You know how things niggle away at you sometimes. They just start off as small things in a relationship and before you know it … they’re tearing you apart.

I remember when Jacqui and I were married many years ago now. It was back in the days when toothpaste didn’t come in the plastic tubes that it comes in now, but these soft metal tubes.

From when I was a little boy I’d been taught that you squeezed the toothpaste from the bottom and as the lower parts of the tube became empty, you’d roll it up. The aim was to get the maximum out of your tube. By the end, the whole thing was rolled up, except the very top, where you squeezed the very last bit out, before you started a new tube.

Well, we get married, we move in together, I’m thinking we’ll share a toothpaste tube in the bathroom. But to my shock, to my horror, SHE just squeezed the old tube from the middle – and it was this mangled mess.

I … I was speechless. After a few weeks, I decided that, for the sake of marital bliss, we would need to have separate toothpaste tubes, something that continues to this day.

Crazy isn’t it?! And yet, as Solomon writes in the song of songs, it’s the little foxes that spoil the vine. It’s the little things that can niggle away at a relationship, that can destroy things. Certain things annoy each one of us. The things that annoy you are probably quite different to the things that annoy me.

If you really want to annoy me, be late to a meeting, waste my time. Why does that annoy me? Because I’m an achievement oriented, outcome oriented kind of guy, who plans his time down to the last minute.

Sometimes we find other people’s habits annoying. The way the speak, or some aspect of their body language. And it irritates us. Think about how you behave when you’re irritated. It’s not nice is it. You’re not nice to other people. None of us are, when we’re irritated.

And, let me say it again, it’s often the little things that rub us the wrong way. So, how do we love others in that situation? Because that’s what this series of messages is all about. Love. How to love, what it means to love someone. And it’s down here in the weeds, down here in the middle of the nitty–gritty little things of live, where we either love people or we don’t.

We often think of love as some grand thing, supported by grand or romantic acts. And that’s fine. Love is a grand thing and sometimes we do big things, make big sacrifices, to love people. But have you noticed how 99.9% of life is just the mundane humdrum. The same old, same old day after day?

Here’s what God says about the whole irritability thing:

1 Corinthians 3:4,5: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.

If you love someone, if you want to show the love of Christ to a work colleague, to a friend, to a child, to a spouse … then irritability and resentfulness – we’ll talk about that second one in a moment – have no place in the relationship.

Anybody who’s been married for any length of time knows how the little foibles of their soul–mate can drive them nuts. I remember being at a church in Accra, Ghana a few years ago, and the pastor was preaching on this very thing. He told how all their marriage, his wife would just come in the front door, kick off her shoes and leave them there.

It used to cause a huge amount of tension in their marriage – drove him crazy. Why can’t she just pick up her shoes and put them away?! Until one day, He was praying about this, and God spoke to Him. God said: And why can’t you just pick up her shoes and put them away for her?

Since that day, that’s exactly what he’s done, with a glad and willing heart and the tension is gone. You see, if we allow this irritability to go on and on, it turns into something worse. It turns into resentment. No resentment is a nasty thing. It’s like a cancer that eats away at a relationship. When you start to resent what someone does, it brings up bitterness and unforgiveness.

It’s interesting to go back to the original Greek language that this verse was written in: love is not irritable or resentful. Quite literally, it says that love is not easily provoked (that’s the irritability bit) and, here’s what it says about resentment: it doesn’t think about, dwell on or reckon evil.

And that’s exactly what resentment is. You dwell on it, you turn it over and over and over in your mind, you think about how bad this person really us, and you ascribe to them, you reckon to their account, evil.

And here’s the absolutely crazy thing: we do this over stupid little things like how you squeeze the toothpaste. You think about the people who irritate you, the people towards whom you feel resentment – and ask yourself, what is the thing that irritates me? What is the thing that I resent in that person?

And ninety–nine times out of a hundred, it will be some stupid, insignificant little thing that, in the scheme of things, really doesn’t matter.

Listen again and listen carefully this time: love is not irritable and resentful. So, how do we overcome that? How do we get over irritability and resentment? The answer, plain and simple, Is forgiveness. Here’s what Jesus had to say on the subject:

Matthew 18:21,22: Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy- seven times.

See this speaks directly into this sort of irritability and resentment that goes on day after day as someone’s habits rub you the wrong way. When you think about it, we’re a lot like Peter here. He thought that seven times was an awful lot of times to forgive someone. But Jesus reaches into His hyperbole bag and says, no not seven, but seventy–seven times. Over and over and over and over and over again. Get the picture.

If we truly want to love someone, really, then we forgive over and over and over and over again, just as God forgives us. Is it hard? Sure it is! Forgiveness is always hard. Look what it cost Jesus to forgive us – death on a Cross. That’s why Jesus said:

Matthew 16:24–26: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life.

The whole crux of love, the whole point of love is that it’s not about us, it’s about the people whom we’re called to love you and I. There are two ways to live, for ourselves with the big ME in the centre of the universe, or for God and others.

And what, according to Jesus, is the single most important thing in life?

Mark 12:30–31: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. ’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself. ’ There is no other commandment greater than these.

And as I said, all that begins down here in the weeds, in the little things, where the little foxes want to ruin the vine that bears the fruit of love in your relationships.

It’s sobering stuff isn’t it? So who’s irritating you right at the moment? Towards whom do you feel resentment, right at the moment? It’s time to start praying about those relationships, and your reactions and the forgiveness and acceptance that needs to come into your heart. Because … that’s what love is.

It’s simply not easy this whole love thing, when you look at loving people who irritate us, loving people towards whom we feel resentment, forgiving those people who don’t deserve it. That’s why God’s Word is so important. The Word of God has the power to transform your relationships and your life.

So to help you with that, you can listen to each of the messages in this series again, right now, online at christianityworks.com. just click on the A Different Perspective icon at the bottom of the homepage and you’ll see them all right there. The series is called “Love is”.

You can stream the individual messages online, download the audio or transcript, even subscribe to the podcast.

And while you’re there, don’t forget that you can have instant access to the free, daily Christianityworks eDevotional. Words of inspiration, hope and encouragement delivered to your inbox on your smartphone, tablet or computer each weekday.

It’s all about helping you live out each and every day in the victory that Jesus came to give you. And remember, like everything else on the site, it’s completely free. You’ll find the eDevotional icon at the bottom of the homepage at christianityworks.com.

Love is forgiveness. Love is getting before God and confessing the irritability and dealing with the resentment. Because I tell you only He can. When we take His Word to heart, when we let the Holy Spirit bring God’s healing to our lives.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m Berni Dymet and I’ll catch you again, same time on Monday, with … A Different Perspective.