Love and truth go hand in hand

The year “seven” rhymes with “heaven.” If you want to have a heavenly year, take the advice of the Apostle Paul who instructed us “to speak the truth in love.” That’s my New Year’s Resolution and hopefully for every year thereafter.

Partly because we know that God is love, we have the divine tendency to exalt love as the greatest. Indeed the same Apostle as above said that of faith, hope, and love, love was the greatest. However, love must be governed by another great axiom of life and that is truth.

Over the years my tendency has been to exercise love in relationships and give surface treatment to truth. That probably has cost me more friends than I can count. Any husband, particularly, who only practices love with his wife and skates over the truth is skating on thin ice. Love’s dept is truth.

The Apostle Paul put the two together, love and truth, because he knew one without the other only world lead to disaster. Love by itself may sound good, be received well, and provide for the moment, but in the end, it’s limited. Dionne Warwick said, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love...” Paul McCartney said “Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs; and what’s wrong with that? I’d like to know; Cause here I go again.”

Love, generally, is what the other person wants to hear and feel and believe. Truth, on the other hand, needs to be said, will strengthen the relationship, and give the relationship greater integrity. Love and truth.

Too many of us have the idea that truth exercised essentially blows the other person out of the saddle. Truth, many believe, would mean the end of the relationships. You might be interested to find that studies show that most wives would forgive their husbands even of adultery if -— that is, if — they were told the truth.

When couched in love, truth is blessed. When couched in truth, love is enduring.

It may take a few more words than “I love you,” but love born on the wings of truth will enable a relationship to make it over difficult times and times you will want to remember at end of another year.

Happy New Year! And for sake of trying something new, speak truth in love. Check 1 Corinthians 13 to read what love exactly sounds like.