The Difference God’s Love Makes in the Home
Romans 16:3-5
I Corinthians 13
The family and home are under attack today. All families experience stress and distress due to work schedules and various activities at school, at work and at church. We need to ask the question. Does the love of God make a difference in the home?
Paul in his closing chapter of the book of Romans gives greeting to Priscilla and Aquila and to all who meet regularly in their home. Romans 16:5, “Please give my greetings to the church that meets in their home.”
Whenever you and your family, 2 or 3, meet for family Bible reading and prayer, have friends into your home to discuss scripture and have prayer, you are having church in your house. At the center of our meetings whether at home or at church should be God’s love.
From personal experience I can testify that God’s love does make a difference in the home. In a negative way I experienced God’s love in the home. Up through 8th grade we had stress and a very dysfunctional atmosphere in our home. My dad didn’t know how to show God’s love or for that matter, human love. His goal in life was inwardly focused and he found his fulfillment outside the home. When I personally saw my dad come out of a house several blocks from our home with another woman I knew my parent’s marriage was in trouble.
When I started the ninth grade in school my parents were separated. My mother found a teaching position in Sterling, Kansas 75 miles west of Gypsum. During my four years of High School my mother was able to bring the love of God into our home without stress or a dysfunctional atmosphere.
When I think of God’s love in the home I think of I Corinthians 13. I Corinthians 13 describes how God’s love is to be lived out in our home and in relationships. Whether you are single or married these principles apply to your life. The Apostle Paul describes love not just as a feeling but love is about making choices and decisions.
In Colossians 3:12-14 Paul suggests a number of things that we are to have for one another: compassion, forgiveness, kindness, and graciousness. Then Paul says, “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Colossians 3:14 Put on love. It’s a choice we can make.
In some ways love is hard to describe. There are many kinds of love. I love to watch and play tennis. I love my wife and children. There are different kinds of love.
In preparing for this message I was reading the comments someone made on the comic strip, “Calvin and Hobbes.” The scene in the first box of the comic strip has mom laying in bed. It’s pitch black. It’s obviously the middle of the night. “Mom! Wake up. Come quick.” It’s Calvin calling for her. She sits up and kind of mumbles. “What is wrong, what is the matter?” “Come here.” So the next scene is the mother standing in the bedroom with Calvin saying, “Do you think love is nothing but a biochemical reaction designed to make sure our genes get passed on?”
His mom in the next scene looks at him and says, “Whatever it is, it’s the only thing that is keeping me from killing you right now.”
The last box is Calvin safely tucked back in bed, saying, “Mom’s midnight reassurances are never very reassuring.”
Love in relationships requires that we take action. On Valentines Day your wife or husband looks forward to hearing you say, “I love you. Here are some flowers or here is your favorite coffee or candy.”
Love is a feeling but it is also more than a feeling. Those of you who are married let me ask you this question: “Did you fall in love at the first sight of your spouse?” When I first saw Carollyn I liked her and over time grew to love her.
I met Carollyn during the fall of my senior year in college. My college room-mate encouraged me to ask Carollyn out on a date. Our first date almost didn’t happen. I was going with another girl, but decided to take my roommate’s advice and ask Carollyn to go out on a date with me. The boy’s dorm was a block down the hill on Greenville College campus. One evening I walked up the hill. I almost went in the front door of the dorm, but chickened out and walked half way back down the hill. Remember I had never personally met Carollyn yet. My room- mate pointed her out to me, but she didn’t know who I was from Adam. She only knew me because that same evening my girl- friend was telling other girls in the dorm what a great guy I was. Well, I got up my nerve and walked back up the hill and went through the door. I saw a girl I knew and asked her to go tell Carollyn someone wanted to talk to her. Carollyn came down to the reception area and Carollyn saw standing before her the very person my former girlfriend was talking about. Anyway I introduced myself and asked Carollyn to attend church with me. Carollyn and I had similar goals in life and in time we made the commitment to one another in marriage. That commitment in love has stood strong now for 45 years.
Let’s look at I Corinthians 13 and see how we can apply God’s love to our life and our home.
I. Gifts are nothing without love. I Cor. 13:1-3 (NLT)
From I Corinthians 13 we learn that love is the most essential gift. In chapters 12 and 14 Paul outlines a number of spiritual gifts that God has given to build up the Body of Christ:
Apostles,
Prophets,
Teachers,
Miracles
Gifts of healing,
Helping others,
Leadership, and
Speaking in unknown languages.
Paul is saying that all the spiritual gifts are nothing without love.
If you could speak every language on earth and even speak like angels in heaven, but didn’t love as Jesus loved all your languages would be like a loud gong or clanging cymbal. The word used here for love is “agape” or giving love without any personal benefit or reward.
Love is more necessary than prophecy, knowledge or faith.
Love is more important than self-sacrifice.
In the home there are several things that love is not. Love is not letting your children get away with anything they want to do. True love sets limits and boundaries because we know that is what is best for our children.
Love is not giving our children everything they want. There is a tendency in our fast-paced life style to give our kids things rather than spend time with them. Love does not equal material gifts.
Love is not being a doormat for our children. The proverb, “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” does not mean endless punishment, it means guiding and shaping the child to honor and respect authority.
