Friends, I sometimes wonder if I'm doing everything right, and yet still missing out on Christ. I could cross all my t's and dot all of my i's and yet be no nearer to Christ than I am now. As a minister, I work for the Lord. Literally, it is what I do, as the church I serve at has asked me to fill the seat of minister full time. I study, I pray, I call, text, counsel or visit, I do the "work" at the church, and even do the work of an evangelist, but works do not save, do they? So what is my hope? If my works can not save me, what can? Let's be honest, if works could save, Jesus died for nothing. After all, the Lord gave Israel works of the Law to atone, and yet over and again they failed. There is nothing I can do to "make it up to God." It's not about how good I can be, but how good God is. It is summed up in what Jesus calls the Greatest Commandment: to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and the second that is like it: to love our neighbor as ourselves. All the Law and Prophets, Jesus states, is summed up in these. God's love language is obedience. If we love Him, we will do as He states. And since all Authority has been given to His Son, we will follow the Son, in command and by His example. To be close to Messiah means to be like Him. to follow Jesus is to seek to be like Him. Otherwise, I think we're missing the point, even if we do everything right. 1 Corinthians 13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
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