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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.
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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.
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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.
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