Something the Lord spoke over our team before coming to Africa was that He was calling us to go deep. I tend to be all over the place in the Word, and in the Lord throughout my day. I found an exercise in my book called lectio divina, which is a guide to meditating on scripture, it guides you into go deeper into the word that you’re reading. So I tried it with 1 Corinthians 13:1-8. Sheesh, I was humbled by what the Lord revealed to me about those verses. He is good.
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong of a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek it’s own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice with unrighteousness, but rejoices with truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.
He spoke to me about the love the Father, Son and Spirit have for each other. They exist in relationship with each other and I’m invited in to that. It’s not a relationship I create but rather one I enter in to. I’m included in that love relationship, it is my true home. This love it describes is about the lover, not the object of the love. My heart is made to be completely satisfied by the lover – HIM. He is unchanging, constant and near. All of the things love is are found in and come from HIM.
He used this passage to describe what being at home with Himself (Father, Son and Spirit) is like. It describes the nature of their love for each other. He is a place of rest. In our home love is like this: patient, kind, not jealous, doesn’t take into account a wrong suffered, rejoices with truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, this love never fails…. He will never fail me.
This is the relationship we are invited into, included in, wanted, chosen, and pursued by. This is life; abiding in Him. HOME.
I used to think those verses were kind of a check list of what my love for others should look like. Something to strive for, but they’re not. They’re describing my home with the Father, what our home is like. This is where I belong.
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.” John 15:5
