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If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m
nothing but a croaking rusty gate. If I
speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything
plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, ‘jump,’ and it
jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If
I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a
martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere.
So no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt
without love.
1 Corinthians 13.1-3
These words prove to us that love is more than actions. Love provokes, yes, but love runs even deeper
than provocation.
Why do we do what we do in any given day? Is it because we’re driven by love or by the
lie of obligation? What causes our hands
to move? What makes our hearts
break? Why is loving so hard?
Love demands more of us than we’re oftentimes willing to
give.
I remember one morning during a debrief in Swaziland I was
sitting in prayer with the Lord. I was
asking Him what I needed to do better, what I could do differently to make my
life more intense. He told me, “Matthew, love beyond your self.“ Those words still resonate deeply within
me. The moment we start pouring into
lives we begin pouring ourselves out as well, and in the process, we allow God
to come in and fill us up. And by doing
this we also create an opportunity for others to love with us as well.
I wrote a while back talking about the love of God and how
we oftentimes compartmentalize it in an effort to void us from having to react
to those Jesus-like impulses. It’s a
little intense and I probably poke my finger places I shouldn’t. This was before I had the heart to shroud
things in humility
Read it here: For the
Love of God!
