Lord Let Me Love

"So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
1 Corinthians 13:13

Lately my mind has been swirling with these three concepts... faith, hope and love. I think there is a simple answer to why love is the greatest, however, it has taken me, and is still taking me a while to put words around the thoughts in my head. Faith, is a result of the fall. Before our sin, God was with us, walking, talking, communing... we did not need faith, we had Elohim. And now in our twisted thinking we have taken faith and made it a god. Thinking that we can conjure up enough that we in our power can move mountains, heal the sick, and cast out demons. But faith is essential, without a belief in our God that we can not see then we can not have eternal life. Our faith is rooted and established in Christ and His shed blood... He increases our faith because He is alive and moving even though we can not see Him. When our faith becomes sight, what a moment... what a magnificence moment when there is no more faith!

Hope... a wishing for something with the expectation of it being fulfilled. Our only hope is in Christ. Again, hope is a result of the fall. We had all the fulfillment of the Godhead and His plans for us through creation, then we sinned. And now we must hope in the promise that through Christ there is more to come and He has already made the way possible through the shedding of His blood and His willingness to bear the wrath of God on our behalf. When we meet our Savior face to face, there will be no more hope... it will be fulfilled!

But Love... Only love will remain, because Love is the product of our God. It is that emotion that gets us in our guts. We know that it is bigger than us but yet it consumes us. We twist and turn it to fit what we need. We excuse our behavior and better judgment in the name of it. We sell our purity, our respect, our lives just for a moment of it. We move from one person to the next like a drug addict looking for her next fix. When in reality the one thing we love most is ourselves. It is the one thing we have directly from the person of God and use it against Him because our selfishness. Because when we see His love for us, we can not believe it. "For God so loved the world (i.e you) that He gave is only Son (He left praise, majesty, power, honor, glory, respect), that whoever (even if it was just one person) would believe in Him should not perish (His love is so extravagant that He wants none of us to die because of sin), but have eternal life (forever forgiven and in His presence). John 3:16... but keep reading... When faced with a love so extravagant that we find ourselves lost in its power... what do we love... darkness.

That is why the as Christians we will be known by our love. When we come to Christ's cross and allow Him to teach us this selfless extravagant love, we will want to pour it out on others, our husbands, wives, children, THE LOST! We don't have to wait to meet our Savior face to face... His love awaits us NOW! It is the GREATEST and most ENDURING.