1 Corinthians 13:4-7 “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” This episode is about how love is defined in the Bible and whether or not we are living up to that definition. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
What is Love?
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
How many of us have known that kind of love? How many of us know how to love like that? When we look at all the things love is, it can be a bit overwhelming. Let’s break it down and examine it phrase by phrase. “Love is patient.” Are we being patient with the Lord? Are we rushing Him to give us the answers we want, when we want them, or are we allowing things to work out in His time? What about our loved ones? Are we being patient with our spouse when they still haven’t done that thing we asked them to do about a hundred times? Are we patient with our children when they are asking us the same question for the tenth time? Are we patient with our siblings when they ask to borrow our clothes again? What is one way we can be more patient with our loved ones? “Love is kind.” Are we being kind to the Lord our God? Are we being kind to all those who we love? What is one way we can be kinder to those we love?
“It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.” How about us? Are we envious of the relationship others have the God? Are we envious of what God is doing for others? Are we envious of all the things we see on Facebook and social media? It is hard in this day and age not to be envious when there are so many people posting about how great their life is on social media. We all know, on some level, that no one has a perfect life, and yet, when you scroll through facebook it is hard to find someone who appears to have any cares in the world. “It does not boast.” Do we boast about our relationship with God or about how much God has blessed us with? Do we post things on social media for the sole purpose of bragging about what we have? Are we boasting about the amazing things we get to do just so others will see it? What are our intentions behind what we are posting on social media? “It is not proud.” When we hear the word proud, we might not understand why this would be a bad thing. I love my children and my husband and I am proud of them. In this verse it is not saying love means you are not proud of other people or proud of an accomplishment you might have done. Proud in this verse is talking about an arrogance we have the we are better than others. Pride of all we have done, without acknowledging God’s role in all of it? Attributing our success to our own efforts instead of God’s blessings and grace. Are we struggling with pride? According to one definition pride is also a “cynical insensitivity to the needs of others.” Are we being sensitive to the needs of others? What is one thing we could do to be less envious, boastful, or proud?
“Love does not dishonor others.” Are we honoring those we love? Have we gossiped or spread lies about them? Maybe you didn’t know they were lies, someone told you something and so you told someone else. Gossip is an awful thing. Even if it isn’t a lie, other people’s business is not ours to share. Let’s honor people enough to not spread information about them to others. Let’s honor people enough to stand up for them when we hear information we know isn’t correct. Next time you catch yourself gossiping, or you hear others gossip, I hope this sentence comes into your mind, “Love does not dishonor others.” How about God? Have we talked badly about God? Have we talked about how He hasn’t answered our prayers yet? What is one thing we can do to honor our loved ones more?
“Love is not self-seeking.” Have we only been looking out for ourselves? Have we been spending all of our time talking with the Lord and not bothering to stop and listen to what he wants to say? Have we been asking and asking from the Lord and not giving Him anything in return? What about our loved ones? Have we been looking out for their best interests and trying to serve them, or have we been asking them to serve us? Have we been spending time with them or are we just doing what we want to do? “Love is not easily angered.” Wow, that is a tough one. Have we been getting frustrated and angry more easily with God? Have we been easily angered with our loved ones? “It keeps no records of wrongs.” This is one I think we struggle with. In our human love, we do keep records of wrongs. I hear people saying all the time, “My brother did this and my sister did that.” I bet if I asked you to tell me something your siblings did when they were younger, you can come up with a whole list of things. This can be also be true in marriage. Although Love doesn’t keep score, we sometimes do. I did the dishes three times and he only did them once. I put the kids to be 5 times this week and she only did it twice. Are we doing this with God too? Are we keeping score? Are we comparing how much He has helped others vs how much He has helped us? What could we do to be less self-seeking or less easily angered? How can we learn to not keep score?
“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.” This one we would think would be an obvious one. Obviously love doesn’t delight in evil. Why would we want something evil to happen to a loved one? However, if we are struggling with envy, sometimes we can get some delight when something goes wrong for someone who we think has everything. It is not the best side of us, and yet it happens. If you have a friend and everything always seems to come up in her favor. She tries her hand at several different things and it always works out. It’s as if luck is always on her side. Meanwhile, you are struggling to make ends meet, you try things and everything seems to fail. It seems as if you are the unluckiest person in the world. Sometimes when we are in this situation, as much as we hate to admit it, we like to see others struggle a little. We like to know we are not the only one having a difficult time. When is the last time we rejoiced in the truth? What can we do to learn to be happy for other’s success? How can we realize, someone else’s success doesn’t take anything away from us?
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” This right here is a pretty big statement. I always tell my kids, “nobody always anything.” For instance they will say, “he always hits me,” talking about their brother. Or, “you always say no to everything,” talking about their parents. However, this verse is telling us that love always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always preservers. This is how we know that God’s love is different from the love we are used to. There are parents that love their children and yet they don’t protect them, they abuse them. There isn’t always trust in a loving relationship, there isn’t even always trust in a marriage. I would like to say there is hope in all loving relationships, I am just not sure if that’s true in many relationships. Love always perseveres. This is another one I would like to say is definitely true and yet I am not sure it is with all human love. We are a broken people and we don’t know how to love like our heavenly father does. However, we can keep trying to learn.
Today’s episode asked a lot of questions and did not give you a lot of answers. The reason for this is because I don’t have a lot of answers for how you love. We have all had very different experiences with love over the years. I feel lucky in that I had great experiences with love growing up. I always felt loved and cared for. This isn’t the case for everyone. Today’s episode is meant to get you to examine two things. First, what is true love? Sometimes we think God can’t love us because of all we have done, or because we are looking at love through our own past experiences with love. God loves us with a perfect love that transcends all of our limitations and unworthiness. Second, how do you love? The love you are sharing with the world, how does it compare to true love? If we are thinking more and more about what love is meant to be then we can start to change the ways in which we are getting it all wrong. We can start to love more like Jesus did. This is what God wants from us. Not to share our broken love, but to share His love with one and all.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we appreciate you laying it all out for us. We are grateful you explain to us what love is so we can see how we are getting it right and how we are getting it wrong. Lord, we want to spread your love to others and we can only do that if we know how. Thank you for showing us how. That you for being such a great example of perfect love. Thank you for loving us the way you do. Help us to receive that love God. You are so mighty and so powerful. You are the Light of the world. We love you, we adore you, we glorify you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus love you and so do I! Have a blessed day!