And now I will show you the most excellent way…

~ 1 Corinthians 12:31

 

I told my friend to let her husband have it. I told her to unleash and let him know how he crushes her, destroying her almost daily with his hate-filled ways.

“Enough is enough,” I’d said…

She had every right to defend herself.

But this is the same fragile-strong soul who sat so ladylike and prim just days ago, telling a living room of friends that we have to die to ourselves, or we won’t make it.

She said it right out loud, like a canon-blast through the silk web of my excuses.

She meant it.

 

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh

with its passions and desires.

 ~ Galatians 5:24

 

I’ve watched her tears splash onto her jeans more times than I can count, because her heart was so broken.

I’ve sat without answers and listened to her ache out loud; so this time, I just got mad.

I gave her my honest opinion as an angry friend who wants her suffering to stop.

 

But our battle is not against flesh and blood…

~ Ephesians 6:12

 

I want to believe mean men are not the enemy—their tormentors are.

Their broken childhoods and their stress and their tossing and turning at night with not feeling adequate—this is the enemy.

I know, I know, I know.

But I was mad, so I told her to tell him to change, or else.

 

What miserable counselors you are, all of you.

~ Job 16:2

 

She prayed about it. She always does.

Hours later, she called me.

“You got a minute?” Her voice was soft…I wasn’t sure what was coming. Was she leaving?

I braced, ready…

But what came next was so unexpected, so life-giving, so Jesus-full, I trembled with awe. I trembled because God was near.

She described her husband to me—not the man I know, the man she knows.

The little boy who grew up battered inside and out. The angry teen who wandered alone and soul-bone hungry. The young married man who flexed his chest at the bad guys and gave his yes to the military, to war. The scared daddy who finds himself in enemy territory every day raising a free-spirited daughter who’s as stunning and complex as any of God’s majesties. The man who loves with his whole heart or none of it, no in between. The funny, honorable provider…

She described her husband the way Love sees him.

Her words were certain, intimate and powerful like the God-Words that created her husband on purpose, perfect and whole long before he was bruised.

She loved him with Words that penetrate broken earth and lift dead human hearts from nothing but dust.

The Spirit of Christ flowed out of her, over her lips into the world where healing words are so rare, I thought a cloud might form right over me and rain down the weeping heaviness of what she was saying.

It was too good, too much love—It was the unbearable, undeserved goodness of God.

Because God is Love.

And it’s people like her, wives who forgive when it makes no blaming sense at all, seventy times seven, and offer grace as often and as lavishly as if it’s as easy as breathing, people like her who remind people like me that God’s Love is relentless.

He forgives again and again and again, and loves just for the sake of loving—for the sake of showing us we are just loved.

We are loved and accepted and forgiven, every time, all the time, despite our meanness. 

I saw Jesus in my friend, the way He pursues us until we believe He loves us… with Love that reaches out and up, endlessly.

It has no end.

 

May you have the power to understand…

how wide, how long, how high, and how deep God’s love is.

~ Ephesians 3:18

 

I caught a glimpse of something else, too—a mystery.

As she rejected my advice to plow him back into the ground, as she breathed holiness instead of hatred…she came to life again.

Peace was setting in.

As she poured love out, Love poured in. She chose to give life, and Life filled her.

And this is The Resurrection…poured out, emptied things raised to life by Love.

She’s going to make it.

Eternity is endless because God’s Love is endless.  

Only a place with no end can contain that kind of Love…full of that kind of people. People who love on earth the way God loves, whose very lives are testimonies that make us crave to know Him more.

Like wives who stand as witnesses of A Better Way…

Love so confounding, so offensively fantastic and unnatural that people get slobbering mad when it’s given to those who don’t deserve it.

And this is the stuff of Heaven. Kingdom come, on earth as it is in Heaven.

 

And now, I will show you the most excellent way…

Love.

~ 1 Corinthians 12:31/13:1

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*Dear reader, I hope my friend’s courage to love inspires you like it did me. However, if you are reading this and you’re in danger, today’s blog isn’t for you. I beg you to seek safety and never look back. 1-512-267-SAFE (7233)