Love is the Difference
Grant van Boeschoten
October 7, 2007
1 Corinthians 13-8a Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Love never fails.
Some impressions that Kids have on love:
"When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love."
"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth."
"Love is when someone hurts you, and you get so mad, but you don’t yell at them because you know it would hurt their feelings."
"Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is okay."
"Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas -if you stop opening presents and listen."
"Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well."
"Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford."
"Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day."
"You really shouldn’t say ’I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget."
Love is the Difference in your life. With Love, you can be the difference.
Love is the Difference between a friend and an acquaintance
Love is the Difference between thought and action.
Love is the Difference between good and evil.
Love is the Difference between Life and Death.
How good are you at loving? How much of your love comes from feelings and how much of your love is based on decisions and principles.
There are two kinds of love that we can have. There is the natural kind of love, which is simply love that comes naturally. It finds its motivation in feelings and emotions.
Then there is the God kind of love. This is the kind of love that makes a difference in the world. It doesn’t always come naturally to us, but with the God kind of love in us, we set ourselves up to win in life. This is a supernatural love that comes only from being connected to God.
Rick Warren in his book The Purpose Driven Life says, “Life is all about love!”
“Because God is love, the most important lesson he wants you to learn on earth is how to love. It is in loving that we are most like him, so love is the foundation of every command he has given us; ‘the whole Law can be summed up in this one command; ‘Love others as you love yourself” (123).
There is a saying by Arsene Housaye which states, “Tell me whom you love, and I will tell you what you are.”
I want to revise his quote and say it this way instead, “Tell me HOW you love, and I will tell you what you are.”
Because if you have got the God kind of love in you, then you are a Christian, you carry the spirit of God in you, because God is love.
How you love is the defining point of who you are.
The God kind of love sometimes can go up against what makes sense, it doesn’t allow for revenge and it forgives the people that you and I think should never be forgiven.
The God kind of love is such a powerful force that there is nothing on earth that can compete with it.
The Bible says that the God kind of Love keeps no record of wrongs. 1 Corinthians 13:5 “Love is not irritable and keeps no record of wrongs.”
The God kind of love doesn’t carry a grudge or regurgitate old hurts.
That’s mother birds feed their young you know. They go and have a meal and fly back to the nest where all the little baby birds are waiting. Then momma bird regurgitates the food, which is basically the opposite of eating it. She forces the food out of her stomach, up her throat, through her beak and into the waiting beaks of little baby bird.
The natural kind of love does the same thing. Somebody hurts your feelings and its not just a little hurt, it’s a big hurt. It’s the kind of hurt that makes you sad, mad, angry and disappointed all at the same time. Your feelings are hurt, but the Bible says that you need to forgive or else God won’t forgive you.
So you forgive the person like God asks you to do. But if you have got the natural kind of love working in you, then the next time that you are upset or that you are in an argument with that person; you regurgitate that old hurt.
You do the opposite of receiving the hurt in the first place. You grab it from that shelf in your mind where you labeled it and stored it. Then you channel the pain and emotions through your thoughts and then through your throat and it comes out of your mouth and you shove it into the other person’s face.
Now you both have to relive old hurts and re-open sealed wounds on top of the ones that just came up. Some people who are married have been arguing about the same thing for the past 5, 10 and 20 years, and they desperately need the God kind of love that forgives and keeps no record of wrong.
One of the greatest philosophers of our age is Andy Capp. I remember one comic strip several years ago in which Andy is up to his old tricks, always dodging his pastor because he is in the pub and not in church. One day after Andy’s wife Flo decided to take him back after one of his periodic expulsions from home, the pastor said, “Flo, I’m so glad you took him back again.” Flo answered, “There’s something about me; I just have to forgive and forget.” Andy replied, “There’s something about her, all right. She never forgets that she forgives.”
When you forgive with the God kind of love; you give up the right to recall the offense, you give up the right to use it as leverage, you give up the right to bring it up again. You simply choose to forget as best you can, and where you fall short you ask for God to help you.
There are some people that I know who say that they will never talk to some of their friends again, because of some stupid thing that there friend said to them. They have labeled the hurt with a date and a name and put into a jar, and they would rather hold on to their pain then have a life-giving relationship. They are relying on the natural kind of love, dominated by their feelings.
We need the God kind of love in our relationships and families. We are prone to regurgitating and keeping records of old hurts and disappointments. It comes naturally to seek revenge.
When somebody hurts me the first thing that I want to do is hurt them back, I have to choose to let the God kind of love dominate my natural instincts so that I can be a difference maker in the world.
It is the God kind of love that is the difference; it keeps no record of wrong.
1 Corinthians 13:5 “Love is not irritable and keeps no record of wrongs.”
I’m going to tell you the truth this morning. If you are keeping record of wrongs then you are going to become a highly irritable person. People are going to have to walk on eggshells around you, because you will be a venomous, toxic person to be around.
If you keep records of wrongs you will slowly kill off all meaningful relationships in your life, and here is the greatest tragedy of it all…God wants for his children to be salt and light, difference makers. And the person who keeps record of wrongs is so toxic that the only difference they will do more harm than good.
As long as you are keeping a record book of things done against you, you won’t be able to believe the best about other people. Have you ever noticed that natural love is the opposite of believing the best of everyone?
It is always ready to believe the worst of every person. It gossips and slanders and is just waiting to here some juicy news that will point to failure.
Kenneth Hagin, a longtime minister and founder of RHEMA ministries took this approach to gossip in his life.
