Learning to Love...Continued from page 2

Susan Nikaido

Paul said love has supremacy over intellectual powers. He said if he had prophetic powers and understood all mysteries and all knowledge, and if he had all faith so as to remove mountains, but

had not love, he was nothing.

He went further. Love has supremacy over material sacrifice. You can dole out all your goods to feed the poor until you have nothing left. Yet all the money you’ve given isn’t entered to your credit in heaven unless your giving is motivated by love.

These absolutes stated by Paul are devastating. If you or I had written that second verse, we would have said, “If you have prophetic powers, if you understand all mysteries and all knowledge, if you have all faith, and yet you don’t have love, you won’t be nearly as effective as you otherwise would be.” But Paul said you can know your Bible backwards and forwards, yet without love you are nothing. You can have the kind of faith that gets wonderful answers to

prayer, but if you don’t have love you are a spiritual nobody.

Paul wasn’t trying to denigrate spiritual gifts or knowledge or having the faith that moves mountains. But he said all these things must be motivated by love or they are spiritually barren.

DJ

5. How do you react to Paul’s statement that spiritual gifts, knowledge, mountain-moving faith, sacrificial giving, and even dying for your faith amount to nothing if you are not a loving person?

The Look of Love
First Corinthians 13:4-8 contains a personified list of love’s qualities. The first is patience. People are not always easy to be patient with, are they? But love is capable of great self-restraint. Peter came to the Lord one day, perhaps after the other apostles had been giving Peter a rough time. He said, “Lord, how often should my brethren sin against me, and I forgive them? Seven times?”

I suppose he thought he’d made a great concession to forgive them seven times, but what did the Lord answer? Yes, Peter, that’s wonderful to forgive them seven times, but I suggest that you try seventy times seven, and then come and see Me again. Seventy times seven!

How patient am I? How many times do I forgive someone who does something wrong? How many times do I get impatient with my children? Love is patient?and when I am impatient, it’s because there’s a shortage of love.

6. With whom are you most likely to get impatient? Check all that apply.

____ Your children

____ Your spouse

____ Other family members

____ People to whom you are ministering