Well, this is the week for love. I never really have understood why we have to have a holiday that is designed to remind us to love each other. I have just assumed that everyday should be a day in which we love one another. But since 270 a.d. their has been a holiday known as Valentines day. A day in which people buy over 180 million flowers on this day alone. A day in which people throw out their weight watcher points to dig into those boxes of chocolate. And so since it is apparent that the focus is on love this week, I thought it appropriate to ask you how’s your love life going.
Someone once said that if you ever want to know the truth about something then you should ask children. I love the article in the Vessel this month by our Busy Bees as they shared what love means to them. Yet, I also came across some other responses by children as to what they see love is.
Glenn, age 7 - If falling love is anything like learning how to spell, I don’t want to do it. It takes too long. (loving people takes a long time. It should take a lifetime. We should love people all our lives.)
- Kenny, age 7 - It gives me a headache to think about that stuff. I’m just a kid. I don’t need that kind of trouble.
- Regina, age 10 - I’m not rushing into love. I’m finding fourth grade hard enough.
- Angie, age 10 - Most men are brainless, so you might have to try more than once to find a live one.
- Dave, age 8 - Love will find you, even if you are trying to hide from it. I’ve been trying to hide from it since I was five, but the girls keep finding me.
- Manuel, age 8 - I think you’re supposed to get shot with an arrow or something, but the rest of it isn’t supposed to be painful.
Love is not supposed to be painful, but if left unchecked it can be. And so today as we ask the question How is your love life, I want to do it by looking at probably the most famous passage of love in all scripture. It is I Corinthians 13. For Paul when he talked about life, he understood life needed to be centered around love. And in this chapter he speaks about what real love is. And as he writes this letter he is aware that the church at Corinth has a problem with their love life and their problem is that they are not full of love.
Rather their focus was on who was the best or which spiritual gift was more important than others. They were arguing about how to do the Lord’s supper. Their was problems of immorality. Their was no love and Paul sprang into action.
Understanding all that was going on and realizing the state of things, Paul writes in the last verse of chapter 12 by saying “And now I will show you the most excellent way.”
Paul wanted the church at Corinth and he wants us to know today that our love life should be exhilarating if Christ is in the center of it. And so if I may use a phrase from both Paul and Bill and Ted’s excellent adventure, I want to share with you today how you and I can have an most excellent love life.
I. A Most Excellent Love Life Is The Best Thing In Life!
When we look at the first three verses of chapter 13, it can be summed up by saying that Love is the most excellent thing. The first three verses share that love is the best thing in life. Love should be the picture hanger upon which everything is hung. Love should be at the forefront of everything that you and I do. When we look at our priority list we need to see that love should be the most important thing in our lives.
According to verse 1 it is more important than speaking in tongues. Can you speak in a different language. I have told you that when it came time to choose a language to learn in high school and college I choose the French language. I chose it not because of it’s beautiful language but because it was the romance language and I thought I would be able to woo the girls with my parlez vous francais (said in redneck fashion).
Yet, listen whether you can say J’taime, Teiamo, Yatiblialehvu, Ani oheaosapt, or I Love you, it means noting if not spoken from the heart with love.
Eloquence in speaking was mandatory to the people of Corinth. They wanted people to speak polished and perfectly. They would not have been impressed with me as a speaker back then, and they were not impressed with Paul in his speaking. In 2 Corinthians 10:10 the people of Corinth said about Paul that “in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.” And so Paul is saying listen you can be the best of speakers. You can speak with such eloquence that for a moment it might be electrifying but without love is can be as irritating as fingernails on a chalkboard or a cymbal crashing. A cymbal crashing by itself is not beautiful music but incorporate it with the other instruments and it is beautiful. Same thing with love. Words are just words but put them with emotion and feelings of love and they can be electrifying.
I don’t care if you can speak 20 different known languages or a heavenly or angelic language and can communicate with the best of them. It means nothing without a heart of love! Without love, our speaking is just a bunch of noise!
Not only is love more important than speaking but it is more important than faith. The message translation says that if we have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.
