No One Can Stop Your Love

By Jon Walker

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. Proverbs 17:17 (NIV)

"Others can reject your love, refuse your love, misunderstand your love … they cannot stop you from loving them."

(This devotional is by Jon Walker, editor of the Daily Hope Devotionals and author of Costly Grace.)

If you set out to love someone, no one can stop you from reaching your goal.

If your goal is to get him to love you back, he can decide not to love you. If your goal is to change her, she can resist your attempts to change. If your goal to please him, he can remain unpleased. If your goal is to control her, she can rebel against your control.

But no one can block your goal to give unconditional, Jesus-led love.

Others can reject your love, refuse your love, misunderstand your love, discount your love, spit on your love, ignore your love, impugn your love, but they cannot stop you from loving them.

Others can hold your love in scorn, crown your love with thorns, and nail your love to a cross of shame, but they cannot stop you from loving them.

Bono, from U2, once asked the question: “How do you dismantle an atomic bomb?” The answer, he said, was love.

Love presses through as “it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” and love “sustains all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7 NIV; Hebrews 1:3 HCSB).

The all-powerful God of love takes our fears and redeems them with his love, so we can move with the unstoppable, sustainable objective to love even those who seem impossible to love.

With Jesus loving through you, no one can stop your love.