Valentine's Day 2021

New Light, God is our Father and that means that we are also capable of loving the “Adams and Eves” of this world the same way God did with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Now the question you may have is this: “How can I know that I love people the same way God loves people?” Let’s turn to the chapter in the Bible that most refer to as the “Love Chapter” – First Corinthians 13 – to answer the question. Love is our Father’s heartbeat and if our hearts are not beating with His heart, then we will be out of step with Him and His desires for us and for the world. Before we look at the verses in First Corinthians 13, I want you to hear, grasp and understand what I am about to say.

First Corinthians 13, the “Love Chapter,” describes a love that is the deliberate choice by the one who is giving the love because it is not based on the worthiness of the one who is receiving the love. Do you understand this? Many people base their “giving of love” on the worthiness of the one on the receiving end and this is not the love that God has shown us. God’s love for us is without conditions and that is a hard principle to understand in our human forms.

New Light, my focus this morning is how we can demonstrate “Valentine’s Day love” to others, including our family, friends, and even strangers. It starts with our knowing that the love that resides in us, in the born again nature that we received at the new birth, is the love that can demonstrate “Valentine’s Day love” when we deliberately choose to live by what we’re going to read in First Corinthians 13. We are going to read verses four through seven and then go back and look at each verse individually. Let’s begin reading at verse four. “4Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things; endures all things.” (First Corinthians 13:4-7) In these verses, we see God’s heart and we see God’s character. Remember we read from First John that God is love? Ephesians 5:1 says “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.” What we have just read here in First Corinthians 13 is God’s instructions to His children on how to demonstrate love the same way He, Himself, demonstrates love. He wants His children to imitate their Father! Let’s begin with verse four to see what our Father wants us to imitate.

? Love suffers long. In the Greek, the word suffers mean having the ability to contain and control anger. The first thing that our Father wants us to learn from Him is how to be longsuffering in dealing with people like He was with the children of Israel and like He is now with us. This is not easy, especially in the climate that we live in today. I don’t ever remember a time in our country when the lack of civility has been so apparent. So many people seem to be walking around with chips on their shoulders just waiting for someone to knock them off so they can jump into a tirade. God says His child, walking in the love, does not allow their emotions to determine how they respond when mistreated. Let me bring this even closer to home. How many Valentine’s days have passed when you refused to tell your loved one that you loved them because you were mad at something that they had done recently? How many times have your anger made you walk away. Never to look back because you were simply tired of trying – experiencing Groundhog Day of everything being the same with no improvement? I thank God that He is long suffering with me!