Let us take that powerful passage from the Apostle Paul about Love and spend the rest of this month considering it, praying about it and letting it work in us for the Glory of God.

Below is a simple interpretation of I Corinthians 13.
It is so profound even the angels of heaven stand in awe of it.

  If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

   Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self.  Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.  Love doesn't strut,  Doesn't have a swelled head,  Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always "me first," Doesn't fly off the handle,   Doesn't keep score of the sins of others, Doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best,  Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

DAY 30—God’s Love gives us the ability to stand firm with a hope that will not fail.

 

Truth, hope and love are three qualities of Kingdom Life that will sustain us through anything—yes anything—that may come at us from the realm of evil. We draw hope and understanding from the few words at the beginning of I Corinthians 13:8. Charity never faileth.

The word charity is from the word agápe. It has come to us from the eternal bearings of God Himself. It holds the quality of being eternal. When it entered us, it brought that quality with it. Through all the time it has remained with us, it has kept that quality. Love never fails because it is eternal. Just think of that. The love that comes to us from God brings eternity with it.

Through all the years and days of our lives we can have this divine quality alive in us, no matter how difficult our path is. And, whatever lies ahead, this eternal quality remains. It enfolds our every day and every pain and every hopeless situation that seems to be waiting for us in the road ahead.

Those words ...never faileth are as strong as they could possibly be. Never comes from a compound word oude’pote meaning, “never ever.” The word faileth comes from the Greek ekpip’to which means “to come to an end.” The kind of love that has come to us from God will never ever come to an end.

What can the man of sin do to bring us down? Why, he will come to his end before the love that sustains us will even grow weak! It will remain with us through every attack in all the realm where anti-Christ supposes he might prevail. There is no hope for him.

Our great shield, imparted into us by the Lord out from His eternal being, remains. And the marvel is, while we are still in this age, we have opportunity day by day to live out of the Life and Love He imparts to us.

FATHER, my plea to You this day is that I might adjust more and more to the Love that has come to me from You. This is a work that You must perform. Please don’t cease working in me.

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