Faithbase

Hello, and welcome to Thinking About the Bible and this current series, Thinking About Love. So far in this series, we've talked about some things that are foundational, literally. We talked about Jesus telling us we should build our life upon his teaching. We've talked about the fact that the two greatest commands are loving God with your entire person and loving your neighbor as yourself. Jesus taught this and then replied when he was questioned about this and told the parable of the Good Samaritan. And we talked about how that, again, is expression of love in a general sense to all of humanity. But today, we're going to look at 1 Corinthians 13, 4 through 7. I will read that entire section, not too long, but let's read that again from the New Living Translation. Love is patient and kind, love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude, it does not demand its own way, it is not irritable, it keeps no record of being wronged, it does not rejoice about injustice, and I've got to put these on so I can see what I'm doing. But rejoices whenever the truth wins out, rejoices in truth, love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful and endures through every circumstance. And that might be a little bit different than what you've read or what you remember, because again, I'm using a translation that is not familiar to a lot of folks, but New Living Translation. Let's begin here with love is patient. Now we think we know what that means, don't we? Love is patient, I'll put up with something. But any of you who have children, any of you have a coworker that you've maybe trained into a new position, in fact, let's use that example right there. Seeing a newbie on the job, how to do the work, can sometimes be frustrating. And if we're going to show love, remember, we're showing love to every person on the face of the earth, okay? It's all of humanity, that's our neighbor. So that coworker is actually a closer neighbor than, say, the person at the checkout line at Walmart. This coworker that you're working with is someone that you need to learn how to love in a more broad way. Person at the checkout line at Walmart, you can show patience with them in a very easy way, you're behind them in line or whatever, you just are patient with them. You don't roll your eyes or grumble even internally. But with that coworker, for instance, to love them patiently, to help them learn something that is very familiar to you, takes patience. And it's not just an outward show. You want to actually cultivate love and patience for that person. They're going to be able to tell how you actually feel and what you want to be doing. And here's something you can think about as we think about patience today. But think about Jesus Christ and how he has been patient with you time after time, day after day, year after year, patient with me as I failed him, as we have failed him in many, many ways. But he's patient with us. He continues to love us, continues to draw us into deep relationship with him. And so our goal is to be like Jesus Christ and to be patient. Love is patience. And that's what I want you to think about today. How you can show patience to people, to the coworker, to your child, your spouse, patience. Not just an outward show, but cultivating as you think about Jesus Christ and what he's done for you. Think about love, the love that he's shown for you. Think about the love that you can show to somebody else through the act of patience. Thanks for being here this morning. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. God bless you and we'll be back again thinking about love.