Daily Devotion - Monday - September 28

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
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1 Corinthians 13:4-7, 11 ESV
https://bible.com/bible/59/1co.13.4-11.ESV
 
 How many times have we heard this particular scripture being shared in various forms and fashions?  It's often used as the  benchmark for how to love your spouse or your family or your fellow man.  Sometimes when we read it, we see it as a description of how love is supposed to be and we can look at and and see how often we fail at showing love the way it is supposed to be.  If we look further, we see there's a snippet in this particular scripture that does talk a lot about how our upbringing can impact and influence how we love one another. Part of the problem with relationships is that we interact and love the way that we were loved as children. We often learn some very ineffective ways of loving others, but when we become adults we are to put up our childish ways and take on what God has taught us…..even if we were to have the wrong thing by our parents as children.  Our parents modeled love as they knew it.  They may not have known better, but Maya  Angelou says  when you know better,  you do better.  If it comes  to our attention that the way we were loved as children was not modeled by the biblical standard we are given, we should then dive deep to re-learn ways to love one another as God loved us.  
What are you doing on a regular basis to strengthen your love for others?  

Meghan DeGregory