Take a Love Checkup

If you want to see a huge turnaround in any area of your life—cultivate the fruit of love. It really is the key to everything you want and need in life. Just being nice isn’t going to cut it. You’ve got to cover all the bases to make it work.

How can you do this? By giving yourself regular love checkups. The measuring stick? First Corinthians 13. Let’s give it a try. As you read the following verses, stop at each one and ask yourself, “Am I doing this with every person, every time?” Take the time to meditate on how you can improve in each area. Ready…go…

Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily. It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]. It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail. Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening]. Love never fails… (verses 4-8, AMPC). 

How did it go? If you made it to the end without at least three or four areas to improve on, go back and try again! No one is perfect, and there will always be areas that need work. That’s just the way it goes. But continual effort to cultivate the fruit of love in your life will be worth the effort. 

If you really want to become an expert, write this verse on a 3-by-5 card and tape it on your mirror, or put one in your Bible or anywhere else where you’ll see it daily. Then, speak it out loud. Some people like to include their own name in place of the word love. 

The results of walking in love are worth the effort. God planned it that way