Kaleidoscope Day 14 Enduring: Digging Deeper

Digging Deeper Days
Finding the original intent of Scripture and making good application to our everyday lives as we become equipped to correctly handle the Word of Truth!
The Questions
1) What do I do if I don’t feel like loving someone?
2) Why is love so important to God?
3) How can love endure all things?
1 Corinthians 13:7
[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Original Intent
1) What do I do if I don’t feel like loving someone?
When Paul described love in 1 Corinthians 13, he used the Greek work agape. Agape love, according to Biblical commentator David Guzik, is a ”sacrificial, giving, absorbing, love. The word has little to do with emotion; it has much to do with self-denial for the sake of another.” At the time of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, the church was struggling with spiritual immaturity, immorality, divisions and false teachings. Christ’s heart desire is for His Bride, the Church to live in sweet unity with one another for this is how Jesus loves. Paul wrote to provide clear instruction on how the Corinthian church could love like Jesus. In chapter 13, Paul described the love of God, emphasizing the unselfish actions of love rather than the emotions. Author John Piper shares how Paul was “applying love to the Corinthians’ situation and using it as the criterion for why some of their attitudes and behaviors are unacceptable.” Paul was telling the believers in Corinth that Christ-followers become like Jesus when they choose to show love even when they don’t feel like showing love. (Biblica.com)
2) Why is love so important to God?
The Bible tells us love is vitally important to God; it’s the very essence of who He is. When asked what was the greatest commandment, Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.” (Matthew 22:37-40.) To Jesus, loving God and loving the people God loves is imperative. Because God is love (1 John 4:16), His followers are known by their love (John 13:34-35), which is God’s love flowing through them onto others! The way we come to God is by recognizing His love for us. (Romans 5:8) One way we introduce Jesus to others is by sharing His love with them (1 John 4:11). We love God by loving others, and loving others demonstrates to God our love for Him!
3) How can love endure all things?
The Greek term for endure, hupomeno, means to “remain or abide under . . . not simply with stoical resignation, but with a vibrant hope” (PreceptAustin.org). Love has the ability to endure all things because God’s love is rooted in hope. Psalm 118:1 tells us how God’s love endures forever. According to author Debbie Hannah Skinner, that phrase appears over 40 times in Scripture. God encourages us through the repetition of this specific truth that His love empowers us to endure all things because His love will never stop enduring all things. Nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:38-39) so nothing can ever keep us from the hope and strength God gives us to endure any hardship. Love shows up when things seem bleak and hangs in when things are hard. God promises He will never leave us or forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6). Forever enduring love is God’s kind of love demonstrated for eternity and this is the love He enables us to extend to others through His Spirit’s equipping power.
Everyday Application
1) What do I do if I don’t feel like loving someone?
I am a born romantic, so I am drawn to stories that pull at the heart strings, lyrical poetry, and sentimental ballads. All of these are lovely, but they are not love. They represent only one aspect of love, the feeling kind. Real love, the love discussed in 1 Corinthians 13, moves far beyond a feeling into action (1 John 3:18). Love is a decision every believer has the power to make because the Spirit of God, who is love, dwells within them. God Himself is love (1 John 4:8) and He calls and empowers me to love others even when I don’t have feelings of love. Author Ted Cunningham says, “We can only give love when our hearts are full of God’s love.” I can choose to love my spouse and children even when they make me angry, disappoint me, or hurt my feelings because God’s love is alive inside me (1 John 4:7). My actions can show I love them when my heart does not feel it. There is an old song by the artist Don Francisco with a line that goes, “Love is not a feeling/It’s an act of your will.” When I choose to love like Jesus, in and through His power, and am not ruled by my emotions, my loved ones experience Christ’s love! We are called to love with the love of Jesus, and that means a love powered by God, not emotions.
2) Why is love so important to God?
Love is so important to God because without it, we no longer reflect Him and His essence. The moment we stop loving others as Jesus does, we stop imitating Christ. Through love, God made Himself known to us, and it is through this same conduit Christ calls others to Himself as we love them! His love began our relationship with Him; He loved us first and drew us to Him (1 John 4:10). The Bible warns if we don’t love, we have not known or truly experienced God, because God is love. Everyone who lives a life of love knows God and has been born of God (1 John 4:7-8). Love is who God is; it is His DNA. To love Him and accept His love is how we know Him. He designed His love to overflow from us to those who don’t know Him so they can experience His love (John 15:12) through us. The Bible teaches us to “put on” patience, kindness, humility, gentleness and forgiveness, and that Jesus’ love will bind all these virtues together in perfect unity (Colossians 3:12-14) as we live out our calling to love others. Struggling with loving others like Jesus? The solution is to know and experience the essence of love in fuller ways! Study Scripture, communicate with the Lord God, and begin exploring the Being of Love in deeper ways!
3) How can love endure all things?
Being a teacher and a mom has taught me the virtue of being flexible. The better able I am to adjust my expectations to the reality of my situation, the less stressed out I am in the situation. But there often comes a point where I say, “Enough!”. I feel like I can’t handle one more disobedient student or one more whiny complaint from my offspring. I am all sweetness and delight until I reach that point, and then, suddenly, I am anything but sweet. In those moments, I am showing how far my love can go in my own strength, without the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, and it isn’t very far. For me to endure all things, I must be operating in the love of Christ and not my own inadequate version. I Thessalonians 3:5 tells us God leads our hearts into God’s love and Christ’s endurance. When I am relying on God’s love, a love that gives sacrificially, I am able to respond in love rather than react in frustration.
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Digging Deeper is for Everyone!
1) Take this passage (or any other passage).
2) Read it, and the verses around it,
several times
3) Write down your questions
as you think of them.
4) Ask specific culture related questions and be ready to dig around for your answers. Google them, use www.studylight.org, or look them up in a study Bible and read the footnotes (click on the little letters next to a word and it will show you
other related verses!). (www.esvbible.org)
5) Check your applications with other trusted Christians that you are in community with and embrace the fullness of God
in your everyday!
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Why Dig Deeper?
Finding the original meaning is a huge deal when we study Scripture and can make all the difference in our understanding as we apply God’s truths to our everyday lives.
In our modern-day relationships, we want people to understand our original intention as we communicate; how much more so between God and humanity?!
Here’s a little bit more on why we take Digging Deeper so seriously.
Study Tools
We love getting help while we study and www.studylight.org is one of many excellent resources, providing the original Hebrew (Old Testament) or Greek (New Testament) with an English translation.
Want to know more about a specific word in a verse? Click on “Strong’s Interlinear Bible” then click the word you’d like to study. Discover “origin”, “definition” and hear the original pronunciation – That Is Awesome!
Want more background? Click “Study Tools”, then pick a few commentaries to read their scholarly approach, keeping in mind that just because a commentary says it, doesn’t mean it’s true. (just like the internet :-))
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