10 Ways to Love": Trust Without Wavering. 1 Corinthians 13:1-7 INTRO:

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Russell Bruce
6 years ago
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1 10 Ways to Love": Trust Without Wavering 1 Corinthians 13:1-7 INTRO: We are learning to love well. I sure could have used this information a long time ago! How about you? Loving is something that we learn as we live. We learn to love by our families and our friends. Then, one day, our eyes and our hearts are opened to God's love for us! Then we learn to love God and we learn to love like God loves us and all. His creation. ME: I find that old habits are hard to break. But it can be done. I have been sweet free for a month now! That, my friends is a miracle! I learned a bit about how bad sugar is for you, even though people have said this all my life. So I gave it up and I don't feel like I am missing anything! I may sometime test to see if I can eat sweets on occasion without going on a maniacal binge! Probably not for another month or so, though. I was loved by my family and I learned to trust people until they gave me some reason to not trust them. My family was not perfect, as no family is. But I felt safe and loved and so I learned to be trusting of others. YOU: How did your early life gear your ability to trust others today? I hope that every family does its best to love little ones early in life and teach them to contribute to the world as best as they are able as they grow into adolescents and adults. Did your family help you develop the trust habit? If not, have you been able to turn that around on your own? Or, with the help of friends? Let's take a look together at what God can teach us about loving by unwavering trust through Paul's letter to Corinth: GOD: 13 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (NRSV) 1

2 WE: In a series on 10 ways to Love, we had to know we would get this passage sooner or later, right?! 1 Corinthians 13 gives us a description of how love works. This applies to us as we try to learn to love others well. Love is patient, love is kind (13:4). God demonstrates these aspects of love toward us all the time. While we were still sinners and His enemies, he sent his Son to die for us. The word for kind here means bestowing benefits or grace. These simple truths about love are the key to healthy relationships and lives. Yet for some strange reason, it seems easiest for us to be least patient and least kind to those we profess to love the most. As they say, You only hurt the ones you love." Love does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. Paul has told the Corinthians that we are one body as Christians. If one part of the body hurts, the whole body suffers with it. If one part rejoices, the whole body rejoices. This is the nature of love. When we love, we are happy for each other s successes. We do not value ourselves more than those who are not experiencing the same triumphs or rub it in their faces. Love is not rude self-seeking easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs (13:5). In the words of Philippians 2:3, love leads us to consider others better than ourselves. If patience is victory, venting your anger at someone else s expense is defeat in the Christian contest. If forgiveness is Christ-like, then holding grudges is... not. I read that: These behaviors are not only contrary to God s desire for us; doctors tell us they eventually cause our bodies to rebel against us. Love rejoices with the truth (13:6). Love should not rejoice that someone we love has gotten away with something. Love would do all in its power to see those one loved become right with God and in line with the truth. Sometimes love must be tough to lead the other towards the truth. Love is not just about the other feeling good or not feeling pain. The highest love works for the greater and ultimate good of the beloved. Our love of God itself leads us to hate the evil and love the good (Rom. 12:9). Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres (13:7). If we remember that Paul directs these comments at the situation in Corinth, we will not fall into the trap of thinking that love must be gullible or always let others run over it. Love indeed bears all 2

3 things, as the KJV translates the first statement. But there is also a time for love to let the other try their own wings, and even fail and fall. This is part of learning and growing up. Sometimes love must be tough. Love does not focus on the negative or constantly second guess the beloved. But we also know there is a time for love to question. For the sake of love we hold our loved ones accountable to what is true and right, not because we want to find failure but because we trust for success. We always hope for them; we always hang in there for them. Even long after we would normally have given up. Could Paul have himself in mind as he says these things? He is bearing suffering and even dishonor from them, trusting in what God is doing in them, hoping that they will come around, enduring till he sees them through to salvation. APPLY: As we try to apply this to our relationships with others, wouldn t it be great if we could have absolute, unwavering trust placed in us or placed in another? Actually, we have that when we re born. We have no lack of trust. We completely trust our parents (and anyone else). We don t show up wondering if our parents will take care of us. We have to learn not to trust. How sad is it that it doesn t take long to learn? Others let us down, some on purpose and some just by being human. Add in selfishness and the fact that our brains and perceptions have just a few years to grow, and it s inevitable that we learn to mistrust. We get hurt; we expect others to hurt us too. We also then add to the mistrust in others. Can we learn to trust? Can we learn to love others? Can acts of love build bridges of trust? In his book The 9 of Arts Spiritual Conversation, John Crilly tells a story about building a relationship with five young Muslim men from a refugee camp outside Kenya: We have very different life experiences and faith stories. I was raised in an Irish Catholic middleclass family of four outside of Chicago. They were Muslims raised in Kenyan refugee camps, fleeing tribal violence in their homeland. They boarded a plane in T-shirts and flip-flops and arrived in a new country in the dead of winter, carrying all their belongings in a bag. We had hardly anything in common. But because of God, our lives have been divinely woven together as our God of Love pursues each one of these young men. 3

