I don't know about you, but when it comes to my growth with God, I often take five steps forward just before I take two backwards.

It happened to me yesterday. I spoke with a dear friend about a direction I feel God is leading me, teaching me, and even stretching me. I grew frustrated when I didn't hear similar enthusiasm in her for this new venture. And I told her so. She defended herself and explained that I shouldn't belittle her because we didn't have identical experiences with God.

I'm not by nature a confrontational person, so our conversation left me unsettled. Later, I went hiking with my dog and talked to God. Suddenly I remembered a brother in the Old Testament. His name was Nehemiah. He also felt God leading, teaching, and even stretching him, but his technique was superior to mine.

Nehemiah lived and worked as a cupbearer in Shushan, the southwestern area of present-day Iran, though his heart was in his ancestral city, Jerusalem. God gave him a vision to rebuild the walls there, but he didn't just go out and bang his idea over the heads of his onlookers. His vision was his vision, and he didn't just expect everyone else to inherit that vision. Instead, he developed it in private before God. Only when it was ready to launch did he present it in public.

I learned something valuable in yesterday's exchange. I was right in my enthusiam for God's leading, but my friend was right in reprimanding me for the way I presented it: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal" (1 Cor. 13:1).

Nothing works without love. Living out God's love needs to always be our default option. When omitted, no passion or vision or any other good thing will survive. No matter what we do or which decisions we face, no matter how many wonderful things we have to present, no matter how God is dealing with us about our calling, no matter how excited we are about new things God is teaching us, love must always take precedence. How do we know when we're succeeding at love? This passage goes on to say that love . . .

suffers long
is kind
does not envy
does not parade itself
is not puffed up
does not behave rudely
does not seek its own
is not provoked (1 Cor. 13:4-5).

I love my friend, though I did not show her love. But because of God's love for me, He's still patiently teaching me how to love. And that love is big enough to overcome my insufficiencies.

It's through this experience that I challenge both you and me: Always err on the side of love. When we do, God's work will ALWAYS gets done.