What Is It All, Without Love?
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (New Living Translation)
1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
My brother and I were talking earlier this evening and I was relaying something that God had showed me about my experiences in ministry previously and how it had effected me. God had allowed me to see that sometimes in ministry people can be great in ministers of the Gospel, great prophets, teachers, pastor, etc…but do things without love and without having a God centered and God focused agenda and this can scare people and mess them up so much that they run from ministry, and from God; or they can become so disheartened, that they lose faith to believe that they were even called to begin with and they give up. Love is a powerful tool and it is an attribute that should not be lacking in the things we do, the efforts we put forth and especially not in the ministries that we are called to. Even our speaking should be done in love, even when it is something that requires correction, love should still be present.
All too often our zeal will overtake our ability to love. We begin to apply principles that the world applies, like only the strong survive, and kill or be killed in our daily lives and in our calls in the kingdom. We think it is about who we know, and so we scratch and claw to make the right connections, get in good with the right people and align ourselves to what and who we think the right people are, without realizing that, it is about connection, but it is about being connected God the Father through Jesus His son and being led by the Holy Spirit. All too often we want to say God is using us, but love is nowhere to be found in the midst of our activities. So how can God be present if the Bible says, God is love (I John 4:7-8)? We confuse people and often times lead them astray with the thought that we are doing things for God, for the Kingdom and yet we do it with such harshness, manipulation and we lack love and understanding; we are misrepresenting God and the Kingdom. All that we do really is dust in the wind if love does not come along with it. If we are emptied of love and we are just doing the work or going through the motions, we get no credit for those things. It is like a beautiful empty vessel, pretty to look at about useless or a cymbal that clangs and makes noise, but has not rhythm or rhyme.
The Heart of God should be implant in us, if we say we belong to Him and that we are hiding in him. If we are hiding in Christ, then people should see Him and little to none of us. They should see an exhibition of love, as God for Christ sake exhibits His love. After all God is love, and it is that love that should show forth its evidence in the things that we do, say and how we treat one another. Make a conscious decision to ask what does love have to do with it, and know that the answer is that love has everything to do with it, because without love we lack the right motivation and the right direction to bring Glory to the Kingdom of God and for us to decrease as God increases! Let love abide and let it begin to be seen in you today!
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