How big is our faith? Do we honestly believe that our faith can move mountains. When paul was speaking of moving mountains, what he was implying is doing the impossible. Now Paul is not speaking of faith as a saving faith in coming to know Jesus, but he is referring to a powerful faith that the Holy Spirit can do powerful things in our lives. It’s the same type of faith that David had in which he went out and faced Goliath regardless of the odds that were against him. A mountain was in his way but he knew that the battle was the Lords and he had faith that God could and would move that mountain.
But you see if you have faith but don’t have love then that faith is not going to be good for anybody.
And it is also important to understand that anybody can give. There are some who simply give so that they can get something back in return. Paul is saying here that true love possesses a willingness to want to give and not expect anything in return. True love says hey I want to help spread the gospel so I am going to give what my heart has decided to give. I give out of love.
No matter what you talk about (speaking in tongues, preaching, faith, missionary work, etc.) love should be the most important thing in life. It should be the controlling force of your life! If you don’t love people then what you do or what you say won’t mean much to them or to God. So if we want to have a most excellent love life then we must be willing to show our love through our speech, faith, and works.
II. A Most Excellent Love Life Will Perform Well
Whenver we try to do something, we should want to perform well. Whether it is at sports, work, or our spirituality, we should try to do everything to the very best of our abilities.
I remember when I was playing baseball, I would practice everyday hour after hour until darkness came. I would go to the side of the house and for hours throw balls against the wall practicing fielding ground balls. I watned to perform well as a shortstop. And I had a problem. I could not keep my bottom down. Every time the ball was hit to me I always hesitated to get down on the ball. I did not want it to eat me up. And so I had to practice over and over to keep my bottom down and field those ground balls with precision. It took a lot of work but it made me a better ballplayer.
Same thing with love. If we want to have a most excellent love life, then we must be willing to constantly work on our love life and make it to perform well. So if God was to ask us how our love life is doing, could we honestly tell him that it is performing well. You say well I don’t know how it should perform? What are the characteristics. In 3 simple yet powerful verses, Paul gives us 15 characteristics of what a most excellent love life contains: We are not going to cover all 15 this morning (and some of you go Whew Thank you lord. What I am doing is illustrating the characteristic of love known as kindness in not forcing you to listen to me wah wah wah wah for another 30 minutes)
1. Love is patient.
Now what does patient mean. I will tell you something that I have to be patient for and that is trying to get online here. Someone will send me an email with a picture or document attached to it and because we have the SHRUSH connection it takes 10 minues to download. You have to be patient with that. But be careful because that is not the tpe of patience that Paul is talking about here
Rather he is talking about a patience in the capacity of having somebody wrong you and not retaliating. Patience is the opposite of being short tempered but rather patience is longsuffering or to put it simply means to be slow to anger. Even when someone has done you wrong patience demands of us to “kill them with kindness.” It means putting up with annoyances and inconveniences without complaint.
Abraham Lincoln personified this example of patience on numerous occasions but one sticks out in particular. Their was a man who treated Lincoln with more cruelty than anyone ever had. His name was Edwin Stanton and he said of Lincoln that he was a low cunning clown and had nothing but venom to say about Lincoln. Yet Lincoln never said a word and actually when Lincoln became President, Lincoln asked this man who had called him every name under the son to be his war minister because Lincoln felt that he was the best man for the job and everyday Lincoln treated that man with respect and courtesy. It is said that as Lincoln lay dying from an assassins bullet that Stanton looked down on Lincoln and said “there lies the greatest ruler of men the world has ever seen.” Why the change of heart? Because the patience of love had won.
Friends, when someone drives you up the wall. When you have had it with all the negativity be willing to be patient. I know that it’s hard to be nice to some people and it is hard to be patient with some. But love is patient, it does suffer long yet it is victorious. Because it is the same patience that God uses with us. It is not the sign of weakness but of strength. It is not the sign of being defeated, but is the only way to victory. God shows his love to us through his patience and his long suffering when we choose to disobey his will. So let’s be willing to be patient and perform it well.
2. Love is kind.
Being Kind means that we are willing to take the initiative to respond generously to those who are in need. It means not neccessairly being asked to do something but just doing it. Someone once said that the greatest act of kindness that a husband could do for his wife was not flowers, it was not beautiful clothes, rather it was to simply put down the toilet seat.
