relationships and accomplishments…

if i don't live a life of love, nothing i accomplish will matter. 1 corinthians 13.3b in the message paraphrase says, no matter what i say or what i believe or what i do, i'm bankrupt without love.

you can rack up an incredible list of personal achievements. you can have enormous accomplishments, be entrepreneur of the year, build a billion-dollar company, have incredibly great successes in your field of endeavor. but the bible says it isn’t worth squat if you don’t love. the bible says – GOD says – relationships are more important than accomplishments. life is about relationships not accomplishments.

so let me summarize it like this. GOD says i can have the eloquence of an orator, the knowledge of a genius, the faith of a miracle worker, the generosity of a philanthropist, the achievements of a superstar, but if i don’t have love in my heart, it is worth zero. it doesn’t count. the only thing that matters to GOD is do i love HIM and do i love other people?

the bible is very clear that love is the primary objective of life and love is the supreme value in life and love is the greatest power in life. so if love is that powerful, if it’s the primary objective of life, if it’s what matters most in life, what in the world is it? what is love?

if you would go to your 24-volume world book encyclopedia, and look up “love” you will discover it has no article on love. in fact, it had one line that said, “love: see sex and emotion.”

now if you look up the article on emotion. you already know about sex. if you look up the article on emotion and you read the entire article. it mentions the word “love” one time and never defines it.

so then if you look up this article on “sex” you will find three and a half pages – fascinating article. it mentions “love” four times and again never defines the term.

now isn’t that typical? we know far more about sex than we do about love. but almost nobody knows about real, mature, GODly, CHRIST-like love. we just haven’t the slightest idea. in fact, the world doesn’t know anything about love. almost all of the love songs that are “love” songs are really lust songs. they’re not about giving. they’re about getting. “give it to me! give it to me! give it to me! if you don't give it, i'm going to take it! and if i don’t get it, i’ll go somewhere else!” that's not love. that’s lust.

love can always wait to give. but lust can never wait to get. when a guy says to a woman, “if you love me, you’ll let me,” she ought to say, “if you love me, you’ll wait.” love can always wait to give. but lust can never wait to get.

just a thought from the front porch…