Faith, Hope, And Love: Essentials Of A Healthy Heart Life

Faith, Hope, and Love:

Essentials of a Healthy Heart Life

1 Corinthians 13:13 “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

- Faith, Hope, Love: These 3 can be discussed on their own merit, but I’d like to take a look at how they relate to one another. We can see how they work together to bring us to God, as well as how they continue to breathe life into our spirits as we follow Jesus.

-Love will help your faith remain hopeful and your hope remain faithful!

-Faith and hope are intertwined and are both essential to a follower of Jesus. But we also need to know that we’re not on our own, not alone – that’s where love comes in. Love is always about someone else. If it’s just about me, that’s not love. That’s self-centeredness! Love gives! God so loved the world that He gave…. Love must express outward, away from itself.

-In 1 Corinthians 13:13 Paul wrote about these enduring words: faith, hope, and love. They make up a triad or trinity of truths about God and us. We continuously need these three factors, which is what "abide" implies. Our need for them never ends in this life. We live by faith, and the other two are directly connected to faith. They are, in fact, the three building blocks of a successful, abundant life. They are inextricably bound, tied to our relationship with God, and they are the qualities that make us run or work correctly.

Think of it this way. We are God's invention. He built us, and as our manufacturer, He designed us to function and produce. Automobiles run on gasoline. They do what they do because of the way they were designed and built, and they move only when fueled by gasoline. Movement is a key here: We run—move—on faith, hope, and love. These qualities nourish us, giving us strength to function as God intends. Every living human being who has ever lived, was intended to function by these qualities, but only the faith, hope, and love that comes from God will work to produce true success. (Adapted from John W. Ritenbaugh)

-As we examine these 3 essentials, I’m going to rearrange their order to remind us how God works in us to produce spiritual life and health

I. God’s Work in Us

1. Loved!

-Love is the only truly eternal, self-existent attribute of God. All other qualities have to do with us or this world, either comparatively or in relation to. But God’s love was always in action through all eternity past. His others attributes did not come into play until creation. Listen to some powerful words from Dr. Stanley Grenz, one of my favorite Bible scholars who passed on a few years ago. The Bible says that God is love. Stanley Grenz unpacks this like no one I’ve ever heard, and he also helps us understand more about the Trinity. Let’s listen in. (8:48 to 15:03)

-So our relational God is love with or without us, but what is amazing is that He wants to give us His love! And as this teacher points out later in his lecture, when we come to God, He puts us smack dab in the middle of Christ, on whom He is showering His unending love without measure. He cares about every human, but only those who are in Christ are gaining the full benefit of His love! We are loved by our Creator, which is why He took all the steps necessary to invite us into His love. The next step is up to us. Will we receive His love? What will we do with His life?

2. Inspired!

-To give hope is to encourage or inspire; To inspire means to breathe into, giving life, instilling courage or strength of purpose. Inspired people inspire people!

-The Bible refers to God as the God of hope. We all need hope just to make it from one day to the next. We need a reason to go on, with the thought that there must be something more! Dreams die, life beats us down, and sometimes we lose sight of why we are here. God wants to breathe hope into your heart today! There is more to this life than just work and play, eat and sleep, buy and sell, live and die. We have a purpose that will extend beyond this life into eternity: to glorify God with our lives and enjoy Him forever! God has huge dreams and plans for each of us and for all of us together as His church! So He uses all kinds of means to inspire us, to give us hope, to catch a glimpse of the eternal. As the Bible says, Deep calls unto deep. Something deep within cries out with the desire to know the life of God!