“I traveled for years in the field ministry, and many times a preacher would say to me, “Have you heard about So-and-so? And they’d start to tell me something bad about someone else.
I’d always say to them, “I refuse to believe anything bad about anyone. I believe the best about everyone.”
God’s love is always ready to believe the best about every person, NO EXCEPTIONS. Since God is love, that means God is ever ready to believe the best about each one of us.
I can think of countless people whom I had never even met before, and somebody would tell me some bad thing about them, and I would write them off before I even met them. I would go into the relationship with a tainted view and I’ll bet you that I missed out some great life giving friendships because I allowed myself to believe less then the best about some folks.
On the last night of our vacation in California there was a meeting for everyone at 9:30 at night. Brenna had a couple of returns to make at one of the department stores and so I was putting Ethan to bed while she ran her errand. She left at 8:30, one hour before the meeting and I fully expected her to be back around 9:15, so that I could get to the meeting on time.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, 9:15 came and went and there was no Brenna. I was curious, but I wasn’t yet upset. 9:20 and still no Brenna. 9:25 and I’m starting to think that I might be late for my meeting. 9:30 comes and still no Brenna. Finally, at 9:35 she comes into the room, full of apologies for her unexpected delays.
Now, it’s a good thing for me that I was preparing for this sermon because I’m prone to saying and feeling the wrong things when I rely on natural love. I probably would have wrecked the evening for both of us with some dumb sarcastic remark.
Thankfully I had been reading the book on the God kind of love and I had read that love just believes the best about everyone. And so I wasn’t even mad, Brenna looked pretty worried, but it sure felt good to say, “I’m not even upset, I believe the best about you.”
You know, moments like that build a marriage, they strengthen relationships. And my natural reaction would have been to condemn and to make a scene, but that’s not what the God kind of love would do. And the amazing thing is that the God kind of love is just so much better than the natural kind of love. I mean, when you can have God’s supernatural love growing and working in you, life is just better.
If you will put the God kind of love into action, people will be drawn to you. People will want to be around you. And you will have more opportunities than ever to be used by God, and your enjoyment of life will significantly improve as well.
I mean, people used to think that you were a gossiping, volcano who was about to erupt on them at any given time. But if you can believe the best about everyone they will start to think of you as a friend and as someone who believes in them. They will see God in you and they will allow you input into their very life.
Love is the difference. It changes irritable people into gracious people. It changes sour people into sweet people. The God kind of Love will change you forever if you will just choose to let it dominate the natural kind of love that you were born with.
That choice is the biggest challenge we face; choosing to let the God kind of love dominate our natural impulses and gut reactions. The choice will be the difference in your relationships and in your life. Will you choose to let love be the difference?
When you choose to let the God kind of love work in you, you will quickly discover that it is beyond your natural ability. It would take a supernatural miracle for you to have God’s grace and mercy and love on someone else.
Choosing to have the God kind of love in you means that you choose to take the necessary actions to grow the God kind of love in your spirit.
When Jesus explained to his followers how to get the God kind of love in them, he used a common illustration that everyone would be able to relate to.
Jesus said, 5 “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.
People who know Gardening know the importance of trees and branches on those trees producing fruit. They can judge how much life is in a branch by the quality of the fruit the branch produces.
The Bible calls Love a fruit of the spirit.
Galatians 5:22-23 (NLT)
22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
That means you have to grow the fruit in your spirit. If you were going to grow a tomato in your garden you would make sure that you watered it and you would check up on it regularly to make sure that it was growing healthy. And if your tomato came up rotten, or never fully ripened or was eaten by bugs, you would know that you had something to fix in your garden.
If you have got rotten fruit in your spirit it means that you have got something to fix. Jesus says, I’m the vine, you are the branches, you have got to remain in me if you want for me to remain in you.
You’ve got to saturate your spirit with God if you want to have good fruit in your life. It’s your responsibility. It’s your path to success. It is how you make a difference. And the greatest kind of fruit that you can grow is love.
You know, the best part of growing a tomato is eating the tomato, don’t you think. It is the reward for months of careful work. It would be silly to grow a tomato, and then never enjoy it.
It would be silly to grow the God kind of Love and never enjoy it as well. You spend all the time letting the word of God renew and transform your mind, and you put hours into prayer with God that shapes your thoughts and it would be such a shame to see the fruit of that never be enjoyed.
So enjoy the fruit of love in your life.
Enjoy Forgiving people and releasing them to go ahead in life.
Enjoy believing the best about everyone and get to know people so much deeper as the relationships expand.
Enjoy the life that comes from being connect to the vine, it is good to be in love with God.
You know, the Word of Life Church logo is Love God, Love People, Love Life. It’s all about love. It’s all about relationships. Life is good when you’ve got God.
I want to give you permission to enjoy life this week. I want to commission you to have the best week of your life, and here is how you are going to do it.
By being connected to God and letting his supernatural love DOMINATE you. When the opportunity comes to you, choose the God kind of love over the natural kind. Your love will be the difference in the world around you. You will be the salt and the light that God called you to be.
Make this confession in your heart and with your mouth this morning.
The love of God has been put in my heart by the Holy Spirit. I will choose to let the God kind of love dominate me. I will not let the natural kind of love have control, I refuse to let my flesh have a say in the matter.
I am going to grow the fruit of the Spirit by walking in love. I am a lover and not a hater. I will practice and exercise the fruit of love so that it can grow and increase.
I will think the best about everyone; forgive all who do wrong to me and rely on God’s supernatural strength more than my own strength.
Love is the Difference in my life; I am the salt and the light of the earth, commissioned by God to make a difference.
