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The Way of Love

It's Valentines Day. Hearts, flowers, candy, champagne,  kisses and love. Does it get any better than this?! I could write hundreds of pages about love and how I feel about it, what changes it has brought to my heart, how it has affected so many around me, and how it's wrecked my life completely. I could write about my deep, unconditional, never changing love for my children. I could write about my deep, abiding, rich, fulfilling, unbelievable love with Michael. But I won't. The incredible articulation and expounding about love has already been written about in another book, chapter 13 of I Corinthians. I cannot improve on the best. 

This is how God feels about love...

"If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
doesn't have a swelled head,
doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies.

Inspired speech will be over some day; 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 Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled. 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! 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 l-o-v-e."

Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 15, 2011 at 1:10 PM

    Thanks Deb, its another well written article. It can fill another page in your book. I notice the following you have and know you are pleased.
    Keep the fire burning..
    Dad.

    ReplyDelete

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