Talk is Cheap
http://www.onthingsabove.co.za/2009/01/finding-purpose-through-love-talk-is-cheap/
Talk is cheap!
“Verse 1: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal”
A man decides that he wants to marry the girl that he is currently dating. He hires a Hot Air Balloon and charts it along the Cape coastline in Summer. He surprises her with tickets to Cape Town for the weekend and they spend the Saturday driving around the garden route and stop for lunch at a quiet wine estate. That afternoon they are driving back the Cape Town and the gentleman surprises her once again with a Hot Air Balloon ride. She has always dreamed of this moment and now it is finally happening. Up in the balloon with the Ocean on the one side, lapping the shore beneath them, and the Cape Winelands stretching out on the other side. He turns to her and recites a poem that he has been struggling to write for the last few months. The words are the most eloquent words she has ever heard, they touch her deep in her heart. She feels so much in love with the man before her. He asks her to marry him and she accepts.
Heres the hiccup, later on in life he becomes complacent and his new wife starts to feel unloved because of his selfish behavior. As much as he says he loves her she will not feel loved. He can buy her all the presents in the world and she will not feel loved. What she needs is obedience...
That man promised to love her, to care for her, to respect her, to build her up, to help her and to support her. As he became complacent in their relationship he started spending more time at work, less time with his wife, more time with friends on the weekends and less time helping her around the house, more time in front of the TV and less time talking to her like they used to. This man has become disobedient to the very promise that he made to his wife.
My wife once said to me when I told her I loved her that I don’t need to tell her, but rather my actions towards her would tell her that I love her.
How often do we proclaim our love to God. We sing “How Great is our God”, “I Love You Lord” and “Blessed be your name.” But it is our obedience to the laws in His Word that gives those words meaning, that brings those words to life in Gods eyes. Our words and even the words of angels are a resounding gong. A loud harsh noise that only attracts the attention of those around. If we want our words to mean something more than a ‘resounding gong’ to your heavenly father then we should make sure that our lives are obedient to his laws, to his ideals, to his will, so that he can see that we really mean the words we say to him.
ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS!!
1 John 5:3 gives us a litmus test of how our love for God is shown to God. “This is love for God: to obey His commands. And His commands are not burdensome.”
Everything you do at church or at home in your attempt to show God that you love Him will only been seen as love if your heart is in such a place that you are not burdened by God’s commands. Rather you see the purpose of His commands and how they actually set you free. God’s commands are not designed to restrict us but rather to aid us in living fuller lives in Christ who saved us and the God who loves us.
What's interesting here is that as Paul discusses the intricacies of finding God's will in our lives he suddenly describes to us THE MOST EXCELLENT WAY. Paul has just finished his third missionary trip. He has been a Christian for 20 years by now. For a large portion of Pauls life he was a missionary completely focused on preaching the gospel. So this man Paul has spent 20 years leading people to Christ, encouraging them in Christ, he has spent this time making sure that his primary purpose would be to draw people nearer to God and encourage and correct them in their christian life. This man must have tried various ways of getting to know Gods will. More than that he has spent time trying to work out how to communicate that message to christians around him. After all this Paul says to us “This is the MOST EXCELLENT WAY!”
So lets take a look at the way that Paul suggests. Quite simply Paul says in no uncertain terms that Love is the way that we find our purpose. We often look at this passage in an attempt to understand love and we gloss over the comparison section and skip straight to the 'love is patient' section. The problem with this is that the comparison part of this scripture is the section that shows us how to Love. More importantly is shows us how to Love God. Only once we have grasped this can we dive into and grapple with the 'Love is patient' verses.
Paul strips bear the notion of love and our perceptions of love by telling us that without love so many of the things we often use as measuring sticks for love (like what we say to confirm our love, How well we know those people we love, even the things we do in the name of love), actually mean nothing.
Created over 3 years ago
