We are still stuck in 1 Corinthians 13….agreed to read it every day for another week.  It keeps our minds focused on real love, and points out how easily Self gets in the way.  As I read it over and over, the words are taking up residence in my head, and I turn them over, examine them throughout the day…like gems, they catch the light in different ways as they turn, new truth constantly becoming clear:  “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword…” (Heb. 4:12)

Last night I had that familiar weight of inadequacy hanging over my head; this morning I woke with “If I speak in the tongues of men and angels…if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries…if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains…but have not love, I am nothing” running through my head.  What is it about us that wants to have those grand spiritual abilities?  We all want to be the gorgeous vase on the mantle that everyone admires, or at least the good china to pull out for special occasions.  Loved, put-together, accomplished.  Who wants to be the drab clay pot with the chipped edge that carries the water?

But notice that Paul doesn’t even bother to say: “If I spend Saturday mornings distributing bread to the poor and have not love….”  He is not admonishing them about the excellence of love when they are taking that lonely college student home for dinner.  He is not reminding them of the necessity of love when they are hugging that weeping sister in the hallway after Sunday School…. or sitting at the desk at home writing notes to people on the prayer list….or rocking babies in the nursery so that young mothers can go to Sunday School.  He doesn’t have to, because these people already “get it.”  They are content to be “stewards of God’s grace” (1 Peter 4:10) however He chooses to use them.  They know the truth: that they are only clay pots, ordinary and not very sturdy, but so very useful to the Body-group when God’s glory is within, shining out through the broken places.

The Corinthian church was immature and full of ambition and comparison, and what we call The Love Chapter was actually a scathing rebuke to them for their lack of love, for their desire to Be Somebody within the Body of Christ.  Often we are not so very different.  I have spent most of my adult life so far arguing with God about the way He made me, and why did He ever call someone like me to ministry like this anyway?  But at some point in our growth, faith has to bow to the Creator in submission and acknowledge that He is the One who made me just this way, and knows not only who I am but who He is making me to be… put Self to death and acknowledge that He put me here for His plans and purposes, for His own pleasure.  It’s not about me at all.

A dear friend once pointed out that clay pots, as uneven and cracked as they might be at times, have the most potential for leaking out what they carry…which is immensely meaningful when what they carry is the life and light of Christ.  So I bend my will to be content as a lopsided, drab pot, and in humility accept that the Creator God knows what He is doing in my life.  All I have to do is be obedient to what He puts in front of me each day, one day at a time, and love Him, love others in every way possible.

“For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.  Having gifts that differ according to the grace given us, let us use them…”  (Romans 12:4-5)

“It’s all about You, Jesus, and all this is for You, for Your glory and Your fame.  It’s not about me, as if You should do things my way. You alone are God, and I surrender.”  (Jesus, Lover of My Soul, Paul Oakley)

It’s easy to get off-balance in loving God, and loving His people.  We talk about “getting involved” and “ministering to others” as if that were the important thing about church.  It may be the most obvious thing to our own eyes, but it does tend to take our eyes off the most obvious thing of all: that church is people gathering to tell God how much we love Him, a Body-group of people who are not the same, learning to live together in love the way He intends us to.  True, there is much work to be done, of teaching and building up, and helping those in need, and speaking out the good news of the gospel– but it just becomes so much busy-ness if we don’t put first things first.  And first of all, we are commanded to love, to put on Christ-likeness, to be transformed from the inside out.  All the doing will follow, quite naturally.

Like Paul said, “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clashing cymbal.”   So why is it easier sometimes to fill up with doing instead of the all-important business of loving?  Maybe we feel more comfortable with the work of our hands than risking exposing our hearts.  Maybe if we focus on the doing we don’t have to face the difficulties of forgiving, or of talking through the conflicts.  Maybe if I keep busy I won’t have to stop and see how poverty-bare of love this heart can really be.  All the noise of busy cymbals drowning out the still small voice that says, “Come away with Me awhile and learn of Me, abide with Me.”

And of course that is right where The Enemy wants us, scurrying around using our abilities for God and forgetting that it is not the same thing as loving God.  So easy to make idols of good things.  We needed that commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your  heart and with all your soul and with all your might” and with it the reminder to “teach [these words] diligently to your sons and talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up….and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”  (Deuteronomy 6:5,7,9)  A whole life built around loving God with every breath, the framework for everything else to fall into place.  Being right with Him first, then doing for Him….in Him….as response.

Our real work on Sundays and every time we are together is to open our eyes to see people where they are, to open hearts to accept them, to come alongside and listen, to pour out praise and thanksgiving to God as a Body-group because He has knit us together into a family.  Love God, love people….it’s all relationship and who we are becoming.  This is what He wants from us, first and foremost.

