If I could speak in any language in heaven or on earth but didn’t love others, I would only be making meaningless noise like a loud gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I knew all the mysteries of the future and knew everything about everything, but didn’t love others, what good would I be? And if I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, without love I would be no good to anybody. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would be of no value whatsoever.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Love will last forever, but prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will all disappear.
There are three things that will endure - faith, hope, and love - and the greatest of these is love. (1Corinthians 13:1-8,13)
What are words when they have no meaning?
Why say to a person, I love you, when it is not sincere, nor is it coming from your heart?
Why boast about your accomplishments or abilities when you don’t have love as the foundation?
Why be rich in faith and bankrupt in love?
Why have a heart filled with superficial joy and a soul that lacks supernatural love?
Why say that you love, when it’s only your need that wants to be fulfilled?
Why say that you love someone, but as soon as there is a conflict you are ready to throw in the towel and give up?
The word of God clearly defines love as patience, kindness, endurance, perseverance, everlasting, trusting, modest, humble, complimentary, tolerant, truthful, hopeful and filled with faith.
Society allows us to confuse love with lust. We sometimes say that we are in love with a person, but we are actually feeling is lust! This allows confusion to erupt in our lives because we are not being truly honest with our feelings.
Love is giving of ones self (unselfish).
Lust is fulfilling a self need (selfish).
If you are in a relationship and you are feeling as though you are the only one that should be fulfilled, then you are not in love and you are only wasting your time as well as the other person!
We were created in the image of God,
(so God created people in his own image; Genesis 1:27a), therefore love was deposited in each one of us upon our creation, because God is love.
(Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. 1John 4:7a)
The world has taught us to convert that Godly love into lust without us even realizing it. The world has taught us that it is all about “ME” and as long as “I” am pleased then it really doesn’t matter. As long as my needs are fulfilled then it doesn’t matter who gets hurt in the process.
We see this played out on television just about everyday. We have a tendency to judge and criticize and give our opinion to situations that don’t even concern us. Everyone has an opinion on someone else’s life, yet we keep our own under wraps.
Where is the love in that?
Where is the love in talking about others when our situation is far worse than theirs?
(Stop judging others, and you will not be judged. And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Matthew 7:1,3-4)
Does God judge and criticize us every time we stumble, or is His love so unconditional (agape) that He is willing to forgive us every time we fail Him?
(But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong. 1John 1:9)
The Word of God teaches us in 1Corinthians 13, that love is not only a feeling but it is a choice and an action that we take. Because love is deposited in us from our creation, we have the choice to take action with this love and dispense it throughout the earth. Or we can choose to turn the natural love within us into hate and animosity, but what good would that do to us, but destroy us from the inside out and bring havoc in and around our lives.
Is it really worth it to not love the right way??
We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in him. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. 1 John 4:16-17a
