CYMBALIC
SELFISHNESS
Sunday,
August 19, 2018
1Corinthians [NLT] 13:1-1 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. 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. 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.
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, and it keeps no record of being
wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices
whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses
faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages
and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever!
Now our
knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only
part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection
comes, these partial things will become useless.
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and
reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.
Now we see
things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see
everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete,
but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me
completely.
Three things will last forever—faith, hope,
and love—and the greatest of these is love.
4:12am I awoke again pondering patience. This
bout in light of God’s Truth spelled out in 1Corinthians 13, in particular that
patient charitable love is contrary to ego-centric impatience; plus the fact
that we may have deep emotional affection for a person(s) and yet not exercise
patient charitable love for them.
To serve Him
all our days in all ways,
EBB4
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