What's Love Got to do with It

https://www.barna.com/research/non-christians-faith-conversations/

https://thomrainer.com/2017/06/dispelling-80-percent-myth-declining-churches/

According to an 2017 article published by Thom Rainer 65% of Southern Baptist are in decline or plateaued with only 35% are considered to be growing. Why is this? A large majority of churches within our county are considered to be on the decline or dying and I’m sure many of us have wondered why. Is world fallen that far from christian influence and tradition that the difficulty to get people to church has risen? Could this be blamed on the increased busyness in the american’s life? Could it be the desensitization of sin and vulgarity in the media? Is this the Christian’s Fault? Maybe we need more discipleship, evangelism, fellowship. What if we just taught more apologetics and increased the education of the Christian. Maybe we have just grown too lazy and apathetic to care. Yes. The answer is yes to all of those questions and suggestions to at least some extent but, none of these lead to the true answer to what is wrong with the church or what can fix it.

Studies performed by an Evangelical polling group “Barna” show that 18% of Christians claim they know their neighbor well. 62% of non-Christians value non-judgmental conversations while only 34% claim they see this trait in Christians. 17% of non-Christians claim they know Christians that care about their stories, while only 16% know Christians that are good at asking questions.

What are some ways you know if someone truly loves you? Usually if someone loves you they are slow to be judgmental, they want to know you and because they want to you they listen to your stories and what you care about. Not only do they listen but they ask good questions to learn more about you. Human tendency is to be far more responsive to love them than those who don’t. Think back to when you were in school. What teachers had the biggest impact on your life. Most of you are probably thinking about someone who showed love and compassion toward you.

More discipleship is needed, more evangelism is needed, more sound doctrinal and theological teaching is needed but all that is for not without love. No busyness can stop love. No cultural divide can stand against love. The grip of sin and death was even defeated by agape love or God’s love. The soul reason we love is because He first loved us . God commands us to love in as Jesus states the two greatest commandments are to love God with heart soul and mind and the second commandment to love our neighbors as our self. states that God sent His son to die for us because of love. in we are commanded to abide in love. This brings us to the scripture we will be in tonight. We will be in .

This so commonly referred to as the “love chapter”. Paul wrote this to the church at Corinth and this specific section (chapters 12-14) is addressing spiritual gifts and how they are to be used. In chapter 12 Paul is explaining that every member of the body of christ has a role and an spiritual gifts. After the explanation of the members of the body, Paul goes into the basis of all these gifts-love.

(). I am not going be able to address this section as much as I’d like to because I want to focus on 4-7 tonight but 1-3 cannot be forgotten. If we use the gifts God has given us for our on gain we will gain nothing. If one speaks in tongues or speaks poetically for his own benefit and glory he gains nothing. If God has given one knowledge and wisdom and he only uses it for his own pride and to build himself up- he will gain nothing. If you have any gift but use it to glorify yourself or to exalt your own name it is ultimately useless.

If we go door to door and share the gospel but only do it to boost church membership we are doing nothing. If we take our worship service out into the community and do not truly love and care for the community we are just enjoying the outdoors. If we invite someone to church just mark it off the check list we are missing the point. The point is to share the love of Christ and that love resulted in Christ dying for our sins.

What is this love that we must have. I don’t know about you but the idea of love is hard for me to fully wrap my head around. Love is often presented in an abstract concept, a feeling or emotion. The word used for love here is “agape” this is the highest form of love and the word describing the love of God. In verses 4-7 Paul, under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, defines what this agape love is. ()

The words used in the Greek for “patient”(long suffering), “kind”, “rude”, and others are verbs. Characteristics of love are not abstract but tangible. Agape love is not a love that is meant to be passive or kept to one’s self but it is active and moving. This love is something one would should be able to see and observe. This love is something that we can actively do.

So what do these verbs mean? What do they look like in our lives? Well let’s start with patience in verse 4. Patience is something that can be observed in someone’s life. To me, patience can often be observed best when someone is driving a car. When someone cuts us off in traffic how quick are we to lose our temper? When a car gets in front of us and goes 54 in a 55 we often neglect love and patience. I’ll be honest, when someone shows me patience its a big deal to me. A couple of months ago after I got done playing disc golf with some buddies I was walking across campus with my discs. One of the professors that live on campus saw me with them and wanted to play catch with the Frisbee. So I agreed and we started playing. There were other students outside and I was throwing the disc horrendously. The professor had to walk forever to go get the discs i had thrown 10 feet over his head. Instead of the professor telling my to go get them he did. When I got embarrassed and tried to quit he insisted that we continue to play. This small act of patience made my day a great deal better. Another example of patience that I have witnessed in my life is with the work I have been doing this summer. (insert story here). One of the greatest evidences of love is when someone does you wrong but you remain patient with them.

The next aspect of love that is mentioned is kindness. Kindness can be defined simply as “living life to be useful to other people”. Kindness is going out of your way to make someone’s day. Kindness is showing love to people. There is a tale about two men on a trail that describes kindness. 2 men were walking on a trail and met each other traveling opposite directions. The two men tried to get around each other but the trail was too slender. One of the men came to the conclusion that the best way to get through this situation was for him to lay down and let the other man walk over him, so he did so. He put the other man’s life over his own. How often do we as Christians display acts of kindness. One thing I’ve always wanted to do but have never done is pay for someone else’s meal at a drive through. Small things like that can go a long way in showing love to people.

