No Love, No Victory – Your Love Needs To Be Stronger Than Your Faith “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” – 1 Corinthians 13:13 ESV This week we learned about what love is NOT. At the end of this chapter, Paul sums it up and says the greatest of these is LOVE! One of the definitions of “greatest” in this verse is “stronger.” If the Bible says love needs to be stronger than hope and faith, we need to make sure that we are developing love more than the other two.  We need to develop our faith, yes, and we need to be able to move the mountains in our lives. After all, it is faith that pleases God. However, just because faith pleases God, that doesn’t mean that it’s the only thing that pleases God.  “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John 13:35 ESV God’s number one priority is people. More than anything else, He wants people to choose life and not death. He wants them to select Heaven and not Hell. The lowest person in Heaven is far better off than the best person in Hell.  God wants love to be our calling card. As we learned earlier in the week, love is the difference-maker. God is pleased with our faith, but people are moved by love. I am not saying we need to always be a people pleaser, but I am saying when we show love, it stands out so much that everyone sees it without much effort.  The best way to increase your faith is to increase the number of loving acts. Whatever you currently do, take it to another level. Ask God to show you what He wants you to do. Your faith needs to be strong, but your love needs to be stronger.  Confession Today “Today, I will grow in my love towards people. Love matters more than anything else. Love is what drives my faith, and I need faith to move mountains in my life. Because love is the calling card of God, I will show love to the people that need it the most. They will see who God is through me.” Please go to believersvictory.com  to learn more about us. Also, you can follow us on Facebook and on Instagram.

No Love, No Victory – Without Love We Are Annoying “If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” – 1 Corinthians 13:1 NLT “Want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?” If you thought of the movie Dumb and Dumber when you read that, you can imagine the sound that the two main characters make next. (If you don’t know, look it up.) The sound was so annoying that the man in the middle of the two main characters started to yell for them to stop. When we say things without love, we sound like those two guys making the screeching sound.  Can you imagine knowing all the languages on Earth? According to Google, there are 6,500 different languages on Earth today. That’s a lot and I don’t think anyone is capable of imagining them all. Ziad Fazah can speak the most languages and can “only” speak fifty-nine languages. That’s fifty-eight more than I can speak. However, if this man speaks any of the languages without love, the Bible says he is a noisy gong.  Everything we say and do needs to have the element of love not just mixed in, but that love needs to be the driving force. When it’s anything else, the real intent of what we do and say is missed by everyone. Even though technically we are communicating clearly, without love the message is altered. This is something that we all can work through.  Without Love the Results Are Not the Same Someone I know made chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips. Naturally, I thought that would make them sugar cookies, but nope. It didn’t taste like sugar cookies at all. The taste was all thrown off, and it didn’t taste good. When we communicate without love, we may think it’s the same, but in reality, it’s something totally different.  Grow in This We ALL need to grow in this. Sometimes we can say insensitive things. We need to take more time to examine what we are saying BEFORE we say it. It’s possible to apologize after, but it is not the same as not saying it all.  Don’t be the actors in Dumb and Dumber! Don’t be annoying! Be the person full of love that people want to listen to.  Confession Today “Today, I will watch my words. I do not want to be the annoying person that doesn’t have love mixed in with my words. Without love, what I am saying is not what is being received, so I will examine my words before I speak! I will speak with love.”

No Love, No Victory – Love Doesn’t Do That “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.  It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.  Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NLT  Love gives you everything that you need for this life. This is not to say that it is easy to apply, but Paul gives us some clear direction of how love does NOT act! Not Jealous or Boastful or Proud or Rude Love does not make it about us. We all are tempted to do this, and at times we have all fallen into this trap from the devil. The most important thing to do when we see ourselves doing this is to make the adjustment to not stay there. When you find yourself in that situation, do not defend your action with intention. Own it, adjust, and move forward.  Does NOT Demand Its Own Way The relationship is more important than being right. It can sometimes be easy to get caught up in using the Bible to defend having things our own way. Once again, I speak from experience. The interesting thing about having our way is that sometimes we are wrong! We are not perfect. However, sometimes we allow the desire to “have our own way” win over the best action for the situation. When in a disagreement, do what love would do.  Not Irritable and Keeps No Record of Being Wronged I love how these two go together. Love is not easily angered. Another translation says, “love has a long fuse.” And it keeps no record of being wronged. It is easy to become irritable if we continually count all the ways that we have been wronged. If we do that continually, we will have the shortest fuse ever. We have all hurt other people, so let’s extend the same grace to others when we are on the other side: do not be easily angered, and keep no record of the past. Does NOT Rejoice About Injustice; Rejoices When Truth Wins Out Love wants the truth to prevail. It is not loving to enjoy someone else’s misery. Love puts ourselves in their shoes and looks at things from another perspective. No matter what the truth is, that is what love does. In times like these, let’s make sure we are walking in love with everyone! Confession Today “Love is not jealous or boastful, so I will not be either. Love does not demand its own way, so I will not either. Love is not irritable and does not keep a record of being wronged, so I will not either. Love rejoices in truth, so I will rejoice in truth. Whenever I find myself doing something love wouldn’t do, I will ask God to help me make every adjustment that I need to make. Love never fails.”

