Love Is Better Than Miracles Series

Ron and Patti had been married for twelve years and have two children. Patti had grown up with believing parents as they attended church where she grew up in the area. Ron was born in Ada, Oklahoma to hard working parents. His father had served in the Vietnam War and neither parent felt church was important. Ron had not given a great deal of his attention to spiritual matters until a friend invited him to a Young Life meeting when he attended West Ark College. It was there that he met Patti and a relationship developed. Patti was instrumental in leading Ron to Christ early on in their relationship. They were married in a Podo, OK church before Ron’s job caused them to move to other side of the state. Living outside of Little Rock, the two could not find a church they were comfortable in, so the grew out of the habit once the kids came along. The churches were either too large or they lacked anyone who really asserted themselves to take Ron and Patti in. The economic slowdown caused Ron’s work to lay him off. So the couple moved closer to home. Now with twelve years of marriage under their belt, this couple has only about three years of church experience. Their young children have only rarely had a Bible in their hands yet they pray before meals. Patti wants to go back to the church she grew up in and they have attended there on a few Sundays. But the habit of staying home on Sunday is hard to break for both of them. The economic stress of Ron losing his job has placed a stress upon the marriage as well. The couple works two jobs between them as her parents watch Catlin and Addison. I had the chance to sit down with both of them and ask about their involvement in church recently. I prodded them with one question, “You both profess Christ as your Savior and Lord. Can you point me to an area where you are loving others?” “Can you point to a place where your Christianity is being practiced by loving others in a church?”

Ron and Patti’s problems are greater than the long lines at the unemployment office. Ron and Patti have failed to develop any meaningful practices where they practice love around a church. Instead, their actions have stated clearly through over a decade of marriage, that if the church doesn’t meet their needs, then church doesn’t matter. Patti had been a part of a great singles group before marriage. She had even attended a MOPS group in a church during the week that gave her support and encouragement with the little ones while she was in the Little Rock area. Ron had rather go on a hike on Sunday mornings and doesn’t care for a lot of the organized religion he has seen after his conversion. Ron and Patti are typical of a generation of professing Christians who want Christianity their way. Christianity practiced ala cart where we pick and choose the elements of Christian life that we like and discard the other. And while the church is oftentimes messy, the command to love not just anyone but to love one another is essential. Ron and Patti need to experience the love found in a community of believers who are not just like them. In fact, they need to experience the revolutionary love of Christ in a church where Christians love one another. When they truly experience this love, they’ll turn from just consumers to producers.

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 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. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.