Wednesday 4 Jul 2018

July 4: 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 13:2
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

Devotion:
The one thing we must never exclude from our lives with Christ is love. No matter how much we do, how much we give away, how much we are recognised, how much we profit, none of it is worth anything unless we have love as the driving force behind it all – just as Jesus told us too. I am not talking about the love one has for another person, excluding others, but the true and meaningful love that we must have to God and to man. We may think of our love for a partner as the be all and end all, but the love we should have for God and man should transcend that. That may sound odd but think it through with me…

The love we have for a partner is something truly special. It is a love which nothing should be able to break apart. It is a love that should last and a love which means so much. Why people today treat it like just another commodity I am not sure… But that love is a bench mark from which we can see what our love for God should be like. God is the one who has loved you right from the beginning of time and will continue to love you throughout eternity. He is the one who has given His Son to die for our sin debt. He is the one who has shown true love. Our love for Him should be as true as our faith in Him; yet that is where many of us do fall short of the mark.

Jesus has taught us that we need to show our love to our partners and family first. There is a reason for this. With our partners and family, we have a visible target (excuse the harsh description) whereby we can focus our love and attention and have a response that is as visible too. Our love for God is a love in the invisible and a response that may be invisible to us too; that is why we may get downhearted from time to time. By focusing our love on the visible, we can learn how to focus our love on the invisible and have utter faith that love first started from His end. We try to think of our love in terms of the visible things in life, when what we should be doing is having the faith to believe and rest upon the love of God which transcends all else. Without love, we are nothing…

Points to Ponder:
Does your family know how much you love them?

How do you show your love to God?