And the spiritual gifts He has given are simply personalized ways to love others with His Spirit’s strength, whether it is by praying in faith for their needs, or teaching them the truths of Scripture, or helping them with willing hands, or encouraging the weary and wondering….“as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”  (1 Peter 4:10)  Again, doing flowing out of being.  It’s just a matter of putting first things first.

“As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.  But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

    “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”  (Luke 10:39-42)

We have agreed to read 1 Corinthians every day this week.  A King James version lies open on my nightstand, an English Standard version open on my desk, to remind me.  I keep coming back to one verse over and over: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (v.7).

Bears all things?  Some things no woman should have to bear.  But I know women that do, and keep forgiving, making excuses, staying on.  Is that what You really mean, Lord?  I keep looking and the verse before it answers, “Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth”….ah, so not everything.

This is not a love that picks up after the person wreaking havoc and keeps silent.  It faces things and looks them in the eye, grieves at the brokenness, calls it what it is, speaks truth.  This love finds joy in right-doing, with evil all around, pressing hard.  So what is it bearing?

I finally dig it out, and unearth a treasure.  The root word in the Greek means “to roof over, to cover with silence”.…the way this roof covers our home, protecting us from everything outside, joining with walls to define the space that is our family’s and no one else’s.  Love chooses to be patient with the flaws of the ones close to us, to carry the stresses of life’s ups and downs, to take them in as “ours”– something we will own together and work on together.  Love roofs over sin with repentance and reconciliation. Love covers over life’s problems by standing shoulder to shoulder.  Love doesn’t complain about doing for one another.  All is freely given and freely shared as we bear these burdens together as a family, in love.

Paul adds to it in another letter: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Philippians 4:8 ESV)  When I choose to set my mind on these kinds of things it becomes much easier to bear with others, to cover over them with the roof of God’s love.  When my mind focuses here, love can believe that God will accomplish His purposes.  When I think about such things, love finds hope for the future.  When I look at these things, all that God has done for me, love can endure in this world.  Love bears all things…. covers over us like a roof against whatever will come.

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”
(Colossians 3:12-14 ESV)

Someone said it plainly last night, when we were reading Paul’s “Love Chapter,” and thinking about why love is better than all the good things we do.  She said “If we aren’t doing these things for love, then why would we do them?”  Indeed.  If Christ’s love is not the energy flowing through my heart and mind, then all that is left is me in there,  doing the right things but for the wrong reasons….a counterfeit of love.

Easy to slide into maybe, because the needs inside are so natural and we hardly have to think about hunger to grab for more to fill it.  It just happens.  Being nice to others makes you feel better about yourself.  Using your abilities in the church builds relationships.  Helping others gives meaning to your life.  How easily I could slip into the habit of doing these right things all by myself, to gain the reward….I’d be running on empty, filling my tank with the little I earn and spending it right away again, two steps forward and three steps back.  No wonder Paul says you end up with nothing.

See, the love Paul is writing about is real and eternal; someone said that last night too: “God is love.” (1 John 4:8)  Not just that He is a loving person but that His very nature is love, in perfect completeness, in infinite measure.  He defines what love is.  He is the only way we know love at all.  Because He loved us first, we can love…not just to the limit of our own abilities but with His own limitless supply.  His love should be the motivator and guide for all the “good things” we do.

Real love is a thankful response to His love on the cross.  Real love uses the gifts He has given to grow up others in the faith, wants to please Him, and depends on Him for the ability to do it.  And because His love is real and eternal, the good things we do under its guidance will last for eternity and work for our own eternal good as well.  If I am depending on Him I can run on a full tank and still always have room for more, because He never stops giving and the more I have of Him, the more I want.

Our challenge for the coming week is to read 1 Corinthians 13 once a day.  Lord, as these familiar words settle into our minds this week, help us to seek out “the most excellent way” wholeheartedly, and not be satisfied with any counterfeits.  As we dwell on the love You show us, may love be our thankful response to You and others.

“…if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”  (1 Corinthians 13:2b-3)

It seems appropriate that we are studying from the well-known “love chapter” this week, that on Valentine’s Day I am reading “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7).  Yesterday we had lunch with a couple who were celebrating their 58th wedding anniversary, and we saw this enduring kind of love: his bouquet of flowers on the table, her slicing the chicken and heaping the salads, passing bread, and sharing of words and laughter over strong coffee in tall mugs, deep red on the inside.  It was rich, their life together– and if you knew their story of regrets and celebrations, even richer.

