S1807 Encouraging Love This practical explanation of what real love looks like from 1 Corinthians 13 will provide you with ways to meet the needs of those around you with Christlike caring.
Encouraging love is patient. Patience is the ability to be wronged and wronged again, and to have the power to retaliate, but refuse to strike back. Kindness gives to one’s enemies. Encouraging love catches people doing right and makes a big deal out of it. It shelters others from the storms of life, and always gives the benefit of the doubt. Love perseveres, never withers, never fades.
ENCOURAGING LOVE
1 CORINTHIANS 13:4
Bronwyn’s brush with “death” when she tried to feed a sea gull.
When one sea gull sees another with a piece of meat, sea gulls will fly straight at the second, blasting into him like a linebacker into a full back, doing all he can to dislodge that piece of meat. He has absolutely no concern for the welfare of his fellow bird. Sea gulls do not care and do not share.
Honking geese have an entirely different understanding of community.
Flying in a “v” is intended to conserve the energy of the entire group. They save 71% more energy than they would if they flew individually. And they rotate that leadership in that “V” so that not one goose is ever too exhausted. If a goose begins to fall, that team of geese knows how to dispatch a second one to keep the fatigued goose company until the bird can re-join the flock. Geese know how to take care of each other.
Sea gulls are always picking and pecking and colliding with each other. Geese are always watching out, caring for each other, encouraging one another. In fact, many scientists say that the incessant “honk” of a goose is really a way of keeping the slow birds encourage so they won’t lose their way and they won’t fall too far behind.
Three-part series on encouragement: I want to accomplish that today in the context of agape love.
The essence of divine agape love is encouraging others to get along well in life—meeting the needs and navigating the storms of life.
“Man doesn’t live by bread alone. He needs buttering up.”
Love is a verb.
All verbal participles.
Children definitions of love—all action oriented.
·SLIDE: When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.
·SLIDE: Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.
·SLIDE: I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.
·SLIDE: Love is when mommy sees daddy on the toilet and she doesn’t think it’s gross.
·SLIDE: You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget, and it’s good for them to get reminded.
Teenagers move toward defining love in terms of feelings
Girl at youth camp: “an inward ishness, outward ishness; all over ishness, ness”
Watch her wiping fevered brow of 1st baby: 2:00 am. Diarrhea, alcohol baths.
Ask her: “Are you enjoying this?” “Are you kidding?”
Ask her to define love.
This is love!”
Love is not a feeling. It is not something that happens to us. Love is something we do.
Love is a commandment. It is not an emotion, it is a product of our will.
The preeminence of Agape love in the first three verses.
·SLIDE: 1 Corinthians 13:1-3: 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 gift 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.
Verses 4 to 8 is divided into three movements.
·SLIDE: First movement sets the tone for the deeper dimension of agape love.
1 Corinthians 13:4: Love is patient; love is kind.
·SLIDE: Second movement describes Love’s attitude: eight “nots”
1 Corinthians 13:4-6: 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
·SLIDE: Third movement returns to the opening note of positive action.
1 Corinthians 13:6-8: [Love] rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
Understand that Love is Personified. Put in your own name. “I am …”
·SLIDE #: LOVE IS PATIENT.
Patience Is The Ability To Be Wronged And Wronged Again—And To Have The Power To Retaliate—But Refuses To Strike Back.
We usually think of patience: A clock and time. But this word has little to do with that. It is talking about patience with people.
The word literally means – “long tempered”. It has a long fuse.
Listen to Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount:
·SLIDE: Matthew 5:38-39: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Hank Gunlock bruised face—turn the other cheek.
Jesus never said if we turn the other cheek we would not get hurt. What He says is that when we turn the other cheek
·SLIDE: we look more like Jesus than at any other time in our lives.
·SLIDE: LOVE IS KIND.
Patience says, “I’ll take anything from my enemies.” Kindness says, “I’ll give anything to my enemies.”
Of course, not just enemies.
This is the flip side of Patience.
Patience endures the injuries of others. Kindness pays others back with good deeds.
Let’s talk about Tips—tip good service. What if you get bad service? What do you do? Anyone tip less because they just did not deserve it? Raise hands.
This is exactly what I am talking about. Any cat can scratch back. But agape love says, “You wronged me. Nevertheless, I am going to do something really nice for you.”
Bad service, run ragged, maybe a single mom: give 50%. Shock her. If we act like this we will change the perceptions of Christians.
