Advent – Week 4 Love

This week our theme is Love. There may well be no other theme of greater emphasis or importance in the Bible than that of Love.

We see that GOD redeems man through Love (For GOD so Loved the world HE have His Only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life” ~John 3:16)

This week is unique in many churches in that often we see lit 2 candles…that of LOVE and that of Christ. Without Christ we have no Christmas story. Some churches light the Christ candle at a Christmas Eve service. Regardless of when..as Linus declares “that’s what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown”

I have heard a saying which goes…most of the time we read books, but the Bible is the only book that reads us. It leads us from creation to final destination. In fact depending on your translation love is mentioned 300 times throughout Scripture. That is so accurate isn’t it? God is love (1 John 4)

In 1 Corinthians 13, we find The Way Of Love, it seems the best way to close out our time of preparation for Christ coming is to remember how to love well.

The Way of Love (1 Corinthians 13 MSG)

“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; 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.

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.

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 love.”

Ah yes..the (best) or greatest of these is LOVE.

Prayer today:

Father ..you are so faithful to us. God while we were yet sinners you first loved us. God help us to be a people that will follow after the way of Love.. Let us love well those we disagree with. Let us love well those we dont understand. Those you love Lord, it says you rebuke and chasten… so let us welcome the discipline of your righteous right hand. Let us welcome your correction and instruction for right living. So we may be the hands and feet of Jesus upon the earth. Let us Love well and follow your way of Love.

In Jesus name

Amen.