1 Corinthians 13: Love is Patient

As we grow in our comprehension and experience of God's love, our lifestyle is inundated by that love. God's love for us changes the way we interact in the world. As we talk about the practical expression that comes from knowing God's love, do not mistake it for a legalistic call to try and will power your way to look a certain way. If you try to relate in circumstances the way you think love should be expressed, but don't actually have love, you will fall on your face.  Love flows from you as an effortless response to being loved yourself (1 John 4:19). This is an unveiling of a lifestyle that is merely a byproduct of being influenced by the love of God. Love is expressed in normal life circumstances in such a way that it neither seems normal nor reasonable from a strictly 'human' perspective.  Love is a heavenly perspective, and religious practice can neither understand nor replicate it's deep reality. So allow yourself to be loved by God, ask Him to reveal Himself, and ask the Holy Spirit to fill you with His presence.

"I pray that you will be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith-- that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:16-21)."

Love is patient

Because love is the result of divine influence on someones life, the way that this love is expressed is done so from a heavenly perspective rather than an earthly one. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul isn't saying that if you have love you 'should' be patient, he is saying that if you have love you will be patience. Love is practically expressed through patience. 

Patience is perseverance, long suffering, the capacity to put up with difficulty. Life is full of circumstances that 'don't go our way'.  There are plenty of people who are difficult to get along with, and there are a plethora of situations that we wish would pan out differently.  Yet where love abides, patience is expressed. 

Patience isn't tolerance, it isn't the mere longing of an unmet need, neither is it putting up with someone's problems because you don't know what else to do. Patience isn't ignoring conflict or tense relational situations, neither is it the expectant waiting we have when we want something to happen. 

Patience is the capacity to put up with struggle, difficulty, and conflict; not out of a desire to avoid them, but because love has eyes to see the positive potential that those situations present.  If someone is getting on my nerves by acting out, being rude, obnoxious, or needy; love allows me to be patient, because I recognize their behavior is an indicator of brokenness.  I now have patience for them because I want them to be whole, to be better.  Love seeks the good for the other not the convenience of self. Patience implies that there are difficult situations and circumstances, but love makes patience easy and joyful.

When we see in Jesus that God does not hold our trespasses against us, but that He died for us while we were still sinners, we are set free from our own self-effort and brokenness.  Our new worldview no longer has the capacity to hold the trespasses of others against them, because we know that they, like ourselves, have been forgiven. We then relate with them on account of reality as we know it. We are patient with those who are broken, insecure, and difficult, because the love we have for them can do nothing less. 

"From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.  Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away, behold, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:16-17)."