It was my day for devotions, and I was completely blank. I prayed about it the night before and nothing. I thought about it thought the next day and again, nothing. So I asked God, what do you want for this team today? I opened up my Bible app to look for some highlighted verses that might jump out to me. I started in Acts. Really good stuff, but still didn’t feel right. I then indeed up in 1 Corinthians due to a highlight I had made in chapter 11 a week or so before. I quickly flipped through and found myself stopping on chapter 13. Most people know chapter 13. We hear it all the time. Love is patient. Love is kind. This is all really great and important stuff, but somehow it felt cliche and overused. This made me a bit disappointed, first, that I would think that, second that I know others think that. I mean if someone walked up to you and gave you this verse and said God gave this to me for you, would you think, well that’s great, but I would have liked something more unique. Maybe not, but the point I’m trying to make is that sometimes we hear things from the Bible quoted to us so much that the become just quoted verses. Bones with no skin. These verses are meant to breathe life.
I looked over the chapter and decided to check the verse of the day… 1 Corinthians 13:1. Ok… I was thinking for a moment and remembered that I had seen this verse somewhere else. It was in my Facebook memories today. A post a made years ago about my most favorite topic, love.
I knew then that this was it. I sat for a moment asking God what he wanted me to say to the team and it was clear. Read it to them. Read it in The Passion Translation. I don’t know if you’ve ever read this translation, but I’m always nervous to read aloud from this translation just because everyone has their opinions, but I knew this is what God was asking me to do.
As I was introducing what I was intending to do for devotion, God revealed to me that he wanted to bring some life to this chapter and remind each one of us, including me, that there are some areas that we struggle with. Sometimes we just need to hear something from a different angle for it to be refreshed in our minds.
So I want to share this chapter with you from The Passion Translation and encourage you to really sit in it and ask God to highlight the ways that maybe you’re struggling to love the people around you or even yourself.
1 Corinthians 13
“If I were to speak with eloquence in earth’s many languages, and in the heavenly tongues of angels, yet I didn’t express myself with love, my words would be reduced to the hollow sound of nothing more than a clanging cymbal. And if I were to have the gift of prophecy with a profound understanding of God’s hidden secrets, and if I possessed unending supernatural knowledge, and if I had the greatest gift of faith that could move mountains, but have never learned to love, then I am nothing. And if I were to be so generous as to give away everything I owned to feed the poor, and to offer my body to be burned as a martyr, without the pure motive of love, I would gain nothing of value. Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. It refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance. Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honor. Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense. Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong. Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up. Perfect Love Love never stops loving. It extends beyond the gift of prophecy, which eventually fades away. It is more enduring than tongues, which will one day fall silent. Love remains long after words of knowledge are forgotten. Our present knowledge and our prophecies are but partial, but when love’s perfection arrives, the partial will fade away. When I was a child, I spoke about childish matters, for I saw things like a child and reasoned like a child. But the day came when I matured, and I set aside my childish ways. For now we see but a faint reflection of riddles and mysteries as though reflected in a mirror, but one day we will see face-to-face. My understanding is incomplete now, but one day I will understand everything, just as everything about me has been fully understood. Until then, there are three things that remain: faith, hope, and love—yet love surpasses them all. So above all else, let love be the beautiful prize for which you run.”
I named this blog after a song by Switchfoot called The Hardest Art. Check it out. It’s good.
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