Love is Hard
Notes
Transcript
Pumping that Iron
Pumping that Iron
In the last few weeks, summer break, Logan and I have been able to start getting a rhythm of working out together.
Pumping iron.
Lifting weights. Jacking steel. Getting swole. You know.
Looking at weight set. Looks… it’s going to be hard. As you get stronger… it doesn’t get easier (or you’re kind of doing it wrong). Progressive overload. The stronger you get, the harder things you try to lift, the harder things you successfully lift.
Why do we do it?
You work hard at it… so that when the time comes to carry groceries. All the bags, one trip. Boom!
You work hard so that you don’t die next week at camp surrounded by middle school-ers and high school-ers… oh my.
Today, it’s time to lift!
We are here… to lift Him high! (Okay, that’s bad).
We are here to grow in strength, not in muscle, but in the strength of our love.
I lift because He first lifted me???
No… wait. I love because He first loved me. Close enough.
What is Love
What is Love
… baby don’t hurt me.
What did Jesus say when explaining how to love?
The Good Samaritan… remember that one? Helping people. Even people who might hate you, when it’s inconvenient, when it costs you something.
Where is that in 1 Cor 13? Isn’t that an odd one to miss?
“Love helps people.”
Paul is not defining love.
Paul is applying love.
This is not about romantic love… though there is application there.
It appears to be possible to “do church” without love.
It appears to be possible to “practice spiritual gifts” without love.
Love is not automatic. It is not the default. It isn’t going to happen easily or automatically because you’ve found “the one” in marriage… or because you’ve found the “perfect church.” (Let me know if you find the perfect church, that sounds great).
Love is not automatic. Love is not easy.
Love is a Discipline
Love is a Discipline
Love is hard.
At it’s deepest, love is not a feeling. It is enduring and faithful commitment to the good of the other. It is, as we heard last week, what we learn from God. We learn what love is because God is love. We learn to love, we are enabled to love, because he first loved us.
Paul isn’t writing a beautiful poem… he is admonishing the Corinthians on their lack of love towards one another. He is calling them to discipline themselves to love.
It is in here because it is something they are to be purposeful in doing. Framed, the last verse in chapter 12:
31 But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
and then, first verse of chapter 14
1 Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.
He is going to teach them “a still more excellent way...” What is that way? Love! Pursue it! Chase it down. Find it. Seek it. Work at it, to find the way of love, the loving thing. It’s going to take hard work.
You ever look at a situation… and you maybe you can’t see the loving thing at all?
That’s the Corinthians. They can’t seem to find the loving way. They are focused on “fixing” the problem, maybe. They are focused on finding and following the best teacher. They are focused on judging and correcting their brother for eating food sacrificed to idols. They are focused on who has the best spiritual gift.
They are focused on all the wrong things.
If you aren’t acting in love, If you haven’t asked “is this loving” you are already wrong.
1 Corinthians 13 then becomes a “filter for love.” A check on our attitudes and behavior.
For the Corinthians, the purpose here is for them to wake up and realize that they aren’t acting and thinking in loving ways. At one point or another they will come up short.
Oh… yeah, that’s not where my heart is. That doesn’t sound like me. That isn’t what I was about to say or do.
I am thinking these thoughts towards this person. I am planning to say this. In church, in person, by email… here is a check on whether or not I should:
The first and most important test:
Is this Loving?
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
It doesn’t matter how true what you are going to say is. Even if you could do it as loud as the loudest thing Paul could think of… or the most beautiful eloquent words possible, the tongues of angels.
If it isn’t done in love, it’s wrong. It gains nothing.
People don’t and won’t listen if they don’t believe and know and receive that you love them. Why would they? Why should they?
If it isn’t love, it’s wrong. If it isn’t loving, it’s wrong. If it doesn’t show love to God with all my heart, mind, soul and strength; if it doesn’t love my neighbor as myself: it is wrong.
It is sin. Because those two commandments sum up all the law and the prophets.
But how do I know if what I am going to say or do is loving? Here is a check. Here Paul checks the Corinthians heart, their attitudes, by checking what they are doing against what love does and does not do.
It is picking up and examining love from each side, each facet. Not a definition, an application.
You may find it helpful to have a specific action or conversation in mind. Maybe one you had recently… and you are wondering if it was loving. Or if it could have gone better.
Maybe it’s an up and coming decision. Should I quit this job and get a new one?
Should I take on this new role, this new ministry at church?
Should I finally speak my mind to Carl?
And we ask: is this loving? Or how can I do this in a loving way? Is this love?
And we walk through verses 4-8.
1 Corinthians 13:4–8 (ESV)
Love is patient and kind;
Am I being patient here? Is now the right time to speak? Am I choosing this time because I’m fed up and impatient or because this is best for them?
Am I thinking of them first, their good? That’s “kindness”. Compassion. Can I truly say “I say this because I love you.. and I say it now because I believe you’re ready to hear it.”
love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
What do all these have in common? These are all about me. My pride, my position, my status, my reputation.
Am I saying this to make me look better in their eyes or someone else’s eyes?
Am I embarassed?
