Love Never Fails

Claire Black: This is True Girl, a podcast for girls and their moms. Together, we’ll explore God’s truth for us, one drive at a time. Buckle up! You’re about to grow closer to each other and closer to Jesus!

If there’s one thing you can count on when it comes to friends, it’s this: your friends will change. It’s a sad but true fact. 

In one survey of 6,000 middle school students, two-thirds of them said they had different friends at the end of the school year than the ones they started with. That means a lot of students are going through friendship failure each year. 

Do you have a friend who has disappointed or failed you? Most of us do. Today, we’ll learn how to stay stable when your friendships don’t!

True Girl is hosted by Dannah Gresh, author of Talking to Your Daughter about Best Friends & Means Girls. Let’s get moving for season 4, episode 7 titled, “Love Never Fails.” Here’s Dannah!

Dannah Gresh: Hello, true girl. Just a sec . . . I’m a . . . my phone is almost dead. Let me just . . .

Staci Rudolph: Dannah, what are you doing?

Dannah: I’ve got to just plug my phone in, Stace, but I forgot my charger. Do you think it would work for me to use this fancy, shmancy, long thingy here by my studio mic?

Staci: No. No. No. Don’t do that! You could . . .

Dannah: Uh, oh!

Staci: I told you! Your phone was not made to plug into that . . . thingy!

Dannah: I knew that. I just wanted to demonstrate something important. When it comes to love, we often have a hard time plugging into the right place to power our love.

Staci: Well, that was one expensive object lesson. 

Dannah: True fact. 

Staci: Do explain!

Dannah: Well, I think we as girls will try just about anything to get love. We try to get it through lots of things: some of us super perform so our teachers love us. Some of us volunteer to do good things so people love us. Sometimes we go to church thinking that is where love comes from. But there seems to be one place girls try to get love more than any others.

Staci: Friendship.

Dannah: Yup. We can be pretty obsessed with friendship.

Staci: Now, I’ve always kind of been a person with a small friend group. I can be pretty intense about friendship. In middle school I had one best friend, and we talked all the time. 

And looking back, I was a bit obsessed with our friendship and relied on her too much. And if I’m honest and I’m not careful now, I can still kind of slip into relying on a friend too much.

Dannah: Yeah. Here’s the thing. Plugging into friends is never going to be a fail-proof way to feel loved, because friends fail us.

Sometimes that’s because we disagree or have a fight we can’t overcome, but a lot of times it’s just because life changes and we change and we grow. Sometimes we need different friends in our lives. 

I think it takes most of our lives to learn that there’s only one source of love we can plug into that will never fail us. And it’s not the things we usually try to plug into. 

Staci: As we continue to learn the seven secrets of true friendship based on 1 Corinthians 13, we’ll come to one today that’s almost impossible. Unless . . . we plug into the right source.

Dannah: Let’s hear 1 Corinthians 13, verse 8b, our power verse of the day. It reads,

Love never fails.

Staci: True friendship, true love, lasts forever. It never forgets to show up on time. It never abandons you when you become a lot of work. True love doesn’t forget your birthday or your dreams. True love doesn’t say “no” when you need it most. It doesn’t run out of money or time. It lasts forever . . . and never fails.

Dannah: So, who do you know on this earth who’s never ever disappointed or hurt you?

Staci: Well . . . 

Dannah: Yeah. Everyone on this earth will fail at some time, no matter how much they really care about you. But I have some good news. The Bible uses the words “unfailing love” together a whole lot of times. But here’s the thing, never once is the source anyone other than God Himself. 

God’s love, that’s what we need to plug into. Otherwise, none of this kind of love we’re learning about in 1 Corinthians is even possible. Unless His love first comes into our hearts, we cannot produce the kind of love that we have been learning about in 1 Corinthians 13. 

We will gossip. We will erupt in anger. We will be inpatient and unkind. We will fail others. Only God's love will never fail.

In fact, let me tell you a really special story about God’s unfailing love.

Staci: Okay.

Dannah: Let’s go back in time to November of 2006 and cross the ocean to China. 

A beautiful thirteen-year-old girl named Zang Cho Yun was waiting for something. She was waiting to be loved. You see, when she was born, her mother left her on the steps of an orphanage. 

Abandoned for the first time.

But soon a young Chinese couple took her home as their own. But hard times fell on the family and Zang Cho Yun’s second mother just decided to leave. 

Abandoned for a second time.

Flash forward a few more years and her father died.

Abandoned a third time.

Now she was living again in the orphanage system of China. She had only eleven months left to be adopted internationally. On her fourteenth birthday, she would age out. That would mean she would no longer be taken care of by the orphanage system, and she wouldn’t be eligible to be adopted. She’d be placed on the streets with no family of her own.

