Love Doctor: Love always trusts

Let's begin with our scripture (Paul really causes us to reflect deeply here)

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, 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.

Today I want to look a little deeper into love always trusts.  Remember that love here means agape, which is God's perfect, unconditional love.  And I want to begin in the physical and move into the spiritual.

Brothers and Sisters, I almost skipped this one.  Trust seems to be one of those things that does not come naturally for me.  Perhaps I am was born with a flawed trust gene.  I can honestly say, this has been a monster in my life.  But God, true to form, has even taught me how to trust.  Praise Him!

The King James Version does not say love always trusts.  It actually says love believes all things.  Anyone out there has ever seen the damage infidelity can do in a relationship will agree that it is a foolish thing thing to trust when someone has proven themselves untrustworthy.  God is not telling us to be fools.  What Paul is saying here is that we need give our loved ones the benefit of the doubt. 

The word of the day here is intentionality.  I am stricken with the horrid foot-in-the-mouth disease.  Things fly out of my mouth with the greatest intentions of kindness and love; however, the misinterpretation of those same things can leave others with hurt feelings.  Most of the time I think of a better way to say things 2 or 3 days after I have already manifested the symptoms of my ailment.  If people who love me did not trust that I say things with good intentions, I would be a very lonely person.   

Paul is saying to us that when there is a question of malice, or wrongdoing, that we should give the benefit of the doubt and believe that people are not out to harm us.  I think that is where trust begins to work.  Trust begins to work in that space between action and response.  If the action which can be a word or deed occurs, and that causes us some sort of offense, then our loving trust will affect our response.  When we can say to ourselves that whatever that person did that hurt us was not intended to hurt us, and quickly forgive them we are practicing this principal of believing all things.

This principal also allows us to be genuinely affectionate and loving to people.  When we do not look for the best in others we are automatically on our guard and our communication both verbal and nonverbal seems false.  It's that to wide smile or too perky hello (and people pick up on it--don't do that folks).  We cannot be effective witnesses, effective living epistles, if we cannot believe all things.

God loves us with the kind of love Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians 13.  God has given us more than the benefit of the doubt through the remission of all sins of believers by the blood of Jesus Christ.  God has said to us that he knows we messed up.  He knows we have fallen short.  But He still loves us,  and he has provided a way for us to maintain a loving relationship with Him.