The root word here in Greek is “useful”. I will do anything that will be of use to another. Love gives itself away to help somebody else.
So, Gordon and Gail McDonald sit down in their seats near the back of the airplane.
As the plane loaded up, a woman with two small children took the seat right in front of them. Behind her came another woman. The two women took the A and C seats and one of the children sat in the middle seat and the second child sat in the lap of one of the women.
I figured that these were two mothers travelling together with their children—and I hoped the kids wouldn’t be noisy.
He didn’t get his wish. The air was turbulent, the children cried a lot. Their ears hurt—it was a miserable flight.
He watched as the two women tried to comfort the children. The woman at the window played with the child in the middle seat, trying to make her feel better—gave her lots of attention.
I thought, “These women ought to get a medal for what they are doing.”
Near the end of the flight, everything really went down hill.
The child in the middle seat got sick. Stuff from the inner recesses of her body came roaring out of her mouth. Her diaper came loose and loosed out the contents of her diaper. A strong stench wafted throughout the cabin.
Both stuffs were all over the woman, on her dress, all over the seat; on the floor. Repugnant.
The woman next to the window patiently tried to quiet the child and clean up the mess and make the best of a bad situation.
When the plane landed the passengers tried to exit the plane as fast as they could.
The flight attendant came up with paper towels and handed them to the woman in the window seat, and said, “Hear ma’am, these are for your little girl.
The woman said, “This isn’t my little girl.
This is something we all can do. And it will set us apart from the rest of the world.
·SLIDE: LOVE REJOICES WITH THE TRUTH.
Love Catches People Doing Right And Makes A Big Deal Out Of It..
Instead Of Parading In Public Someone’s sins and short comings, Love Picks Out The Good And Talks About That.
John Blanchard: The One-Minute Manager: “Catch them doing something right.”
Need practice: some of us can criticize some one for 60 minutes. We have a hard time keeping compliments going for 60 seconds.
March Madness just concluded. Many of you love basketball. Many of you women were forced to sit with your spouse and boy friend watching games during the last several week-ends.
Heard the term “assist.” One person with the ball passes to another and he shoots and makes a basket without taking more than one step.
Great John Wooten: basket ball coach at UCLA for decades. Won 11 or 12 Final four national championships.
Outstanding coach to do that. Built character and values among his players.
Principle: If some one passes the ball to you and you make the basket, he gets an assist on the score sheet.
After the basket turn and point your finger and wink to the one who passed you the ball.
“What if he’s not looking?”
“Don’t worry. He’ll be looking.”
·SLIDE: LOVE ALWAYS PROTECTS
Love shelters people from the storms of life—and does all in its power to stop gossip.
GREEK: The word literally means to cover, shelter, or protect. Love is a retreat which shelters people from the storms of life.
In other words, love does not delight in exposing the weaknesses of other people.
In 1 PETER 4:8, Peter puts it so beautifully, “Love covers a multitude of sins.”
Love doesn’t rejoice in somebody’s mistakes and problems—and doesn’t go passing it around.
7th grade class. Roger’s pimple face: Mrs. Horne at Walnut Hill: “What’s wrong with Roger? Doesn’t he wash his face enough?” Face on fire with shame…
Took me years to finally forgive her—the old hag.
Zack Miller: “It’s O.K. Roger, it won’t stay like that forever.”
We see a good illustration at the cross of Jesus. Up in Heaven God doesn’t say, “You know, those human beings are gross! What do you angels think about them? Especially that Roger Barrier. He’d bad.” No. We are not the subject of heavenly gossip! Isn’t that nice to know.
Rather than sit up in Heaven and gossip with the angels about the sins of men, God just came to the cross and threw a mantle over man’s sins and bore their sin in His own body.
·SLIDE: LOVE ALWAYS TRUSTS.
Love is quick to give others the benefit of the doubt—not the slop.
Bill Weber: “Too Many People Are Willing To Give You The Benefit Of The Slop.”
Love believes in people.
Think about Jesus Christ and the disciples. They were nothing too hot, frankly. The ones who were the most well known in the New Testament were all sinful.
Peter was a notoriously faithless character who was continually falling on his face.
James and John had a pride problem – they even sent their mother to see if they could have the best seats in the kingdom.
We know very little about the others. But they were all sinners, too.
Jesus Christ could have scratched His head and said, “Father, I don’t know how to tell you this but this whole deal isn’t going to work out. I have twelve losers. If you think I ought to come back to Heaven and turn this whole thing over to them, I’ll do it, but it looks a little shaky to me.”
