1 Corinthians 13 English Standard Version

The Way of Love

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 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. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 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. 12 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.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

We call this the love chapter. This is how love acts. Love is all important.

So what is missing?

How about love talks to you? How would you like it if your love did not talk to you?

Do you love God? Do you talk to Him? I mean really talk to Him like He is in the room with you.

Seems a little disrespectful not follow the Lord’s example of prayer and just open up a dialogue with “Good morning, it’s me again.” It isn’t like He doesn’t know what is on your heart already, after all He dwells there. Or do you see God as ethereal and beyond reach or unapproachable.

Or is it that we don’t hear His voice? Maybe that is because we are so busy talking we don’t listen. Verse 13 begins with faith and that is where listening on our part takes place. 

Love listens.

Romans 8:32 (English Standard Version) He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Now that I am home again and life returns to normal, I begin my day seeking what we, me and the Lord, are going to say. Seeking isn’t all that hard with the right heart attitude and that more than anything is what being home is all about.

Being away from home there are so many concerns. Traveling 3990 miles by car on the interstates across America being one of them. My wife got to see strange and wonderful sites. All I got to see was bumpers and headlights. But even when we were in a place of relaxation it wasn’t home. We weren’t settled.

So considering all that, why do I once again post BibleGateway’s verse of the day? It is not because I am lazy or settled for the first thing I see. It has to do with expectations.

What is on your list of all things you expect God the Father to give us so graciously?

While you run down the list of things you want, let me share with you my list of wrong things.

Anything that does not come through Christ is wrong.

It is so easy to overlook the obvious in the heated moment of need. Before the words “graciously give” are the words “with Him”. It is so easy to forget that Jesus didn’t have a place of His own in this world to call home. No career once He began His ministry. Doing the will of the Father was everything to Him. Now, following Jesus, doing the will of the Father, do we really expect “everything”?

Yes I have a car but Jesus didn’t give it to me. My career made that possible. Yes I live in a nice house but it isn’t my home. Home is where the heart is and everything I need comes from the abundance of my heart.

Psalm 5:7 But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.

My body is His temple, and in it abides His abundant love and that is everything.

Give no thought to the clothes you wear, the car you drive, the house that isn’t a home, or the food you eat, which is not manna from heaven.

Love is everything and without it, none of it matters.