Pathfinders Devotional: God Is Love
This devotional was originally given to the Pathfinders Men's Ministry Council on 09/02/2009
WHAT:
1 Corinthians 14:1 (Message)
Go after a life of love as if your life depended on it-because it does.
1 John 4:17 (Message)
[ To Love, to Be Loved ] God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgment Day-our standing in the world is identical with Christ's. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life-fear of death, fear of judgment-is one not yet fully formed in love.
1 Corinthians 13 (The Message) The Way of Love
1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
2If 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.
3-7If 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.
8-10Love 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.
11When 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.
12We 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!
13But 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.
HOW:
Ephesians 5:2 (The Message)
Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
Philippians 2 (NIV) Imitating Christ's Humility
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion,
2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.
3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.
4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death-
even death on a cross!
Ephesians 5 (The Message) Relationships
21Out of respect for Christ, be courteously reverent to one another.
22-24Wives, understand and support your husbands in ways that show your support for Christ. The husband provides leadership to his wife the way Christ does to his church, not by domineering but by cherishing. So just as the church submits to Christ as he exercises such leadership, wives should likewise submit to their husbands.
25-28Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church-a love marked by giving, not getting. Christ's love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives. They're really doing themselves a favor-since they're already "one" in marriage.
29-33No one abuses his own body, does he? No, he feeds and pampers it. That's how Christ treats us, the church, since we are part of his body. And this is why a man leaves father and mother and cherishes his wife. No longer two, they become "one flesh." This is a huge mystery, and I don't pretend to understand it all. What is clearest to me is the way Christ treats the church. And this provides a good picture of how each husband is to treat his wife, loving himself in loving her, and how each wife is to honor her husband.
Ephesians 5 (NIV)
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives and Husbands
22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.
24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
26to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word,
27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church-
30for we are members of his body.
31"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."[c]
32This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church.
33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Definition and Questions:
- To Cherish:
- To treat with tenderness and affection; to nurture with care; to protect and aid; To hold dear; to embrace with interest; to indulge; to encourage; to foster; to promote;
- Charity:
- 4 : lenient judgment of others,
- Which of 1 Corinthians 13 do we have the most trouble with?
- What if we had "well-formed" Love in our marriages - i.e. no fear? What would that look like? What are we afraid of? What are our wives's afraid of?
- Why did God put you two together? How do you complete each other? Make each other whole?
