1 Corinthians 13:4-8

P 2994 Love = great grow food!

/ DVH

“I continue to pray for your love to grow and increase beyond measure, bringing you into the rich revelation of spiritual insight in all things. This will enable you to choose the most excellent way of all —becoming pure and without offense until the unveiling of Christ.”Philippians 1:9-10 TPT.

Choosing to love the unlovely, ushers in growth.However, this will not be a happy little ‘walk in the park’ — it will cost us to learn to love the people who have hurt us, ignored us, and despitefully used us. Especially those people who did it on purpose! That’s the dying to self bit. In the flesh I may want to tell the whole world about the mean things that person did to me. I also want to vindicate myself, as well as give myself valid reasons to live this life as an emotional cripple! That’s called a side benefit BTW.  If I blame ‘you,’ or ‘them,’ then I have no responsibility to change. I can point to other people and say it is their fault I am like this. My sins, errors and missteps become sad, a result of someone else’s unkindness, not my own choices.

Adulthood will not fall on us. Hopefully sooner rather than later, we must choose to grow up and face this life from a mature point of view. Maturity is not about voting, or being able to drink alcohol, or get married. True maturity is taking responsibility for my own actions and responses to whatever has happened to me. Otherwise I am still allowing the person who hurt me to control my life. My own personal choices can take me out of that place of weakness, and place me firmly into God’s place of strength. 

This is why Paul is praying for the Thessalonians to “grow and increase beyond measure.”  Greater offences need even greater measures of love. Instead of sloughing off my responses in my situation onto whoever hurt me … now I stand up, make a choice and let Him take control of my destiny. Because now my aim is no longer just to survive—now I want to learn how to thrive within His unconditional, eternal love.

Living in love, which is the way the Jesus Himself lived, expands my capacity to take more and more of His life, and His ways, IN. If I want to be an overcomer, I must first of all learn to overcome the unnecessary things that tie my life into this world with cords of distrust, anger, bitterness and hatred. Choosing not to excuse my behaviour goes a long way toward changing it. We all know 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 well, but here’s a very different reverse, self-centred view of what Paul said: … 

“Love is not patient because you need to love me! I’m broken, and you can’t expect me to fix my own broken places. My love doesn’t have to be kind because I need people to be kind to me, and my needs are more important than yours. My kind of love is jealous, because I can’t stand for you to get more of anything than I do. At the same time, I’m needier than you! My love totally needs to boast because it makes me feel important and I need to be important, because I have good things inside me that will amaze you, if you would only co-operate with me and treat me kindly. 

Why shouldn’t I talk about you? You don’t appreciate me! When I am seen and appreciated I will be a much better person. Of course I get angry with you, you are constantly showing up my bad side, and I hate you for it. I have lists and lists of things you have done to hurt me. I need to keep those lists! They are my protection against letting you get near me in case you hurt me again. I love it when someone else is mean to you the way you have been mean to me – maybe it will teach you a lesson! 

The truth is what I think and say it is. Because I’ve been hurt, now I have lots of insight into other people’s faults. Why should I protect someone else? I don’t trust other people, they are just out for themselves. My kind of love doesn’t dare hope, it is always scared disappointment is heading my way – again. And my kind of love is too tired to persevere with anything or anyone. Nobody does that for me, why should I do that for them?”

Let’s all pray that this person never ends up in charge of anything!! … Sh-a-ll we? Amen! You know what was really scary, I wrote the above perverted version of 1 Corinthians 13 … so easily. Yikes! None of us can afford to go down that road, we’ll fall into a ditch. Here’s a huge tip to help us on our way — stop waiting for other people to love you and start actively loving them.

Real Love, the God-kind of love, helps us choose His very best way through all kinds of situations. It gives us insight into our own faults and the things that will make us stumble and fall. We simply have to ask ourselves regularly, “Is this love?” And if it is not, then we repent, go back and fix it. That’s not hard to remember! God has a way for things to be done. As we live in His love and give it away to others, we will find we know what He wants us to do. And when we are challenged by love, remember, the result of that challenge is growth. Bye 👋

P 2725 Quit surviving and start thriving.