Will we make it to 58 years?  I can’t really picture that at all, but looking at them I can see how it comes slowly, one year after another piling up… and both of them enduring, bearing life and one another, and still believing in what they are growing.  Paul’s Love Chapter provides the road map.  Love is patient, love is kind…in all those days that never go the way you expect them to.  Love… does not envy or boast… because this relationship is what we have been given and what we do with it will have eternal repercussions.  Love… does not insist on its own way…laying down our lives over and over as we imitate the Beloved One who laid down His life for us.

I forget sometimes that love doesn’t come naturally, the way media tells us it will.  To hear them tell the story, it is a helpless landslide that should take us by surprise and keep us breathless and celebrating.  The way Paul tells the story, it is a daily choice to seek something that matters most of all, a daily bending of my will to obey my Father, a constant transformation of my shallow desires and emotions into the likeness of Jesus’ roaring ocean depth of love.  It may take me 58 years… and more… to figure that out.

This Wednesday night we talked about what it means to bear fruit, to abide in Christ, metaphors that Jesus gave us for living with Him.  How do I abide in Him?  How do I bear fruit?  What does that even look like for a woman living in a small town in western Pennsylvania?  Spiritual metaphors, yes, for spiritual realities, but we must slow down and listen like children again, to understand the everyday stories of truth He told us.

Trees make the fruit they were created to bear, from the stuff of their own makeup.  An apple tree makes apples because the life and stuff of apples flows through its branches.  And if a branch is torn off by the winds, it will die and stop producing apples, because it no longer has that supply from the tree.

Christ-followers produce the fruit they were created to bear, from the stuff of a new creation in Christ.  A Christian makes good fruit because the Holy Spirit flows through her, producing what He wants– the likeness of the Savior– transforming an ordinary sinner into someone ablaze with Christ’s beauty.  And if she is separated from the Source by the stress and busyness and distractions of this world, she will wither up and stop producing anything good, because she no longer has that supply of Christ’s life and righteousness.

Bearing fruit is intensely personal then, not just checking the right things off a list, or trying harder.  Bearing fruit happens in relationship with the One who grows it in us.  As Bruce Wilkinson says, “you bear inner fruit when you allow God to nurture in you a new, Christlike quality….You bear outward fruit when you allow God to work through you to bring Him glory.” (Secrets of the Vine, 96)  No wonder fruit only grows when we abide in Christ, our eyes fastened on Him, our hearts entwined in His, our souls turned upward listening for His still small voice.

“And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Romans 5:5)

Our lesson this week is about growing in love by abiding in Christ.  Both those things take all my effort.  I have read dozens of books on marriage and family and counseling and understanding all the ways our minds turn as they do.  They use so many words to describe relationships and the managing of them, to explain how to balance, how to understand all the complexities.  Few of them are brave enough (or truthful enough) to tell me that love will take all of me, everything I have and more.

Because love is not a 50-50 relationship, no matter how you look at it.  It takes all you have and all the other person has, to make it work.  Not a partnership but a self-giving,  and the joy is in the willingness of both parties.  Learning more love is the hardest thing we do in life, because dying to self is never easy.

Abiding is no easier.  It sounds peaceful, like a cottage in the woods with flower vines growing up the front, something quiet and quaint and soothing.  Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.  Abide in my love.” (John 15:9)  It sounds like a good place to live.

But in the next verse He explained what abiding means: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”  Abiding is obedience.  Obedience is something I am still learning, along with trust– sometimes quick and joyful, sometimes wrestling with old pain, sometimes bending my thoughts and choices around Your mold with all my strength like red-hot metal on the forge.  But I follow along after You and listen for Your voice… “just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”  I can’t think of a better place to live.  But it is not quaint and soothing.  It is dying.

And all this giving and dying for what?  Again, Jesus spells it out for me: “…apart from me you can do nothing….Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you….By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples….As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you….that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full….I have called you friends.” (John 15:5,7-9,11,15)  If I am going to grow in love and abide in Christ it will take all my effort and all my desire– no careless living or peaceful existing– and yet ironically it will fill me up with the very things I need the most, the things I absolutely cannot live without.

The books aren’t wrong, they just don’t push far enough into the matter to see clearly.  They smooth over how rugged the choice to do right can actually be.  They assume that all of us want to give and to get, so if everyone gives half we will all remain even.  The fact is, I don’t always want to give, and the fear of not remaining even makes me withhold even more.

Love is an all-out business.  “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (John 15:13-14)  It’s going to take all you have.

“The abiding believer is the only legitimate believer.”  (John MacArthur)

“…you can’t wonder why love’s wearing thin when you’re wearing a thick layer of self.” (Ann Voskamp)