4 As we were driving along in my pickup truck, one of the boys mentioned something about prayer. Following a whisper from God and stirred by curiosity, I turned down the radio and asked, "How does a Muslim pray?" The relational dynamic changed as soon as I asked that question. I wasn't only these young men's tutor/mentor/adult friend in a position of status above them; I was also a person who was interested in learning from them. They were empowered to guide the conversation and share as much or as little as they wanted. They were in control of the discussion. They started the conversation by telling me about the five "salats" of each day, with each one chiming in as I listened intently. I was fascinated and asked follow-up questions to clarify my understanding and seek to know their lives better. Their experiences were utterly foreign to me. The discussion was rich, as I was able to demonstrate my love for them by hearing their story, learning about their religion, and exploring their world with them. Then an amazing thing happened. As we arrived in my driveway, one of them asked me, "How does a Christian pray?" They say that a lack of trust does not show love at all, because real love trusts. Real love doesn t hold others responsible for the lack of trust given by others. Real love FORGIVES. Forgiveness is not for the person forgiven, it is for the forgiver. The only way to avoid becoming a person who can t trust is to forgive those who hurt us. It frees us to trust again. People usually don t mean to assault your trust, just as you don t mean to do it to others. When someone repeatedly betrays your trust, forgiveness does not say it s ok. Forgiveness doesn t mean staying with someone who abuses you or continuing to trust someone who can t be trusted. What forgiveness says is this: I do not have to let you tarnish every other relationship I have. I can free myself to love and trust. You will not change who I am! Do you allow your hurt to keep you from trusting? And what about God? God is unwavering and unwavering is abiding. During my morning prayers on Thursday I dwelt in John 15. John 15 talks about us abiding in him. He is the vine. And we must remain connected to that vine to abide in him. We can t connect and disconnect, trust and then not trust. We must remain connected unwavering, ingesting the nutrients only the vine can give. When we abide in him, we grow. When we don t, we wither and die. There are many of us who struggle with trust. After all, we all have people in our lives that let us down. Those who have endured abuse have even more reason not to trust. God is not human. We project human failings on God far to often, though We project the sins of our dads on our Heavenly Father. We blame him for evil we bring upon ourselves. We pout and blame when we don t get our way. We allow our trust to waver. We also look at our own untrustworthy nature. BUT... God is, was, and always will be faithful even when we are unfaithful. 4

5 Do you abide in Him? Do you have trust issues that need to be resolved? Can you love like you ve never been hurt? THE SERMON IN A SENTENCE: Love well, by Trusting without Wavering. YOU: Do you abide in Him? Do you have trust issues that need to be resolved? Can you love like you ve never been hurt? CLOSE: Then there's the story of a young paratrooper who was learning to jump. He was given the following instructions: First, jump when you are told; second, count to 10 and pull the ripcord; third, in the unlikely event that it doesn't open, pull the second chute open; and fourth, when you get down, a truck will take you back to base. The plane ascended up to the proper height, the men started peeling out, and the young paratrooper jumped when told. He counted to 10 and pulled the cord, but the chute failed to open. He proceeded to the backup plan. The second chute also failed to open. "Oh boy," he said. "When I get down, I suppose the truck won't be there either." Thank you God that you are faithful, even when I am unfaithful. When I struggle with trust, You hang in there with me and teach me to trust again. I want to faithfully abide in You, and yet I am human. Father, I choose trust. I choose to love like I ve never been hurt. I choose to cling to you as the Vine, the Nurturer, the very Life Blood. Bless your holy Name! 5

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