No Love, No Victory – We Gain Nothing Without Love “If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.” – 1 Corinthians 13:3 NLT God wants us to be generous. I love being able to be a blessing to other people. When I see someone putting groceries back because they can only spend so much money, most of the time I ask the cashier to put those items on my bill. I hate seeing people go without, so I will do what I can when I can. Doing so is one way we show love to others. I know plenty of other people that do the same thing. I heard my pastor speak about paying for the items that someone else started to put back. Ever since that point, I have started to do it as well. This is something that is good to do, but without love, we won’t gain anything. Motives Matter Love is a matter of the heart first, and then actions that come from a spirit of love. Faith without works is dead, but faith is the first part of that statement. Love and faith are both matters of the heart, so the actions that we take must come from the heart to make a difference.  We have all met someone that has done things for the wrong motives. We have all BEEN that person that has done something for the wrong reasons. No amount of actions can cover up the missing ingredient of love. It is not the same. The Same Action Can Have Different Motives Imagine if after I paid for someone’s groceries I yelled it from the middle of the store. That is not love; that is being selfish and prideful; it’s being done so I can tell everyone how “generous” I am. Also, the person may be embarrassed. Is that loving? At the end of the day, my action of buying groceries would mean nothing. But that doesn’t mean you can’t tell anyone. Remember, I started doing it because I heard my pastor say that she does it. She said it in front of a full church during a sermon.  Is that the same thing as yelling about my action in the grocery store? Not really, because there is a different motive. One situation encourages others to work on God’s behalf; the other draws attention towards myself. The heart of love makes the difference.  Today, be generous but do it from a place of love. Don’t be a blessing to get a blessing; Be a blessing to bless others. Confession Today “I will be generous with the right heart. I will not give to get; I will give so that others will get. The love in my heart matters, and I will let my actions come from a heart of love and not a place of selfishness.”

No Love, No Victory – We Are NOTHING Without Loving Other People “If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. – 1 Corinthians 13:2 NLT (emphasis added) Paul is saying that we could be one of the most spiritual people ever and have enough faith to move mountains, but we would be nothing if love is not in the picture. This is something that we need to examine. The gift of prophecy, understanding God’s plans, possessing knowledge, and having faith are all important things. So if not having love makes a person that has all these things nothing, we need to pay attention.  We have a call on our lives. We are born with potential. Some of us have the ability to do many things well. I know one man that can learn any instrument in five minutes, is a black belt in Aikido, and he is also a great public speaker. He has many talents, but if he does not love people, it will not matter.   No matter how much we can do, we are NOTHING without loving others.  How We Treat People Matters God’s number one priority is people. There is no way around that. Often we act like the call on our lives is the most important thing to God. The call on our lives is essential, but the way that we treat people is God’s number one priority. God’s love for people is the reason He gave us a calling! We are created to love people. If we don’t love people, what are we really doing? Love is Our Calling Card “For when you demonstrate the same love I have for you by loving one another, everyone will know that you’re my true followers.”  – John 13:35 TPT We are to be known by the way we love others. It doesn’t matter what we can do or what we are supposed to do. At the end of the day, the way we love others is what matters most. Don’t die with the call of God not resulting in His intended way because you didn’t love people.  “Doing one thing with love is more powerful than doing a thousand things without love.” Confession Today “I will love others in everything I do. God is helping me love others through the call He has on my life. I will make loving other people my main priority because I am nothing if I don’t love other people! God’s number one priority is loving others, so I will make it mine as well.”