But kindness is much more than that. Oh man did I see kindness last night at the Valentines Supper as our youth and leaders attended to our guests needs. I also saw kindness in many ways when several people wanted to Kiss the cook. But I had to tell Charlie and David Braswell that they just could not do that stuff.
One of the church fathers put it as plain as day when he said “love is being sweet to all.”
Kindness comes in so many different ways. Have you ever rented a videotape and noticed the little sticker that would say Please be kind and rewind. It is doing something for others. Why should we be kind. Because Kindness has been given to us. Why did Jesus die on that cross. Because God was kind to us and wanted to give us everlasting life. He was kind to us and we should be kind to others. Isaiah 54:8 shares this about God’s kindness. “with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you, says the Lord your Redeemer.” Because believers have received kindness, they ought to act with kindness toward others. Such love is considerate and helpful to others. Kind love is gentle and mild, always ready to show compassion, especially to those in need.
We could spend the rest of the time talking about the importance of our love lives not being boastful or envious or proud, or rude, or self seeking or easily angered, no records of right and wrong, no delight in evil. Those are things that love does not do. They are things that we should be eradicating from our lives and replacing them with patience and kindness and generosity and hope and faith and the positive virtues of love. And so that is what I want us to leave with today.
III. A Most Excellent Love Life Will Be Positive:
We seem to be a society in which we clamor for some positive in love but are hard pressed to find anything. Just look in the newspapers this week about religious leaders and astronauts to others who have not experienced real love but a fake worldly type of love. And as we prepare to observe Valentine’s day I honestly believe that instead of focusing on chocolates and flowers, let’s focus on a different perspective of love. Can you imagine what would happen if we decided just this week alone to model the attributes of I Corinthians 13 love instead of the material aspects of love. Imagine if we focused more on kindness and goodness instead of bigger and better.
Paul finishes verse 7 by stating that a Most Excellent Love Life will focus on positive love. The first one is that Love never gives up, but willingly protects others. The word in Greek means “cover” so we could reword it by saying “love can cover anything.” It means taking our mistakes and removing them from our lives through the love that God has shown for us. It means that love can bear any insult, any injury any disappointment that comes our way. It actually seems to describe the heart of Jesus as he willingly used his blood as his autograph of love by covering our sins and transgressions and that is our protection in this world.
Love always trusts. It means that if we truly love God then we can take God at his word that he will always look out for us. it also means that in all that we say and do we should be willing to think the best of others. It means with most excellent love life, that we can go to a brother or sister in conflict and through love deal with that conflict. It means that spouses can talk to one another in love and resolve the differences in their relationships. It means that we can come before God and be free and honest and open in our relationship with him and seek his love and guidance.
Love is always hopeful. Believers who love look forward, not backward. They seek for growth and maturity in the church, knowing that God is working in every person.
Love endures through every circumstance. Believers who love are active and steadfast in their faith. They hold on, no matter what difficulties they face. Hardship and pain do not stop love. When believers persevere, they face suffering within the body. They face persecution. They hang on when the going gets tough. They strive to save their marriages despite disappointment, to continue to trust God despite setbacks, and to continue to serve God despite fear or sorrow. When believers truly persevere, nothing can stop them.
ILL.- A long time ago, a little five-year-old boy lived in an orphanage. He habitually stole from the other children. The superintendent of the orphanage tried talking to the boy, but it didn’t work. He just kept right on stealing. The superintendent tried all kinds of discipline, but nothing seemed to work.
Finally, someone suggested, “Let’s lavish love on him.” And in different ways the people who worked in that orphanage began to show love to that boy.
They began to show interest, to listen to him, to play with him, to hug him, etc. AND SUDDENLY, FOR NO APPARENT REASON, THE BOY STOPPED STEALING.
“Love never fails.”
The love of God has never failed and our love will never fail. Commit yourself to a life of loving others.
This Valentine’s day I encourage you to forget the Hallmark cards. Because if you really care to give the very best, then just give a little of yourself. Now that’s a great love life!
