Love Never Fails

Remember doing tract-attack, going from house to hand of a study guide for someone…1 john is like that, and in this verse he wanted to address that the reason for division was a lack of understanding love, and by not understanding love, the people couldn’t understand or even know God.

Christ Loved you before you loved Him!

“oh how I love Jesus… because he first loved me!”

It’s the craziest notion, how can someone love me before getting to know me? I mean let’s think about it… If a man or woman approached each other for the first time, and said, “um excuse me miss, but I was watching you from a far, and have decided that… I love you!” Tell the truth, we’d think the person is crazy, and in desperate need of medication.

And at times I think that’s how God approaches us, and in turn, we react just as we would if it was any body else. And it’s because we have a distorted view… a secular view of what love is.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s take the same two people we talked about earlier. If they expressed that they liked each other, and courted each other… over time, the would say “ I think I’m falling in love with you.” It’s the only way we can express that the way I felt about you at first has grown into a different feeling.

that mushy feeling

that feeling of lightheadedness

that feeling like you would give anything to be with the person

“Falling in love becomes this bridge from like to full blown love. And even when some gets there, it falls apart.

“i don’t quite feel the same way so i must be falling out of love”

But here’s what God wanted me to share today:

We don’t fall in love… we have to choose to Love, because GOD DOESN’T FALL IN LOVE WITH US; HE CHOSE TO LOVE US

Search ...No where in scripture will you find God falling in love with His people! The concept is foreign to Him.

To “fall in love”, (by our concept), is to become enamored with , or obsessed with someone or to begin to “feel” a way for someone. Falling in love is an expression describing an emotional state, and causes us to do some crazy stuff!

But the bible presents love not as an emotion but as an act of the will.

We are to choose to love; that is we commit ourselves to act in the best interest of another person. To act in the best interest of God

JAMES 2:8 “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well;”

JOHN 14:15 ““If you love Me, keep My commandments.”

We talk about “Falling in Love” when we get these feelings. Then when the feelings gone we say that we’ve fallen out of love.”

Love should never be seen as dependent on romantic attraction or expediency or feelings.

“Girl, how do you know you love him? I just feel it in my heart”

Jeremiah 17:9 ““The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?”

Proverbs 28:26 “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, But whoever walks wisely will be delivered.”

Love is not a state that we stumble into. It’s a commitment that we grow into.

One of the biggest reason many marriages end in divorce here in America is because people aren’t willing to put in the work that it requires.

But you know what? It’s the same reason many people leave the God.

We expect God to romanticize us, to sweep us off our feet over and over again.

But when hardship strikes, we say to God… you don’t love me anymore.

We have to look at a well known passage to understand what love is

1 Corinthians 13:1-8 “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity,

but rejoices in the truth;

bears all things,

believes all things,

hopes all things,

endures all things.

Love never fails...”

This is the concept of love that God has for us, and wants us to have.

And the best part is that this concept of love isn’t a feeling that could eventually fade away… This concept of love will last through out eternity!

Paul continues to say

“When that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away… And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love!

Here’s what he’s saying:

If we maintain our commitment with God through Christ, at the end of sins rule of this world we won’t need:

Faith -Because we’ll be with the Father

Hope - Because Jesus would have returned

All we’ll have left is Love; and the Bible says God is love, so All that we’ll have left is God.