She knew the streets well, and in fact, she walked them often with her friend. One day, she was exploring them when she saw a small group of people that didn’t look like they were from China. In fact, they were from Nashville, Tennessee.

She approached the group. Through a translator she bravely said, “I need a family.” 

It just so happened that this group was there in her little village in a remote location in China learning about international adoption.

They flew back to the United States with visions of this beautiful girl, Zhang Cho Yun in their heads . . . and a mission to find her a family. But remember, they only had a few months left to get her out of China before she would age out of the adoption process.

Well pretty soon, a family was identified, but there was just one great big obstacle standing in the way, $25,000. 

Now I don’t know what you think, but I think that's a lot of money. Pretty soon a friend offered to pay $12,000, but do the math with me, how much money did the family still need? 

Staci: A lot.

Dannah: Yeah, $13,000, to be specific. 

The family began to pray. The deadline was getting closer, and they needed the money very soon. They didn't have any idea where it would come from, but they did know that God had called them to adopt Zhang Cho Yun. They believed He would provide somehow. 

That very week, they got a phone call.

Their new accountant, the guy who helped them with their money, noticed that they'd been paying the IRS or the United States government incorrectly for the past several years. It looked like they had a huge problem. 

“You don't understand,” said the accountant, “the IRS owes you money. In fact, they owe you $13,060.” 

Staci: No way!

Dannah: Yes way! And that was exactly what they needed to adopt their new daughter. Only God could use the IRS as a savings account!

There were lots of other miracles along the way. But in August of 2007, Zhang Cho Yun met her forever family. Even though everyone else failed her, God did not.

Staci: That’s wild! 

Dannah: God never fails my friend. You know how I know that story? It was my family that adopted Zang Cho Yun. Today, her name is Autumn Cho Yun. She is my daughter. 

Autumn didn't even know God when she wished for the one thing she wanted: a family, a mom and dad. And God didn't fail her—even though everyone else in her life had.

Against all odds He sent friends of ours to find her in the middle of China. 

And then He had the IRS saving the money to pay for her very expensive adoption. 

Staci: I love that story Dannah, and it gets me every time! Because God saw Autumn, and He provided exactly what she wanted most. 

Dannah: Yup. Even when other people fail us. God does not.

True girl, I want you to experience that kind of friendship with God. Unfailing love. 

Staci: And more than that, God wants you to experience friendship with Him. Jesus Himself said these words when He walked the earth, “I have called you friends.” He wants to be your friend. Yours!

You know, it takes time to grow a friendship. It takes time spent laughing and crying and playing and talking with each other. And slowly but surely as you spend more time creating a relationship with each other, you become closer and closer. Then before you know it, you are best friends. You know every little secret about each other, what they like and don’t like, things that they enjoy, or maybe things that make them upset.

It’s no different with God. You need to spend time with God to have a friendship! 

Dannah: Okay, I think we are ready for your True Challenge! I’m gonna participate in this one too because, well, it’s really a good one! 

Staci: Spit it out! 

Dannah: Okay, your True Girl Challenge is to get alone with God . . . and to make it special!

Go to a place of solitude. 

For me, that would probably be outside. I always feel so close to God when I go for a long walk with my dog Moose or ride my horse Trigg through the corn fields.

Staci: For me it would be with my journal and cup of tea.

Dannah: We just want you to spend some time alone with the Friend who will never fail you: Jesus.

Staci: Now, you may be wondering, What am I even supposed to do? You could write a note to God in your prayer journal, or listen to worship songs and sing along. You might read the Bible or do a Bible study that you’ve been working on.

Whatever it is you chose to do, do it with the intention of getting to know the closest Friend you will ever have even better! 

Dannah: I hope this is the beginning of many great times that you spend with Jesus. I think you’re just going to love it. Whenever I spend time with Jesus, I always feel so refreshed and peaceful and . . . well . . . loved. Loved by an unfailing love!

Claire: I always feel closest to God when I’m reading the Word.

I hope you find a special way to experience friendship with Him, too. Ask your mom if you need help thinking of ideas or finding the right tools.

One great tool is Dannah’s book, Talking to Your Daughter about Best Friends & Means Girls. It contains pull out pages to help you with this special time with God. 

If you like spending time with God—and we hope you will—we’d love to deliver a box of devotional tools to your door on a regular basis. Our True Girl subscription provides daily devos for you and a monthly mom+daughter date that helps you grow closer to each other and closer to Jesus.

You can learn more about the book or the True Girl subscription box at MyTrueGirl.com.

Join us next time when we talk about how to have healthy, God-honoring friendships with boys.

The True Girl podcast is produced by Revive Our Hearts, calling women of all ages to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. 

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