Love Believes - The Best!

This message was delivered by Sheila Schuller Coleman from the pulpit of the Crystal Cathedral. It was aired during the Hour of Power program on Hong Kong's ATV World Channel on 27 March 2011.

Today we're launching a brand new series called "Love Life." Do you love life? How is your love life? Is it rich? Is it full?

We're going to talk about our love lives based on 1 Corinthians 13, beginning with verse 7: "Love bears all things. Love believes all things. Love hopes all things. Love endures all things." In other words, love believes!

Let's juxtapose that with 1 John 4:18 that says, "Perfect love casts out all fear." Have any fear in your life? I'll bet you do. Struggle with fear? Fear of paying the mortgage, fear of keeping your job, fear of your relationship or your marriage falling apart. What are you afraid of today? "Perfect love casts out all fear," says 1 John 4:18.

The opposite of fear is faith. Everybody knows that. But this verse tells us that the opposite of love is fear. You cannot have love without faith. Love that casts out all fear is a love that believes. The question is: What do you believe in, whom do you believe in? Because, you see, everybody believes in something, even if it's nothing. Let me say that again. Everybody believes in something even if it's nothing. Because even a belief in nothing is still a belief.

So, we all believe in something, but what do you believe in? Whom do you believe in? The Bible verse says, "love believes," and I would ask love believes what? Do you believe the best or do you believe the worst? I trust that this passage is telling us that love believes the best. And we have a choice; you always have a choice as to what you will believe in, whom you will believe in. Love believes the best, St. Paul tells us, the best in others.

You may have heard pessimistic things from other people about love and have jumped to negative conclusions. But what would happen if you jumped to positive conclusions?

When my husband, Jim, and I were just beginning to date, one day he said, "Sheila, I'm going to take you to a restaurant." He picked me up and drove me to a restaurant at the foot of a mountain. He parked the car in the parking lot and said, "Now, Sheila, you wait here." As he ran into the restaurant, I'm thinking, who goes to a restaurant on a date with a guy and then sits in the car while he runs in without you. What kind of date is this?

Well, soon, Jim came back holding two plastic bags filled with Styrofoam containers. I could smell it was fried chicken. He threw the bags in the back seat, jumped back in the driver's seat, and we took off again. I thought, what are we doing? Where are we going? And I was, to say the least, very intrigued.

So he drove me up this meandering road to the top of the mountain and pulled into an overlook where you could look out and see the valley below. He parked the car, and turned off the ignition. I looked down the mountain to the beautiful lights twinkling in the distance, and then up to see the moon shining brightly. It was nice, and it was quiet. And then he reached in the glove compartment, pulled out a little candle, stuck it on the console, and he lit it. He reached back into the glove compartment, pulled out a card, and he handed it to me. It said, "To the most beautiful girl in the restaurant." So, we sat there in our little romantic car, overlooking the valley below, eating fried chicken by candlelight. I thought, wow, what a guy. That really did it for me. I was now quite anxious to marry this man.

Many years later, as I was going through all my cards and sorting them, I found that I had kept that card. I read it again: "To Sheila, the most beautiful girl in the restaurant." Then I thought, wait a minute, I was the ONLY girl in the restaurant. We hear messages all the time, and we can choose how to interpret them. How will you hear the next message? Will you hear it positively or will you hear it negatively? Will you believe the best or will you believe the worst?

I encourage you to get a love-believes-the-best hearing aid, even if you're only 12 or 13, one that will amplify the positive and filter out the negative because you have a choice as to what to believe when you hear messages from others. Will you believe the best about other people? Or will you believe the worst? Will you jump to negative conclusions? Or will you jump to positive conclusions?

Many of us have heard things about people, we've seen them do things - not just spouses, not just family members, but colleagues, neighbors - and right away, we think the worst about them. This verse says no, "Love believes the best." And it's a choice we have.

As an educator, one of the theories that I studied as part of my dissertation was Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences theory. If you're an educator, you know about this theory. But once you get beyond the realm of education, I find that many people have not heard about this theory. Howard Gardner is from Harvard and he also teaches at the Boston School of Medicine. He is quite well renowned for this theory.

It all started when he took a good look at the IQ test that has been around since 1900. It's used to measure how intelligent we are or are not. And when they measure the results, they put them on a bell curve. Statistically, where do you fall on the bell curve? Some fall high, some fall low, and the majority of us fall in the average. We're of average intelligence, according to the IQ and the bell curve.

Howard Gardner comes along and he says, wait a minute; the IQ test only tests two intelligences - spatial reasoning, which includes math, and the language arts, which include reading and writing. Two intelligences only. Howard Gardner thought that if there are other cognitive abilities within the brain that can be lost through damage, then those are other types of intelligence.

So, he started studying people who had brain damage. He started to discover what cognitive abilities they lost through brain damage. Some of the abilities that were lost included athletics, sports, the kinesthetic abilities. And he said, you know what, that's an intelligence then, too. If you're a dancer, if you're an athlete, that's a kinesthetic intelligence.

If you're a musician, that's another ability that can be lost through brain damage, music intelligence. If you have the ability to get along with people, to understand others, that's interpersonal intelligence. If you understand yourself, that's intrapersonal intelligence.

