Andrew & Laura Wedding
December 6, 2014
THE WAY OF LOVE (I Corinthians 13 - THE MESSAGE)
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all His mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere.
So,
no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love
cares more for others than for self.
Love
doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love
doesn't strut.
Love
doesn't have a swelled head.
Love
doesn't force itself on others.
Love
isn't always "me first."
Love
doesn't fly off the handle.
Love
doesn't keep score of the sins of others.
Love
doesn't revel when others grovel.
Love
takes pleasure in the flowering of truth.
Love
puts up with anything.
Love
trusts God always.
Love
always looks for the best.
Love
never looks back.
Love
keeps going to the end.
Love
never dies.
Inspired speech will be over some day.
Praying
in tongues will end.
Understanding
will reach its limit.
We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete but when Christ arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant.
When
I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
We don't yet see things clearly.
We're
squinting in a fog, peering through a mist but it won't be long before the
weather clears and the sun shines bright!
We'll
see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing Him directly
just as He knows us!
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation:
Trust
steadily in God.
Hope
unswervingly.
Love
extravagantly.
And
the best of the three is love.
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