The Way of Love

I am not too sure how I began to go to a church. I had a friend who invited me as a seventeen or eighteen year old.  Another friend's father was a teen Sunday school teacher. In that class we were given an assignment to each find a verse in the Bible to share the next week. I was excited because I found this chapter in 1Corinthians13 to share!  As I shared this chapter, the teacher in what I felt was a condesending way, replied, "Oh yes the love chapter, we all know that chapter. My joy turned to shame. I was not in the know, as the others were. I did not return to that class or to church very much at that time. But God led me to read that chapter and he soon would show me his love as he came to me a year later in a dream as I lay in a hospital bed. He gave me himself. I had new life and I had been given his love to share with my family and others in that hospital. God cares for us and he loves us. After this my entire family were baptized in that church. Here is the love chapter. 

1Co 13:1  If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 

1Co 13:2  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 

1Co 13:3  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 

1Co 13:4  Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 

1Co 13:5  or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 

1Co 13:6  it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 

1Co 13:7  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

1Co 13:8  Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 

1Co 13:9  For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 

1Co 13:10  but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 

1Co 13:11  When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 

1Co 13:12  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 

1Co 13:13  So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 

We can read these words and yet say things that are so unloving. Lord may these words be deep in our hearts so that we may love as you do.

Love Lifted Me