The Love That Grows The Church

Read 12-13 and pray.

The Love That Grows The Church Lab vs. Greenhouse

1 Corinthians 13:1–3 NASB95

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

The Sterile Church Stifles Growth

A hospital lab has money, equipment, and specialists but it kills what it can’t control. The lab workers sterilize the lab so that only the bacteria in the petri dish survive for research purposes.

A Sterile Church can have money, equipment, buildings, pastors and ministry leaders and do the same as the lab. They may kill the spiritual life in the church that they can’t control, or restrict it to the petri dish of a class, study, small group, or service where it can be researched.

Fat Budgets, fancy buildings, and full bellies do not add up to faithfulness. Those things may come when we love God and each other, but without love they won’t bring life.

The Fertile Church Stimulates Growth

Like a hospital lab, a greenhouse has money, equipment, and specialists but it encourages things to grow even though it can’t control the growth.

A greenhouse is dirty and workers get messy, but growth happens and fruit is produced.

When we love God and each other it is messy and imperfect, but growth happens and spiritual fruit is produced.

1 Corinthians 13:4–7 NASB95

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

The Sterile Church Will Fail

1 Corinthians 13:8–11 NASB95

Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

COVID tested churches on whether they were built on love or on something else. The churches that were built on programs and budgets took a fatal blow. Those that survived are likely using reserve funds as life support, but they may never recover.

Your spiritual gift won’t last forever, but your love will.

The Fertile Church Will Flower

1 Corinthians 13:12–13 NASB95

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Our greatest season of growth in this church will come when we love God and each other the most. Even then, the life that God gives to our church is only a bud that will not fully bloom until Jesus returns. The best days of our life together is ahead!

I have great confidence that God will continue to grow our church as we grow in love for Him and one another.

Recognize those in attendance for their love and service.

Pray and Sing