With the summer coming on, we began to think about getting our deck ready for some serious use. It was built several years ago and needed a little repair work.
Now I had been reading about some problems with deck construction. I had read of decks that had collapsed, and how the building inspectors found that they had been secured to the wall of the house with nothing more than some nails or with maybe three or four bolts. Those decks which had collapsed were essentially standing on one support. And that’s not enough.
I can demonstrate why very easily. Here’s this one single piece of wood. All by itself. Not attached or connected to anything else. You can push it around any way you like. It won’t resist anything just by itself. It certainly won’t resist a lot of stress.
It’s kind of like one of the little girls I saw during Vacation Bible School. Everywhere she stood, she just drew one leg up and stood on the other leg. To tell the truth, I think she was part stork. Well, that was fine until the little boy standing next to her got restless and bumped her. You know what happened next! Humpty-Dumpty time.
So a deck, or anything else, built with only one means of support won’t stand up to much.
Well, I went out and checked underneath our deck. Thought I’d better count the bolts. Good news, good news. Not only do we have good solid posts, the first means of support; but also we have twelve good firm bolts, going all the way through the wall of the house and secured on the inside of the building. My deck is firmly anchored from two directions. It should stand. It should be rock solid.
The only thing about that is that when you walk across it, it vibrates. No, let me take that back, it doesn’t just vibrate; it shakes. Well, no, it doesn’t exactly shake either; it rocks. It rocks and rolls. Even when one of our little dogs walks across it, you can feel it rocking and rolling. I couldn’t believe it at first, that a fifteen-pound animal could actually rock this big solid deck. And needless to say, if her fifteen pounds can shake it noticeably, you can actually get seasick when I set foot on it with my hundred and mppphty-mmph pounds.
But again, I can demonstrate why. If you have not one but two supports, they help each other; they are better than one. But they are still not strong enough. The geometry doesn’t quite work, not just yet.
Well, the repairman said, I can fix this. I can take care of it. It’s very easy. All I need to do is to install braces at each corner, where the vertical meets the horizontal. And that will take care of the problem.
It certainly will. It will steady the deck. And I know why. Because the strength is in the triangle. The strength is in the triangle. It’s simple geometry. The triangle is a rigid form. It won’t flex or give. It’s solid. The strength is in the triangle.
Life is like that too. Our ability to support our lives is like that. The strength is in the triangle. The trouble is that many of us go around trying to do what needs to be done without the kind of support that would make it possible. We try to get by on only one or two supports. But that won’t stand.
The apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthian church, lays out wonderful thoughts about what love is like and what love does. He does such a great job of it that everybody seizes on I Corinthians 13 as a favorite chapter. People who know nothing else about the New Testament know this chapter. People who want a touch of Christianity without delving too deeply into Christ Himself will read and praise this Scripture. Whenever I am asked to do a wedding and one of the marriage partners is not a Christian, and we get down to selecting Scripture to be used in the ceremony, invariably the non-Christian partner will want I Corinthians 13. It sounds so wonderful and so dreamy, this business about love. Especially that last line: now abide faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love. What bride does net believe that love is the greatest? What groom is not intoxicated by love?
More than that, it sounds as though love is all there is to life. It sounds as though love is all you need. You know, "I’ve got your love to keep me warm" kind of stuff. It sounds as though if you just get out there and love one another, all will be well. Faith, hope, love; these three, but the greatest of these is love.
For a lot of folks, that means, “The only thing is love." A lot of people think if you want to have faith, fine; some folks need religion. And if you can manage to keep up hope, all right; that’s nice. But the main thing, people think, is love. Just love one another, and that’s what life is all about. Just love one another; for the greatest of these is love.
How does that sound to you? Sounds good? Sounds like that’s right on target, right?! Right?! Wrong! Why is that wrong? Because the strength is in the triangle. The strength is in the triangle. I want to argue that for us to live positively, love stands on hope; and hope stands on faith; and you need all three, working together, before your life will work. The strength is in the triangle.
I
First of all, think about what it would be like to live out of nothing but love. Using one and only one support, love. Can it be done? Can we, out of our own determination, just turn love on? Can we love other people just because we think we ought to do it?
Well, before you jump too quickly into the amen corner on this one, let’s test what love is by what the Scripture says about it. Let’s find out what’s involved in doing this love thing.
All right, it says, "Love is patient". "Love is patient." Does that include the folks who telemarket me every night during the dinner hour? Does that mean the ones who pass me on the wrong side on Piney Branch Road? Patient: that’s a little tough.
Well, let’s go on. Says here, "Love is kind". "Love is kind." Yes, but shouldn’t you just tell the truth, shouldn’t you just correct somebody forcefully when he’s wrong? I like to catch people in their mistakes. Love is supposed to be kind, but I don’t know about that.
This is a little tougher than we thought, isn’t it? Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Oh come on now; if I am going to do something loving, at least I want credit for it. If I’m going to give a dollar to a hungry man, he needs to be properly grateful! If I’m going to do a favor for somebody, the least they can do is tell me how great I am! Right!? But, no, love, says the Scripture, is not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude.
Folks, this list goes on and on. There are a whole lot of components to this love business. You see, love is not just having an oozy feeling about somebody. Love is a great deal more than feeling warm fuzzies. Love is demanding, love is tough and disciplined. And, I am arguing that love is well nigh impossible if that’s all you’re going on. You and I do not have reserved of strength to love others without something else to go on.
I haven’t even gotten to the part about how love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Who is equal to all of that?
Here’s the point. We can’t do it. We can’t do love consistently on our own. Using love and love only as the support by which we will live sounds good, but it will not work. It is impossible. It is an attempt to stand, stork-like, on only one leg.
