Every where we turned today, the voices of hate are loud. Many have rejected God’s laws. They insist that those around them validate their lifestyles, even though they are living lives filled with sin. When Christians refuse to give into their demands, we are labels as “haters.” In fact, those who are labeling us are the ones filled with hate. Those who reject God’s laws, hate God and hate what is good.
In this dark world, Christians are obligated to pray and to love. Those are the forces of good that God will use to overcome the evil in this world. We cannot return hate to those who oppose us. We must continue to love and pray for our enemies. For without love, our words are noise–clanging cymbals or the creaking of a rusty gate.
Pray diligently for those who walk in darkness, and let them see the love of Christ shining in and through you.
1 Corinthians Chapter 13 From The Message
1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
2 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.
3-7 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.
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 Complete 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.
Ask God to show you today, and every day, how you can demonstrate love and reflect Jesus Christ to a hurting world.
Susan's Reflections 