\u201cThis is true weed whacking!\u201d my roommate said as she attacked the two forests that were my eyebrows with a pair of tweezers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In high school, the girls maintained a painful ritual called eyebrow tweezing (because no girl wants caterpillar eyebrows. Unless it\u2019s 2020. Then you look like you stepped out of Vogue<\/em>). After a few weeks though, little hairs would start to grow back. I\u2019d tell myself my brows weren\u2019t bad; I could put off tweezing a while longer. But eventually, I\u2019d pull out my magnifying mirror and find growth that would make the rainforest green with envy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That horror reminds me of something Paul said at the end of 1 Corinthians 13. He\u2019d just described a perfect standard of love that we\u2019re to strive for\u2014no envying, no boasting, etc. Then in verse 12, he says, \u201cFor now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face\u2026\u201d In other words, on our own, we don\u2019t know how to love. In fact, our self-perception is so off, it\u2019s like we\u2019re looking in a dirty mirror, thinking, “I\u2019m doing great!\u201d But, as we discover the fullness of God\u2019s love, we come face-to-face with the ugliness of our selfishness. #glowdown<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t know about you, but I have a hard time facing myself. I\u2019d rather airbrush my fatal flaws with defensiveness, withdrawal, and a good reality TV show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s painful. It\u2019ll make you want to run, and that\u2019s OK. Run to Jesus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s the end of the year, and maybe you\u2019re facing yourself too: promises you didn\u2019t keep, addictions you haven\u2019t broken, people you\u2019ve hurt. It\u2019s tempting to despair, but this is actually the first step to having all the traits of love. How? Paul explains in the next sentence: \u201cNow I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.\u201d In other words, \u201cI\u2019ll know love fully as I allow myself to be fully known.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we face everything in ourselves with God, we see that He still wants to be with us, despite all our flaws. This is the fullness of love and it transforms us and gives us the power to love others. But we can\u2019t experience this love unless we let Him see everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s painful. It\u2019ll make you want to run, and that\u2019s OK. Run to Jesus. He is a strong Savior. As we experience His unconditional love, we\u2019ll begin to live out all of 1 Corinthians 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Love Brings Us Face to Face with Ourselves \u201cThis is true weed whacking!\u201d my roommate said as she attacked the two forests…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-devotional"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Love_Matters_Most_pt12.jpg?fit=2560%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paAh8r-3ve","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13468"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15516,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13468\/revisions\/15516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}