Love First: Why You Have to Win the Locker Room
By Erik Kingsley · · Imagine Church, Pembroke Pines, FL
You can have the right team. The right talent. The right strategy. And still be losing.
That's not a motivational opener. That's just the truth about a lot of relationships right now — marriages that look fine on paper, friendships that used to be close, families that have everything they need except the one thing that holds it all together.
This past Sunday, week three of our series US landed on that exact tension. And it started with a basketball story.
The 0-7 Season Nobody Talks About
Before the back-to-back national championships, there was a bus ride nobody wanted to be on. A team full of talented players, sitting in silence after another loss, one side of the bus blaming the other. No unity. No love. Just talent that wasn't working.
Sound familiar?
Maybe it's not a basketball team. Maybe it's your marriage. Your family. A friendship that used to be easy and now feels like work. You've got the right pieces. You've tried the right things. And underneath it all, there's a quiet war that nobody else can see.
The diagnosis isn't what most people expect: You don't have a talent problem. You have a love problem.
The turnaround for that team didn't come from a new play or a new starting lineup. The coach brought them to 1 Corinthians 13 — the love chapter — and made them memorize it before every practice. Not as a wedding reading. As a survival strategy. Because God knew the church in Corinth would be at each other's throats, and he knew we would be too.
What Paul Actually Said About Love
Most of us have heard 1 Corinthians 13 at a wedding. We've smiled at it. We've maybe teared up a little. And then we've gone right back to waiting for our feelings to lead.
But Paul wasn't writing poetry. He was writing to a church that was gifted, talented, and falling apart from the inside out. And what he said cuts through every excuse we carry:
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." — 1 Corinthians 13:1–2
Elegant prophecy. Mountain-moving faith. Radical generosity. All of it — nothing — without love underneath it.
The hardest-working spouse. The parent who never misses a game. The most doctrinally correct person in every Bible study. If love isn't running the operation, it's just noise. Impressive for a second. Empty underneath.
You can be gifted and still be nothing. Love is the one thing that isn't optional.
Love Is a Decision, Not a Feeling
Here's where most people get stuck: I just don't feel it anymore.
That's not a relationship problem. That's a definition problem.
Love was never a feeling you wait on. Because if you wait on a feeling, that feeling might never come. Feelings move like weather — up one day, down the next. Building a relationship on feelings is building on something that was never designed to hold the weight.
Look at what Paul actually describes in verses 4 through 7:
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." — 1 Corinthians 13:4–7
Every word in that list is a verb. Patient. Kind. Not irritable. Not resentful. These aren't emotions happening to you. They are decisions about how you treat people — especially on the days you don't feel like it.
Love is a decision you make with your actions before your feelings catch up.
That's not a soft idea. That's actually one of the harder things you'll ever be asked to do. Most people wait to feel loving before they act loving. The call here is to reverse the order — act first, and trust the feelings to follow.
God modeled this before we ever had the chance to earn it. He didn't base his love on how he felt about things. He made a decision — before the foundation of the world — to die for sins that hadn't even been committed yet. Christ died for us while we were still sinners. That's not a feeling. That's a choice. And it's the same choice he's asking us to make toward the people in front of us.
Before the Championship, Win the Locker Room
Championships don't start on the night of the championship game. They start in the preseason. In the practice. In the everyday, unglamorous decision to show up and choose love before anything changes.
Love isn't the reward for a good relationship. It's the requirement for one.
That team didn't earn the right to learn love by winning first. They had to learn love before they ever won anything. And that's backwards from how most of us live. We tell ourselves: once things improve, I'll be more patient. Once the pressure lifts, I'll show up better. Once they change, I'll love them differently.
That's not a strategy. That's a tactic wearing a nice outfit.
Love doesn't show up after the championship. Love is how you get there.
Love Is What Lasts
There's a reason Paul ends the chapter the way he does:
"Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away... So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." — 1 Corinthians 13:8, 13
Every impressive gift has a shelf life. Prophecies pass. Knowledge becomes outdated. Even faith can waver. But love — chosen, practiced, decided on — outlasts all of it.
Communication, forgiveness, fighting fair: those are containers. Love is what has to be inside the container, or the container is empty. You can have the right theology but the wrong heart. The right effort but the wrong tone. The right intentions but the wrong follow-through. None of it substitutes for love.
Everything else expires. Love never does.
What to Actually Do This Week
This isn't a message you sit with and feel good about. It's one you put to work. Here's where to start:
- Read 1 Corinthians 13 out loud every day this week. Alone, or with the person you're struggling to love. Let it get into your heart, not just your head.
- Name your 0-7 relationship. The one running on talent and effort but not love. Don't avoid it — name it.
- Pick one verb from verses 4 through 7 — patience, kindness, not keeping score — and practice it on purpose today. Not because you feel like it. Because love is a decision.
- Stop keeping score. Old wrongs don't belong in today's argument. Lay them down. God doesn't keep a balance sheet on you, and love doesn't ask you to keep one on anyone else.
- Love first before anything changes. Don't reverse the order. Don't wait for feelings to lead. Make the decision, and let the feelings catch up.
The Comeback Starts Now
If you're sitting at 0-7 in a relationship that matters — you haven't tried everything yet. You may have tried new strategies, new conversations, new boundaries. But have you tried loving first, on purpose, before anything changes?
That's where the comeback begins. Not with a new play. With a renewed heart, retrained by Scripture, choosing love over and over again — even when it's hard, even when it's not reciprocated yet, even when the feelings haven't shown up.
Every relationship has a next level. Love is how you get there.
Listen to the full message on the podcast, or watch it on our YouTube channel once it's up. And if you haven't been in the room yet — doors open at 9:30 AM this Sunday. Come see what it feels like to be in a community that's learning to love on purpose.