Today's passage of Scripture might be one of the more recognizable in the Bible. It's used at countless weddings every day...and if some of the couples that used it actually put it to practice, the divorce rate might not be so high...just sayin.
The verse containing the word phroneo is not the main focus of what God had to say to me today. Sometimes He speaks through a specific verse...more often then not, it's the whole chapter. Today is no different.
LOVE
The word gets misused and thrown around way more often than it should. We fall in love so easily and out of it just as fast. To God, it is his character. He IS love. He can't NOT love. Satan, the father of lies, of course, has rewritten it's definition over and over. Thankfully, though, God wrote down his definition lest we forget it. Here in 1 Cor 13, he is VERY clear on what true love is.
Let's do a little chart comparison of God's vs Satan's definition, shall we?
Love is:
GOD SATAN
Patient until... you are tired of this person
Kind they make you mad
Not Jealous they have something you want
Does Not Brag you have something they want
Not Arrogant you feel you deserve more attention
Act Unbecomingly you feel consideration has gotten you
nowhere
Does Not Seek It's Own your needs are being met
Not Irritable you are "having a bad day"
Doesn't Hold A Grudge your feelings are hurt
Doesn't Rejoice in Unrighteousness you feel they are getting what they deserve
Rejoices in the Truth you feel they should get what they deserve
but God shows them mercy and it makes
you mad
Bears All Things it becomes unbearable
Believes All Things it becomes ludicrous
Hopes All Things you figure there is no hope
Endures All Things you are tired of trying
NEVER Fails you decide to quit
When writing out this list, I began to see that God's list doesn't rely upon EMOTIONS. It deals in absolutes. I don't FEEL love, I DO it. Satan's list is ALL about how you feel at the moment. Emotions lie...everyday, all day.
Paul starts this part of his letter to the Corinthians by saying (my paraphrase of course) "You can be the most spiritually gifted person on the planet, but if you ain't got love, you ain't got nuthin!" You can spout of Scripture all day or have the faith to tell a mountain to move or give everything to the poor, but if we don't practice LOVE, we are just noisy, bankrupt people. And then he gives us the list.
This the Message paraphrase of the last verses in this chapter, it is just beautiful:
8-10 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the completeness arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
11 When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.12 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
ONE DAY we will be complete before God but until then, let's love extravagantly those around us. Choosing NOT to let the Enemy use our emotions to drive wedges but instead to actively choose to love each other.
On a side note...there is no clause here that says to only love those that are loving you back, is there? Those are the hardest people to show love to...
and the ones who need it the most...
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