February 15, 2015 – Sunday

Start Time: 10:00 AM

End Time:  11:00 AM

Title: What is Love?

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13

God’s Message / God’s Promise / God’s Commands:

→ Love is misunderstood today.  It has different meaning from different people but real love comes from the source of it, the One who created it – God.  So to fully understand love, it must first come from God!  1 Corinthians 13 defined what love is and it is very different from the love we know or thought we knew.  It is more than just emotions or feelings.  It is more than just butterflies in your stomach or the wonderful experience of being with someone.  With love comes the truth of the possibility of pain too.  Love is like a coin – it comes with two sides; one side includes all the wonderful and amazing feelings or actions, while the 2^nd side includes the pain and sufferings.  So when you want to be in love or to love someone, know that it is not just a bed of roses, the roses comes with thorns too.

In 1 Corinthians 13, God showed us thru Paul the definition of Love and if you read it through, you would understand the magnitude of its meaning.  It starts with Love being patient!  In the Tagalog dialect, patient is “matiisin”.  Now, think about it for a moment.  Love is patient or matiisin.  This only implies that when in love, there will be a lot of things that you have to be patient about or things that you have to “tiis”.  The word “tiis” usually is connected to martyrdom because you have to go through a lot of pain when you’re a martyr but the truth is when you love, you will have to do the same.  There are no two people who are alike and it requires adjustment to be with someone.  That’s why patient is key!

Then it continued on by defining love as kind.  Having known that you will have to endure with love, it is not enough to just endure or be patient, love is also kind.  So when you love, enduring with patient is a requirement but so is being kind too.  So not only will you need to be patient but you need to act or speak kindness to the person you are enduring too!  Wow!  Now, that’s where there will be a little bit of struggle.  So this is what love is – enduring by being patient and being kind.

Love is never jealous or envious.  The truth about love is that when we see the other blessed more than we are, we are not jealous or envious instead we are thankful, knowing full well that the blessings the other person receives are the blessings he/she truly needs in his/her life at this moment.  At the same way, the blessings you get whether big or small, are the blessings God knows you need at this moment so always be grateful.

Love is not proud or boastful.  It does not consider one’s self better than the other because though in some areas you are better than someone else, in other many areas, the other person is better than you.  So there’s fairness and equality.  We ought to understand that we are all the same, no one is better than the other so no one can boast or be prideful.  More importantly, everything we have or know, we have and know because of the Lord.  So in truth, everything we have or know is not fully ours but God’s.

Love is not rude, self seeking/selfish and not easily angered for it does not keep records of wrong.  Many of us are guilty of this.  We can be sarcastic and disrespectful to others many times whether intentional or not.  And we are selfish by nature too so we are easily get angry because we keep in mind the wrongs that one person do/did to us.  We are unable to let go of them and so we say we forgive yet we do not forget.  That’s why when the other person makes a mistake again, we get angry easily because we know that it is not the first time they did this.  Clearly this behavior shows that we are keeping a record of the mistakes others do to us.

Many times we see what should NOT be done… but we forget what should be!  That’s why when we reprimand a child, we kept telling the kid what he/she shouldn't have done yet we do not tell him/her what he/she should have done instead.  So the kid only remembers what he should not do but do not know what he should do instead. 

In summary, love is sacrifice!  In everything that is written in this chapter of what love is, it all boils down to sacrificing what you love most for the love of someone else – whether it’s just something you have or ultimately your selfish desires.  So that’s why they said, when we speak of love, it’s image today is the heart when in fact it should be the heart and the cross.  For where love is, there is always sacrifice for all persons involve.  The question now is… do you still want to love or be in love for that matter?