This year has been quite a ride. Thank you for supporting me, thank you for your prayers, thank you. This journey has been one of service, but also getting to know myself better, to seek God, and trying to understand what it means to love God and love others. There’s a lot in my head I could write about and probably a lot that I really need to sit down and think about. I have come into a new awareness of ways that God works that I have little experience with. Things like speaking in tongues and prophecy, for example. Now I don’t know what God has planned for me long term, or how he wants to use me or work in me. I want to desire gifts of the Spirit for the right reasons, for the glory of God and to love my neighbor.
“And now I will show you the most excellent way. (isn’t that beautiful!)
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the figt of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three things shall remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
1 Corinthians 13
When I look at the description of love, I can only think of how great God is, and how much I don’t match up to that description. I have to ask forgiveness and repent of being impatient, unkind, envious, prideful, rude, self-seeking, angry, unforgiving, delighting in evil, ignoring the truth, un-protecting, un-trusting, not hopeful, and not persevering.
I need help!
And so do you!
I need the blood of Jesus to cleanse me!
And so do you.
Love is not concerned with self. The list I just made of opposites are all self-centered things. I want to be Christ centered!
because
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5
I want to be a servant of the God who is love. The love that as brutal and fierce and honest, makes you care about others before yourself, desires the good of others, fights for purity and holiness, and rejoices in the truth!