I Corinthians 13 gives the teaching that it doesn’t matter how successful you are in life or how many degrees you earn, or awards you receive, the size of your home, or the kind of car you drive. If you don’t love in your actions, if you don’t possess love in your life, then all that other stuff doesn’t matter because what matters most to God is love. Paul is saying, “you can do some amazing things, but if you don’t love, those things are worthless from God’s perspective.”
I Corinthians 13:1-3 teaches that possessing spiritual gifts without love is nothing.
I Corinthians 13:4-7 outlines the essential character of Christian love.
II. Essential Character of Christian Love. I Cor. 13:4-7
The essential character of Christian love is Christ-like love.
Love in action shows patience, suffers long and demonstrates kindness.
Biblical love does not envy.
Biblical love does not exalt itself.
Love is not puffed up with pride.
Love does not behave improperly.
Love is not self-seeking.
Love is not irritable.
Love does not rejoice in evil.
Love finds no joy in evil of any kind.
Love builds up and does not tear down.
Love produces perpetual hope.
Christ-like love is self-effacing love. One of the character qualities of many Christian leaders is the quality of humility. Great Christian leaders don’t think of their own importance. William Carey, who began his working life as a cobbler/shoe repair man, was one of the greatest missionaries and linguists the world has ever seen. He translated at least parts of the Bible into thirty-four Indian languages. When he came to India, he was regarded with dislike and contempt. At a dinner party a snob, wanted to humiliate Carey, said in a tone everyone could hear, “I suppose, Mr. Carey, you once worked as a shoe-maker.” “No, your lordship,” answered Carey, “not a shoe-maker, only a shoe repairman.”
When love is applied to the home we learn to say difficult words: “I was wrong;” “I am sorry,” “Please forgive me,” and “I love you.” Without those words love is a sham in the home.
Authentic love described in I Corinthians 13 is vital to successful relationships in the home. There was a song sung several years ago that asked the question: “What does love got to do with it?” I Corinthians 13 conveys the truth that love has everything to do with building successful relationships.
Jesus said in John 13:34-35, “A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Biblical love is lived out in our relationships. Love is often spelled – FORGIVE. The late Bill Bright, who founded Campus Crusade for Christ International, had a lawyer friend who became a Christian. The problem was, this lawyer hated his law partner. He came to Bill Bright and asked what he should do. Bill said he should ask his partner’s forgiveness for the hatred and tell him that he loved him. The lawyer said he couldn’t do that, because it would be a lie. He didn’t love his partner, he hated him.
Bill Bright explained to the new Christian lawyer about love being a decision of the will, not just an emotion. He prayed with him. And the next morning, the Christian lawyer walked into his partner’s office and said. “I’ve become a Christian, and I want to ask you to forgive me for all I’ve done to hurt you, and tell you that I love you.”
The partner was so surprised and convicted that he, too, asked for forgiveness and said, “I would like to become a Christian. Would you tell me how?”
Agape love is seen in a person’s character and the actions the person takes. We read in I John 3:18, “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” (I Corinthians 13:4-7) defines the actions that love takes.
The essential character of Christian love is loving as Jesus loved.
I Corinthians 13:8-13 gives the enduring nature of love.
III. Enduring Nature of love – I Corinthians 13:8-13
Love is the most important gift. Love is the greatest of all gifts and love is what Paul calls “the more excellent way.”
Agape love endures over the long haul. True love is willing to wait to fulfill God’s plan for marriage. There are reasons God set strict guidelines for marriage. Sex before marriage in Scripture is called “fornication,” and after married sex outside of marriage is called “adultery.” The reason for these guidelines is to protect the institution of marriage. The young person that “just says no” builds a great foundation for faithfulness in marriage. Sex before marriage and adultery after marriage breaks the wall of trust and builds a barrier of suspicion in the marriage relationship.
Marriages work best when both partners are committed to the Lord Jesus Christ and treasure the same values in life. Children that grow up in a Christ honoring environment in the home experience the kind of enduring love they need as the foundation for their lives.
Enduring love demands unconditional commitment. Success in marriage is more than finding the right person. It is being the right person. Someone has said: “It takes two to make a marriage a success, but only one to make it a failure?”
You know the level of commitment one husband had for his marriage by the ad he put in a Rocky Mountain Newspaper: Caption – Will Trade – Will trade my non-cooking and non-shopping wife with attitude problems for one super bowl ticket. No Indian givers. Call Jim, 672-1000.
To improve relationships in your family you can do several practical things:
1. Recognize the need to so something differently. More of the same doesn’t bring change.
2. Focus on your strengths.
3. State clear goals for your relationship. State where you would like to be in your relationship. Breakdown the goals into measurable behaviors.
a. When we come home from work we will spend the first ten minutes talking about our day before doing anything else.
b. We will follow up questions with: “How did that make you feel, and what do you think that means?”
4. Stay open to change.
a. Schedule breakfast, lunch or dinner dates.
b. See an inspiring movie together.
c. Go on a mission’s week-end together.
d. Attend a marriage enrichment seminar together.
God’s love does make a difference in your home. God’s love is the foundation for the Christian home. I Corinthians 13 reminds us that
Gifts are nothing without love
The essential character of love is “action.”
The enduring nature of love comes from
commitment. Commitment to Jesus and to each
other.