He started to add up these different types of intelligences that he was identifying, and he came up the first time around with a count of seven intelligences. These are not talents, not gifts, but different types of intelligences because they're cognitive abilities that reside in the brain. Either you have them or you don't. If you have one of these intelligences, you can lose it. And God created each one of them.

I love his theory. Why? Because it is all about human potential. God didn't make some children very intelligent, other children not intelligent. He didn't make some children of average intelligence; He made all of His children intelligent in many different ways. And He also gave all of us wonderful gifts because He created each one of us as beautiful and special and unique, and with wonderful combinations of seven or more intelligences. Isn't that amazing?

And what else I love about it is that, when we look at children, when we look at other people and we see their potential, we believe the best in them; they become what we believe they will be. We create self-fulfilling prophecies. When we believe the best about other people, don't they become better? What harm is there in believing the best about somebody? When we hear a negative rumor about someone, what harm is there in saying, no, I believe the best about that person. There's no harm in it, and much good can come from believing the best about others.

Believe the best about God. Oh, yes. Most of us have prayed, beseeching the Lord, saying, I want help. Lord, I need help. Lord, guide me. I have run smack dab into trouble. I'm ready to lose my house. I've had a job my whole working life that I hate. I'm in a marriage and I don't know if it's going to last or not.

When your life is in crisis, isn't it so tempting to believe the worst about God and to wonder if there really is a God out there? If He is, doesn't He care? Doesn't He see? It's tempting to believe the worst about God instead of believing the best about Him. I believe the best about God, I believe that everything He tells me will come to pass.

Here is what God says to you, no matter what your situation. He says, "I will never leave you or forsake you" (Hebrews 13:5). Believe the best about Him; believe that He will never leave you or forsake you. He says, "All things work together for good to those who love God" (Romans 8:28). Believe Him. All things will work together for your good. He says, you "are more than conquerors" (Romans 8:37). Believe Him. You are more than a conqueror. He said, "I have come that you might have life" (John 10:10). Believe that. He has come that you might have life. Believe that! Believe the best about God.

Love believes the best about you, too. It's very tempting to do this - to look in the mirror and not like what we see. I'm never all that excited about what I see in a mirror, especially these days. I look in the mirror and I see wrinkles, I see age spots, I see triple chins. When I look in the mirror, I tend to think I'm ugly, unattractive, too fat, whatever. Look at my roots. My hair is flat. And I know that I'm not the only one who thinks those kinds of things when looking in a mirror. If we're honest, when we look in the mirror, we often do not like what we see. And we would change it.

Sometimes I look in the mirror of my life and I think I'm unfit. I don't mean unfit at the gym, as in physically fit. I mean unfit like uneducated, inexperienced, inadequate for the job. Do you feel unfit at your job? Do you feel unfit as a father or a mother? Do you feel unfit as a neighbor, as a spouse? We all feel unfit sometimes. And there are times when I look in the mirror and I see failure written on my face. Do you ever feel like a failure? The Bible says that perfect love casts out all fear (1 John 4:18). Yet, one of the biggest fears we all face is the fear of failure.

Do you ever look in the mirror and feel unloved? And feel despised and rejected? Do you ever feel that way? I have felt that way. I have felt unloved, despised, rejected. It happens. Everybody feels that way from time to time. Maybe you've looked in the mirror and felt unworthy. Who are you to feel that anything good should happen to you? You haven't deserved it. You haven't earned it. Ugly, unfit, a failure, unloved, unworthy. Wow.

We look in the mirror and we believe the worst about ourselves. We don't love ourselves. But the good news is that perfect love casts out all fear. Jesus Christ came to erase all of this. He said, no, you are not unworthy; no, you are not unloved; no, you are not a failure; no, you are not ugly; no, you are not unfit. I made you beautiful. I made you perfect. You are my child. I made you the way I want you to be.

So, here is the truth: I can choose to look in the mirror and see those lies from the great deceiver, or I can look in the mirror and I can see God's truth. He says, Sheila, you have a stunning soul. I love that. Who wouldn't want a stunning soul! He says, Sheila, you have multiple intelligences. Multiple smarts. Not just one, not just two, but multiple smarts! He says, you are successful, you are my successful daughter. He says, you are loved with a deep, abiding love that nothing can separate. "Neither height nor depth nor powers nor principalities" (Romans 8:38), nothing created on earth can separate you, Sheila, from my love.

And nothing can separate you from God's love. That's a promise. And He says, you are forgiven, my child.

When you look in the mirror, can you believe the best about yourself? Can you believe you are a stunning soul? Can you believe that you are smart in multiple ways? Can you believe you are successful? Can you believe you are loved? Can you believe you are forgiven? Can you? You can choose to believe all of that today because God believes it. God believes the best about you.

Let us pray: Oh, God, thank You. What a gift that You give to us; a perfect love that casts out all fear. You give us a love that believes, a love that has faith. You believe in us. You believe the best about us, and You've given Your life to show us how much You love us. Give us the courage to love You, others, and ourselves with the same beautiful, powerful, positive love. Amen.

Copyright Hour of Power 2011. This message was delivered by Sheila Schuller Coleman from the pulpit of the Crystal Cathedral and aired on the Hour of Power, February 21, 2011.

© 2011 Crystal Cathedral Ministries.