/ DVH

Almighty God is not going to adapt to our way of thinking. However, He has given us a Helper to help us to thrive in our new life – but we must learn to deliberately yield! Jesus Christ, and the way He lived His life here on earth, showed every one of us how to live. Personally, I have found that generosity toward other people and their actions, good or bad, opens the door to thriving.

This is why Christ came here … to DEMONSTRATE and ILLUSTRATE  how to live. I want to write those words demonstrate and illustrate over and over again … just to emphasise them! Jesus is God’s visual aid. He shows us that any human being can live like He did, simply because they have chosen to be devoted to Almighty God. The Lord came here, personally, to tell and show us the WAY God thinks. He released the power of heaven, so now we can choose to change the way we think and act. Try reading the gospels from that POV. Our gracious Heavenly Father will not adapt Himself to us and our self-centred ways… that is ill-informed theology … 

Instead, He sent His Son to live like we do. Christ more than succeeded in His appointed task. His death set us free from that prison of behaviour and attitudes we were stuck in – and He gave us a new life. A life of possibilities where we can now choose. The power of choice must never be underestimated. It provides a life where we are no longer alone, struggling to survive. Christ’s blameless death released the Holy Spirit and His Presence in our lives  provides us with the perfect clothing to wear every single day. Now, we need to choose to wear those clothes that the Holy Spirit has handpicked for us, joyfully! They are our wedding garments. 

Some of those clothes we’ve found we need, only become apparent because of PEOPLE. Some people are just simply “itchy and scratchy.’  Irritating people will be around us for this lifetime, as they generally, sometimes unwittingly, mess with our heads and hearts. These people can often be the people that are supposed to love us. People like this provide the irritation in our lives that will cause us to want to leave this world’s old garments behind and go looking in His Word for new ones! The truth is one of us has got to change, and most of the time, it probably won’t be them. We cannot change someone else’s behaviour, but we now have the power to change our response to their behaviour. 

When we choose to change our response, a new Person comes into our situation. The Holy Spirit. Forgiveness is never optional. Jesus had people who were difficult in His earthly life — some of them were family, and some were even His friends. He led a life of ongoing visible forgiveness. When we read “forgive one another as the Lord forgives you” – it can be easy to forget the punchline … WE don’t deserve forgiveness either! In my life there are times when I think people are like kryptonite. They can leave us on the floor, gasping for air. Unlike Superman, our Saviour laid His life down so now we have a way of escape.

If we want to go from surviving to thriving we will have to let go of the past, even if it was just 3 seconds ago! Then we need to deliberately choose to move on with the Holy Spirit as our Helper. The past is a trap. We have no control over it – it’s gone. And just like other people’s behaviour, it should have no place in our lives to influence us today. Here’s a little warning: we can say we forgive others, but the thing that will put a neon sign above the reality of that action in our lives, is a little word that often pops up – that person did it … “again.” That word ‘again’ is a sign post! Forgiveness always wipes the slate clean. God does not keep a record of wrongs so neither should we. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 “… love keeps no record of wrongs.”

His love, when it is active in our lives, consists of laying aside everything that happens to us, deliberately. Instead we choose Him and His ways simply because He is more important than anything else. This is how we love the Lord back! He gave us all – we give Him ALL.  As it says in Hebrews 12:1&2 “ …let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, …” Let things go. I have found there are times when it gets hard to swallow my pride, because I’ve let the darn thing grow into a large lump in my thoughts! That’s why the bible tells us to keep a watch over our thoughts.

We can be daily learning how to thrive, as we live this life for Jesus’ sake. That’s our purpose. Christ was incredibly generous to us, so now we choose to become generous to others. He died to Himself, so we die to ourselves. We know that nothing ever happens to us by chance – because the Holy Spirit is permanently watching over us to guide us into the good works the Father prepared for us before we ever arrived here. We have been designed to thrive, not just survive. 👋