Week 1 – Jeff Maness – August 5th, 2018
The only thing that is louder than the noise of anger, hatred, racism and division of world today is love. Love is louder. Love is not an emotion though, it’s an action, beginning with my patience and kindness towards those around me. So, if love is going to be louder in my life, then love must be the leader of my life.
Love Is Louder: Have Patience
John 13:34a So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3, 13 1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and ofangels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. (Joing noise) 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood allof God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faiththat I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would benothing. 3 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 havegained nothing. 13 And now these three remain: (out of all the gifts and everything I could ever do for God.) faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
John 13:34-35 So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.
Just over 60% of millennials say that Christianity is “judgmental” and 64% say that “anti-gay” best describes most churches today
Big Idea: If love is to be louder in my life then love must be the leader of my life.
Big Question: How do I lead with love?
1 Corinthians 13:4a 4 Love is patient and kind.
Patient = Makrothumeo (mak-roth-oo-meh’-o) — To defer anger, refusing to retaliate with anger from our human reasoning. The literalsense of the term is “extending a long time away”.
1. Choose to endure
The word used for patience here denotes a slowness to anger or passion; long suffering, patient endurance, and forbearance. It is opposed to haste; to passionate expressions and thoughts, and to irritability. It denotes the state of mind which can bear long when oppressed, provoked, accused falsely, or when one seeks to injure us. It is not quick to resentment, nor hasty to revenge when affronted, but is ready to forgive. Barnes & Gill Commentaries
A. Endure what’s done against me
1 Peter 2:21-23 21 For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example, and you must follow in his steps. 22 He never sinned, nor ever deceived anyone. 23 He did not retaliate when he was insulted, nor threaten revenge when he suffered. He left his case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly.
B. Endure things done around me
This love is patient towards all people. It suffers all the weakness, ignorance, errors, and infirmities of the children of God; and all the malice and wickedness of the children of the world; and all this not only for a time, but to the end; and in every step, an attempt to overcome evil with good. — Barnes Commentary
2. Choose to exceed expectations A.In our temperament
Kind = Chrésteuomai — Liberal, bountiful, and good-natured. Not gloomy. Doing good to all men. Gentle, courteous, tender, affectionate.
B. In our treatment of others
As a lawyer, I win arguments for a living, but something has changedwithin me. I want to be Jesus. I’ve concluded we can be correct and notright. Whenever I make my opinions more important than the difficult people God made, I turn the wine back into water. I’m trying to resist the bait that darkness offers me every day to trade kindness for rightness. — Bob Goff
“Kindness is a fruit of the Spirit, rightness isn’t.” — Pastor John
Romans 2:4 Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patientGod is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that hiskindness (love) is intended to turn you from your sin?
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