Monday, September 10, 2007

love is...


In Jumping off of what we talked about on sunday I thought this might be a good thing to remind people of.


There are a lot of values in the Bible. Things having to do with money, justice, morality... But in the new testament there are two crowning values that are repeated over and over and over and over again.



  1. One is the Mission of God's love. Flowing through Jesus and his death and resurrection...and continuing through our lives in searching and helping to rescue those who are lost to God.

  2. The other is the Description of Christian love. Starting with how and how much Jesus loved others and leading us to love one another in the church outrageously...loving those who don't know God...and even loving our enemies.

what this love looks like is listed below



The version is from the message.


1 Corinthians 13
The Way of Love 1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. 3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.


Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.

Love doesn't strut,

Doesn't have a swelled head,

Doesn't force itself on others,

Isn't always "me first,"

Doesn't fly off the handle,

Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn't revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back,

But keeps going to the end.


8-10Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
11When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.


12We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation:


Trust steadily in God,

hope unswervingly,

love extravagantly.


And the best of the three is love.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love is something i really never understood until your sermon on Sunday. But know I can see what love is. It is amazing how just one thing can change things in a persons life.

Just wanted to thank you for doing that sermon I really needed that one.

 

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