God and others. It says that:

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut, 
Doesn’t have a swelled head, 
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,” 
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies.

Fortunately, this is also a process in our walk with God and our choice to be vessels that demonstrate His nature to the world around us helps us turn from a fallen state of turning against others, gossiping, murmuring and complaining, fault finding, and all other ways that show how the enemy operates through those that do not know God nor who they are in Him. The other reason is that it instead places us in a path where the light of God can shine in us and provokes others to want what we have in Him. So don’t give up! Repent, and choose to take every step toward being a fulfillment of God’s love to a dying world. If you fall again, repent and try again. The more you consciously aim at walking in love, the better you will get. This way you will also see yourself and others as clearly as God sees you and sees them. To Him alone be all the glory∎.