The next 3 in verse 4 is what love is not. Love is not jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant. Jealously is the first one on this list. Jealously is not just wanting what others have but not wanting them to have it. Jealously fans a desire in one’s soul to want less for someone else so they can have more. The impact of jealously in life is underrated. Looking in the bible we can numerous times when jealously led to sin. We even see that in Genesis, the first ever sin. Satan convinced Adam and Eve that God had something that they should have. Satan convinced them to be jealous of God and that lead them to sin. We see it with cain and Abel, it is present in the story of Joseph and his brothers. The destruction of jealously is a repetitive theme in the bible. The scary thing about jealously is that it affects more than just our desire to have others possessions but we won’t others not to do as good as us. Think about it. When you get fired from a job or leave a job, you may act like you do not care about how it is doing after you left but often, deep down we do. We don’t want the people that come behind us to do better than us. This can even seep into evangelism. Why did that person come to Christ for that person and not for me.

Boastfulness and bragging convince someone to envy. The idea of bragging is to make others feel less of themselves so they can think more of you. We are often quick to talk about our own achievements but are hesitant to talk about the success of others. (Elijah ping pong story).

Arrogance is to put yourself above others and behave in a manner that you are better than others.

V. 5 continues this theme of what love is not. This is another attribute that deals with selfishness. Rudeness is the general disregard for others and their feelings. We hear often the phrase “I just tell it how it is” or “I’m just being me”. This is just an excuse to have no regard for someone else’s feelings. Yes, there are times to stand up and say what needs to be said in a loving way. There are also other ways to be rude such as not obeying basic eduquit. As a Christian we should try our best not to irritate people.

As verse 5 continues we see that it addresses selfishness in a very direct way. If we love someone we will not always insist in our way. This is a very practical concept. Many of you are married and if your marriage is healthy I’d assume that often times you make compromises. Maybe its the A/C. One of you may like it cold and the other one hot. The husband should not demand that the temperature always be to his comfort without regard to his wife. This is a very basic example but it goes a long way in showing love to another.

Love is not irritable or resentful. Of course there is righteous anger and that is justified but how often is our anger truly righteous? Most of the time, at least in my life, my anger is usually selfish. Something did not go according to plan or someone inconvenienced me. When you think of someone being angry at you or resentful toward you very rarely do you feel loved in that situation. Also, when I am angry in that moment I do not want anything good for that person. All I care about is letting them know they have done me wrong. You may say well, I keep a fairly good handle on my anger when I get angry to only lasts a second. My reponse to that is it only takes a second for a bomb to do a lot of damage.

Verse 6 cover an issue that many churches are known for and that is gossip. It says “does not rejoice in wrongdoing”. We wouldn’t rejoice in someone’s wrong doing would we? This has 2 levels to it. 1) we should hate sin and avoid it. God has called us to be righteousness. 2) we should not want a brother to stumble. How often are we quick to talk about how someone has sinned. “Did you hear Sally Sue’s daughter has gotten pregnant again” or “ Jimmy Leper done lost another job he is dope again”. We try to act like we are talking about it because we care about the and sometimes that is the case but, how often are we doing it just to talk about someone? Think about it. If that were you, would you go around the town telling everyone how you have sinned? Think about your kids. Would you go around telling everyone how your kid has sinned? No! Most parents tell what good there kids have done. They don’t go around spreading gossip about there kids because they love their kids.

Verse 7 returns to the theme of what love does. Love bears all things. This continues the theme in verse 6. When you love someone you bear their sins. You hurt when they sin. You do not judge them but support them and help them. You do not hold their sin against them. You don’t say “remember when you did this or that”. Their sin and struggles burden you. This aspect of love and really all of verse 7 remind me of a woman I know. A little over a week ago I went to this lady to get my pants hymned for a wedding I was going to be in the next day. I was leaving to go down there as soon as she finished my pants. I came came to her work, gave her no warning I was coming, and she had about 15 minutes to do it. She took time out of her day to do it. As I was talking to her the main thing she wanted to relay to me was her relative. I do not recall if it was her grandson or nephew but it was a family member. She told me that his mom had died and since then he had become hard and rebellious. He won’t talk to anybody and he was mad at the world. I could tell as she was talking that her heart was truly broken over this person. She knew I was called to the ministry so she implored that I prayed for him. As I was leaving, I offered to pay her because i knew I inconvenienced her and interrupted her day. She said “no, all I want is prayer for him”. She didn’t just feel bad for him. She didn’t give up because he was trying to shut everyone out. She bore that pain, she endured and refused to give up on him, She has hope that he will eventually change. This is a great picture of verse 7, but an even greater picture of verse 7 is in Christ. Jesus bore our sins on the cross, Jesus believed the disciples would carry on the mission even though they gave him little reason to believe that, Jesus had hope in and faith in the plan of God, and even though our sin held him there and hate seemed to abound his love abounded even more and endured.

We have examined the love of God tonight. We know that without this love our ministry is nothing. Do we see this love in the church? Do we see this love in the churches in our state, county, Middleton FBC? Do you see it in me? Do you see it in you? We have the greatest example of this love in the cross of christ. states that this love is in the Christian through the Holy Spirit. God has given us this power to love. This love is not easy but it is the love God commands us to. If we truly want to see a change in the world, our community, our church, and in ourselves. It starts here.