Revival of Love: You Can’t Argue With Love

I have watched it happen more times than I can count. Someone has a passionate conversation, maybe online, maybe face-to-face, about what they believe, what's right, and what the Church should stand for. They make their point. They defend their position. They win the argument.

And they lose the person completely.

Here's what I have been feeling deeply in my spirit as we walk through this Revival of Love series: we are living in one of the most argumentative cultures I have ever witnessed. Division is not just in the culture; it has crept into the Church. I have personally seen pastors post videos calling other pastors weak, calling fellow believers fake Christians, all because they disagreed on how to handle a hard season. Social media has given everyone a platform, and somewhere along the way, we confused having a platform with having a ministry. But I want to encourage you: the Church has always found Her way back, and I believe, with everything in me, that God is not done with His people. He is calling us higher, not out of shame, but out of love, because He sees what we can become when we truly walk in His greatest commandment.

Let me say this as plainly as I know how. We can out-argue someone and still never reach them. We can be right about everything and still be wrong in how we treat people. And if love is not present, none of it matters. 

Paul said it this way in 1 Corinthians 13, and I want you to really take it in with this. If I speak every language on earth, if I have the gift of prophecy, if I understand every mystery, if I have faith that moves mountains, if I give everything I own to the poor, but I don't have love? I am nothing. I have gained nothing.

Not less effective. Nothing.

That's a strong word. But that's God's Word, and I believe He means it.

Here's the thing about love that argument can never touch. Love disarms people. You can prepare a counter argument for someone's theology. You can find a debate tactic for someone's position. But when somebody genuinely, radically, inconveniently loves you? There's no defense for that. It gets past every wall. It reaches places that winning a fight never could. And that is the power God has placed inside every believer who is willing to walk in it.

Most people who came to Christ did not come because someone out-argued them. They came because somebody loved them. Radically. Sometimes at great personal cost. And some of those people were not easy to love, but somebody did it anyway. That is the Church at Her very best, and I believe that is exactly what God is stirring again in this season.

That's the revival I believe God is calling us into. Not louder. Not more right. More loving. Intentionally, practically, every single day, more loving. The Church has everything She needs to turn this moment around, and it starts with each of us making a decision to lead with love.

So let me ask you the question I've been asking myself. When people encounter you this week, what do they walk away with? Are you known for what you're against, or for how you love? Because Jesus was pretty clear about how the world would recognize His followers. Not by the bumper stickers. Not by the debates won. Not by the social media profile that lists Christianity as a religion.

By this will all men know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

You can't argue with love. And maybe that's exactly the point.