You know, Jesus knew the sins of the disciples better than anyone else and yet He believed the best about every one of them, didn’t He?
He said, “They can do it” – and He sent them out into the world and they did it.
What an important part of Christian love this is – to look for good in people and help them to recognize it, to let them know that you believe good of them, rather than evil.
Love is a plus. It encourages goodness. It finds the best and exalts it.
Stacy Smith: Remember for two things, great athlete and wild morals.
Basketball practice: nylon stocking on his hear. Remember the look on Coach Dowd’s face.
Stories about his womanizing (high school iizing) were legendary.
Bachelor party for best friends: arrived with case of beer and pornographic movies.
No hope for him.
Ten years later: Farrell Ray: “Stacy teaching in children’s ministry in out church!”
People who believed in Him led him to Christ.
Cyber Slop
Cyber bullying.
Man betrayed by a friend. Posted story on face book.
15 friends unfriended him
·SLIDE: LOVE ALWAYS HOPES.
As Long As The Grace Of God Is Operative, Then Human Failure Is Never Final.
Love refuses to take failure as final. God wouldn’t accept it from Israel.
You see love doesn’t run out. It doesn’t bail out and leave as soon as the first mistake is made. Love waits and waits and believes and then when believing begins to waver then it just starts hoping.
When other people have given up hope for us and when we have become absolutely hopeless about ourselves, the Lord is never discouraged. Christ, because He is love, never gives in to dismay or gives up to despair. I am so glad I have a God like that, for when others give us up it is wonderful to know there is a God in heaven who goes on hoping and planning for our good.
Prison Service At Florence.
Bob Erler – “Catch-me-if-you-can-murderer” was leader. Once attacked by 9 men. face laid open by an iron bar and he knocked them all out.
Mild-mannered, soft spoken – leader.
Testimony from Indian. Been to prison 27 of 49 years. Cup of water on ball field – led him to Christ.
Water came from Bob Earler.
Christ took that minus person and made him a plus.
·SLIDE: LOVE ALWAYS PERSEVERES.
No matter how fierce of hopeless the battle, love hangs in there to the very end.
“Love endures all things.” is a Greek military term to describe being in the middle of a fierce battle and hanging in there to the very end.
Tom and Mary (not real names) once came to me for marriage counseling. Marriage deteriorated over past several years. Decided it was all over. Came for counseling. Really did not want to put their marriage back together but they were about to get divorced for unbiblical grounds and were hoping to have their consciences salved.
Began to tell me the sordid details. Mary said, “So, you see, there is no hope left, no love, nothing to build on.”
Tom took his turn, said, “So, you see, there is no hope left, no love, nothing to build on.”
Wanted me to say, “Well, you are right. No hope left, no love left, nothing to build on, I guess the only option is to get a divorce.
Instead I said, “This really is serious. I guess you will just have to learn how to love!” That is not at all what they wanted to hear.
So, I said to Tom, “God says you are to love your wife as Christ loved the church.”
Tom: “I could not love her like that. No way.”
Roger: “All right, let’s go to a lower level. The Bible commands us to love our neighbors. Since you sleep with her and she’s the closest neighbor you have, love your neighbor.”
Tom: “No, I can’t do that. I don’t want to do that.”
Roger: “OK, let’s go one step further, the Bible says, “Love your enemies….”
You should have seen the look on his face.
But what happens when the rope gets further and further and further out and you’re starting to lose hope? What then? Okay, the last part of verse 7.
·SLIDE: LOVE NEVER FAILS.
Love never withers, fades, nor falls away. Love blossoms forever.
We can never get away from the call to love and compassion.
The classic Greek presents the picture of a bad actor being hissed off the stage. Love never hissed off the stage.
The other picture is of a fading flower with falling petals. Love never withers, fades, nor falls away. Love never loses its place.
·SLIDE: Barnabas Was A Plus Person.
Sold a piece of property
Vouched for Paul with the early Christians who were terrified of him.
Took John Mark on 1st journey and he quit.
Mark young boy lost cloak
Time for 2nd journey: Paul refused to take Mark.
Barnabus was a plus person. He added to people. He didn’t subtract from people. He stood by Mark. Sharp disagreement arose.
2 Timothy 4:11: Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry.
·SLIDE: “Man doesn’t live by bread alone. He needs buttering up.”