Fabulous Family Friday - Winning Love

1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, 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. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails…13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Winning love in a family must be shown freely. Love is the engine that makes the marriage/family go. Whether you are part of a blended family, traditional family, single-parent family, functional or dysfunctional, love is the core of every one of them.  It can cover a multitude of wrong. 

Winning love is agape commitment/giving.  It is patient and kind or courteous – as we have always heard - you get more bees with honey!  It does not envy – don’t worry about the family next door and what they have – do you and your family.  Build up from your family assignment and don’t worry about your friends and their kids.  Watch boasting – with social media sometimes, our kudos and good news can mimic boasting and sometimes boasting backfires in the family – especially when it puts added pressure on a spouse or child.   

Love, winning love that is is not rude…does not interrupt; overtalk; overcorrect; nag or split hairs with one another. It does not keep records…record keeping will change love into competition for love.  Tit for tat never works when you are keeping score of good or bad things.  Throw away the foul book you may be carrying around.  You never get out of the penalty box when you can pull out your foul book at any given time with record keeping.  Forgive and FORGET.  Winning love is not easily angered.  The thing about anger is it’s a secondary emotion to fear, frustration, and hurt.  If it is left unchecked it will destroy winning love.  Deal with those emotions of fear and frustrations by communicating with one another so it will not turn into a bigger problem.  Winning love always protects.  It protects physically, emotionally and spiritually.   Love always trusts.  KJV states it believes all things.  This doesn’t mean winning love is gullible, it means love finds a way to believe or wants to believe.  Love always hopes.  Hope is the emotion behind agape/commitment.  This love sees the glass half full.  It has on the rose colored glasses when needed to find the light at the end of a tunnel to encourage another member of the family.  Finally winning love always preserves!  It won’t give up, won’t give in or won’t give out on mom or dad, husband or wife, children or siblings, aunties or uncles, etc.  It’s a fabulous family Friday to show winning love and in so doing – we all win!