The Church's Love Life

I pray that God was glorified, Jesus was magnified and the people of God left edified from church services on yesterday. The Lord has lead me to preach out of I Corinthians 13 for the month of February. After diving into this, it may take longer than a month but I am excited about this journey. God blessed us Sunday to talk about The Church's Love Life.

Forgive the title as it can make people go places I don't need for them to go but when I looked at this love chapter, I realized that in context it is part of a greater speech that included chapters 12-14 concerning the manipulation, misapplication and the exploitation of spiritual gifts in the Church at Corinth.

Different gifts, Same Spirit, Different parts, One Body! Paul urges them to desire the GREATER GIFTS and he shows them the more excellent way. He urges them in I Cor. 14:1 to "Let Love be your Highest Goal(NLT). He pleads with them to "seek those abilities the Spirit gives that will strengthen the whole church". LOVE IS THE GREATEST GIFT.

So, How is your love life? What does your church look like? What is it known for? When people mention your church, what compliments do you receive? Do they talk about your singing? Giving? Sacrifices? Prophetic Nature? Paul says you can do all of that but if you don't have Love, it's all worthless.

The Sensational, Spectacular and the Sacrificial are all meaningless without Love. Your speech, no matter how you say it, nor how accurate it may be without love is just noise. Oratory can move a person's emotions, rhetoric can move a person's mind, a speech can move a person's will but only love can move a person's heart to Jesus.

For the series my outline is the Portrait, Priority, Particulars, and the Permanence of God's love, and God is asking the Church for our Participation Through Propagation. We participate through our Actions, our Attitude and our Affection. Sunday, I didn't get past patient and kind.

Patience=what I take in, that's my SUFFERING
Kindness=what I give out, that's my SYMPATHY
I couldn't give or take if it wasn't for my SAVIOR, and that's my focus.

I typed too much as usual so I leave with what Max Lucado said in his book "A Love Worth Giving", although Vine says that patience is "Long, Tempered" meaning endurance under provocation, when you put the Greek words into a picture it can describe a pot of water sitting on the stove. It's on the burner and the burner is on but patience is keeping the flame down so the pot doesn't boil over, Patience is keeping the burner down.

I may get warm and sometimes I may even get hot but patience stops me from boiling over. I lost in right there Sunday and as I type it and think about it again, I am ready to lose it one more time so,

Time to go run and study some more,

Owens