You see, self is always on the throne of our lives, and it is not going to be easy to love. We are invariably self-centered. Love takes awesome strength. Martin Luther King forty years ago wrote a book called The Strength to Love. He demonstrated very ably that people who try to love others, just because they think they ought to … people like that soon fail. They soon fall down.
The greatest of these is love, yes; but love needs something else to give it strength. Now remember your geometry, the strength is in the triangle.
II
So what will support love? If you’re going to support your life, what will be added to love to give it strength?
The Bible says, “Faith, hope, love abide, these three.” Hope. Hope has to go with love. Hope supports love.
Now let me describe hope for you in a way that’s a little unusual. I describe hope as a way of loving ourselves. Hope is healthy self-love.
Work with me on this now. Hope is healthy self-love. Hope is believing that the future is possible. Hope means that you believe that your future has significance. Hope is confidence; it’s not arrogance, it’s confidence. Hope is a degree of confidence that you can make your life work. Hope, then, is healthy self-love.
I am arguing that you have to have healthy self-love, you have to have hope, in order to love someone else.
Jesus said it best. "You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself." "You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself." That means that we have to love ourselves in a healthy way before we can really love our neighbors.
When I’m doing marriage counseling or pre-marriage preparation, one of the things I look for is whether both marriage partners have self-respect. I want to find out if this young lady you want to marry, beautiful though she may be, is a real person and not just a Barbie doll. I want to discover whether this hunk of male flesh is something you just dragged in off the street because you were desperate, or whether he is going to take responsibility for a family. Marriage cannot happen successfully unless there are two real people, two adults coming to it. Marriage is not for the immature!
Self-love, hope, is critical before we can live in love. Before we can get outside of ourselves to be something for someone else, there has to be a self there to give. Doesn’t that make sense to you? Like someone said of the city of Oakland, California, "There’s no there there". If in your personality there’s no there there, then you cannot really love anyone else. Unless you love yourself in a healthy way, you cannot love anyone else.
So: love stands on hope, for hope is loving one’s self, hope is having confidence in our own futures.
So: if I have hope and love, is that going to do it? Is that going to be enough? Will my life work now? If I just believe in myself and, using that self-confidence, reach out to love and help others? Hope and love ... will that do it?
Let me ask you this: do you ever get depressed? Just wake up in the morning and you don’t want to go to work, you don’t want to tackle the housework, you don’t want to do anything?
Or maybe you come to the end of the day, and all you can think of is either to turn on the boob tube or go to bed and sleep. You don’t think that anything you did that day was worth diddly. And besides that, nobody saw it, nobody respected it, nobody valued it.
Anybody here ever have that kind of feeling? Depression is very common. I dare say that most of us experience moods of depression. We feel down on ourselves. We feel out of it. We feel as though we aren’t making any difference to anyone.
I went out visiting the other day. Spent five, six hours out calling on people, running errands. When I came back into the church office, I expected to find a stack of phone messages, clamoring for my attention. Well, I found good news and bad news.
The good news was that there were no messages to follow up on. The bad news was that there were no messages to follow up on! You follow me? Nice to have a free evening; but nobody needed me! Nobody wanted me for anything at that time!
Once again, you see, self is the problem. Self is the issue. If all I have to go on is my own self-image, if I have to depend on being wanted or being appreciated, then I’m going to collapse. I’m not going to be able to support my life. I’ve got two supports, love and hope; but they are not enough. They won’t do it by themselves.
Just look at the geometry. One brace can be pushed around at will. Add a second and things are some better, but they can still collapse. But remember, the strength is in the triangle. There is something else I need before my life can be strong and can stand. The strength is in the triangle.
III
Now abide faith, hope, love, these three.
How are we going to get to love? Through hope we get the strength to love.
But where does hope come from? What is the source of hope?
Faith, hope, love. Do not skip over the beginning in your hurry to get to the end. Do not neglect to begin the whole thing with faith. I am arguing today that without faith, nothing else will work. Without a trusting relationship to the living God, nothing else will stand.
If you really want to feel that your life is coming together; if you want to know that you count for something; if you wish to stand without the foundations rocking, there is no substitute for a personal relationship with the living God. That’s what faith is. Faith is trusting that ultimately the fate of this world is in the hands of almighty God. Faith is betting it all on one great premise: that God is in control. Faith is knowing that the God who raised Christ Jesus from death is able to redeem every broken life and heal every shattered circumstance. Faith is the absolute, bedrock foundation, without which nothing else works, nothing else makes sense.
I’ve already said that lots of people think they can get out here in this reckless world and just love their way through. This is called humanism. Humanists imagine that down in their own resources they have enough strength just to love the evil out of everybody else. But the problem is, who is going to deal with the evil in us? You and I cannot on our own power love consistently. One prop is not enough.
And then there are whole lot of other people who are activists. Activists confront the evils of this world boldly. Activists take charge of things and organize demonstrations and write letters and so forth. And that’s fine. That’s a sign of hope. We need activists. Activists have confidence in their futures. But if that’s all you’ve got going for you, you will soon burn out. If believing in a cause and going for its goals is all you have, you will end up feeling unloved, unwanted, unappreciated, and unfulfilled. Yes, two props are better than one, but they are still not enough.
The strength is in the triangle. Have faith in God. Put your trust in a God who has made you and has protected you all along the way, and you will be able to put it all together. Put trust and faith in the God who in Jesus Christ loved you enough to go to a cross and die for you, and you will find that every shred of nobodiness is taken away. Every scrap of inadequacy is destroyed, every ounce of weakness is transformed.
When you put your hand in the hand of a God that great and that loving, nothing will shatter you.
And you will say with the great apostle, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
Remember the geometry. Faith first; then hope; finally, when you have those, the greatest of these, love. But remember: the strength is in the triangle.