Am I being selfish here? Is this really about me getting my own way?
You can’t go through these quickly. I suspect for every action you have ever taken some of your answers to these are “yes!” We operate with mixed motives.
I said “no” to taking my kids to ice cream tonight because they need to learn that we don’t always get dessert, that’s a treat, not a right, and it isn’t healthy to eat dessert every night.
But also, I’m cheap and tired and I don’t want to drive to Baskin Robbins. Both.
Both are true. It can still be the “loving” thing to say “no” to my kids. It was. But there was selfish and sin there in there too. That piece is not love, that’s not love in me. And most often the selfish will be at war against what love wants.
Is this about me? My way, my pride, my reputation, my arrogance. “I’ll put them in there place.”
What if I laid all of that aside, all of the “me” parts of this. My arrogance, my “way”, my irritation… my “record of wrongs.” Without all of that, does love still lead me to say that? Does love still say I should have that confrontation? Take that new job?
Can I see past my own hurt or past my own self to even glimpse it? I may need some wise counsel, some friends I trust who can see for me. I may need to go back to “love is patient” before I have the clarity to even make that call.
And this next one is a test of that. If they were to get hit by a bus tomorrow… would I do a little dance?
You laugh… because you have a list. Hopefully a small list. A few people who, even for a moment, you might be just a teeny little bit super glad they got hit by a bus.
it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
That isn’t love in you. Love doesn’t speak that word. Love doesn’t get joy from that. Love doesn’t rejoice injustice or “punishment” (which this word can mean).
Love does rejoice when truth is brought out. That may lead to true justice, yes.
This is a big one for people who might thing love is all softness and sweetness and careful words… or even sweet little white lies so that no one ever gets offended. Love isn’t about that.
Love rejoices with the truth. It says “YES!!! Finally, now we are getting somewhere.” Hallelujah, now we are being honest. Now we can start!
It waits for the right time… because love is patient.
It says it in the best way possible… because love is kind.
But love NEVER hides from truth. We hide from truth because we fear and perfect love casts out fear!
Love isn’t afraid of truth, and that part of me that is afraid of what they’ll say or what they really think or what they’ll answer… that isn’t love. Love rejoices with the truth.
Not “in” but “with”. Like “love” and “truth” are best friends, celebrating, rejoicing together.
Love doesn’t fear the truth, because this covers so many things:
Love isn’t fragile. Love is resilient.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
Hear the beautiful resilience there.
When you’re at the end of your rope… listen, that’s real. You have limited patience, limited energy, limited time.
You have limited capacity to believe all things. To hope anymore… you’ve been disappointed too often.
You can’t endure anymore. That’s real. That’s honest.
Let’s just recognize… that isn’t love in you.
When we “can’t bear anymore,” that is our human frailty, our brokenness, our sin…
Love isn’t that. Love is resilient.
When does the love of God for you give up? Never ever never ever ever. It never does. Remember that from last week?
Your love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me!
When you are asking “is this loving?”
There’s a lot of voices at play there. Your fear, your weariness, your brokenness, your sin, your limits.
But love? It doesn’t have those. The part of you, the best of you, the love of God spilling out from you onto others?
It can bear anything. All things. It believes that, in Christ, all things are possible. It hopes, sure confidence of a more preferable future, eyes on heaven on earth someday, and hope to see God’s will done here on earth as it is in heaven today. Love hopes. It endures… and it just doesn’t stop.
So you ask “Am I saying this or doing this or ending this because I am giving up?” Love doesn’t do that. Does that mean you are trapped forever in anything you ever start?
No. There will come a day where the most loving thing I can do for my kids is to kick them out of my house.
The most loving thing I can do with and for someone is to set a healthy boundary to protect them and me and create space where we can heal and grow.
Our model is Jesus. He wasn’t ever “stuck” anywhere. He came and he left as the Holy Spirit directed him, when the Spirit directed him. Never because He was driven out, Jesus is never chased out, He was led by the Spirit. Always following never fleeing.
When we practice love, we practice heaven. We practice eternity. This is what we will be doing, who we will be, for eternity!!!
You have never met a mortal being, you are surrounded by immortal creatures in disguise. And love, this kind of love, this is what we will be doing forever.
This is our Ultimate Future.
Our Ultimate Future
Our Ultimate Future
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Faith - so much that we now know by faith, we will then know in full.
Hope - what do we hope for? All of that will be fulfilled.
Faith - fulfilled.
Hope - fulfilled.
Love? Remains.
Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. Forever. For eternity.
Love your neighbor as yourself. Forever. For eternity.
And this is his command to us, His church. This is our covenant together, with love right at the center of it:
This is what we mean when we say we will love one another, we will love others. We are committing to work hard, to strive with one another, to love this way.
To lift the heavy weights, over and over again. To do the hard work of questioning our actions and our attitudes: is this loving? How can I love in this moment, in this conversation, in this season?
As disciples of Jesus we covenant together to love God and love others, inside and outside the fellowship, by the Spirit of God, in sacrifice, submission and trust. We are on mission: to encourage and equip one another to take the next bold step in being and making disciples of Jesus.