The Power of Love - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, October 20th. Social media and technology tempt us to be self-focused. The cure for that attitude is found in 1 Corinthians 13. Learn to experience the power of love as the series Liberated to Love continues. Love will enable you and me to live a certain way that without love we can't live that way.

We can try to fake it out but we can't live that way. Love empowers and enables us to live a certain way. When I think about it, you have one or two choices in life. You can walk around life full of anger, bitterness, resentment, hostility and unforgiveness. Just messed up and frustrated in life and unhappy and no peace, no joy and just making it through life and getting up on Monday morning and thinking, well, I got another whole week to live. Or you can get up with the love of God flowing in your life and flowing through your life.

You know what happens? It doesn't make any difference how anybody treats you. It doesn't make any difference what the weather's like. Nothing makes any real difference because the source of your joy, your happiness and your love is flowing from within you. It has nothing to do with how people treat you on the outside. And so often we think that we love in response to others. Love isn't just a response. Love is an action. Love is a choice that you and I make. And those of us who know Jesus Christ as our personal savior, we have tapped into that inexhaustible, infinite resource of the love of Almighty God, which means that we have a capacity to love.

Most people will never begin to understand in their whole lifetime. So notice what Paul begins, how he begins in this fourth verse. He says, first of all, love will enable you and me to wait. That's what this means when he says love is patient. That is, love will empower us. Love will enable you and me to wait on God's timing, to wait for God's purposes.

Love enables us to wait. Then if you notice, he says, love enables us to be kind, to express kindness. That means that you and I have the capacity to be kind toward others, whether they're kind to us or not. And oftentimes we'll be criticized, abused, falsely accused, whatever it might be. What is our response to be? Well, human speaking, we will respond the way the world speaks and the way the world responds. But love, that is because I have God loving on the inside of me, it doesn't make any difference what someone says to us about us, it does to us.

We have the response and we can respond in kindness. Then he says, love is not jealous. That is, love will enable me to share. You see, if I know how to have a friend, I can share those friends with other people.

When I'm jealous only because I don't want to lose you or I don't want to share you with someone else, then that is a kind of jealousy. He says that you and I, who are his children, who are filled with his love, have the capacity and the power to share without fear. And of course, that is sharing wisely in the wisdom of God and in the confines of what he allows. Then you'll notice, he says, we have the power. Love enables us to have poise.

And what is he saying? He says, we are not braggadocio and we're not arrogant. Love doesn't have to brag.

You know why? Because love has such a relationship with God. When we are loving him and loving others, we have a relationship with him. He satisfies us. It doesn't make any difference what anybody else thinks, what they say, what they do. We are full of the love of God.

We're experiencing something. We don't need anything on the outside to make us feel complete. So he says love is poise. It has the power and the potential to stand quietly on the inside, no matter what's going on on the outside. It isn't arrogant. It doesn't have to boast.

It doesn't have to be number one. It doesn't have to be the center of attention. It does not have to do all the talking. Then if you'll notice, he says, it does not act unbecomingly or love is polite.

Love has the power. Love enables us to be well-mannered and to be polite and to be careful no matter what's going on around us and no matter who it is. It's not that we're just to be well-mannered in public.

We're to be well-mannered and polite in private because we're the sons and daughters of God. And he says, but this all men shall know that you are my disciples, that you have loved one to another. How does love act? Love acts politely. Love acts in a manner that is well-mannered. Then he says, love, listen to this, love does not seek its own. What is he saying? Love surrenders its rights.

You know why? Because love never loses. You can't ever lose loving.

Then he says, if you'll notice, he says that it is not provoked. That is, love enables me to have a quiet spirit no matter what. Now, when you and I learn to love, people can say all kind of things and we can just stand, listen to them and smile and say, thank you very much. Sorry you don't understand or I understand how you feel or what you're saying.

Or if they accuse us, here you are Christian, you this and you that. Just let it go by. Now, we have to learn to love. We certainly do have to learn to love.

But we can respond in the proper fashion. We don't have to be, as he says, easily provoked. And if we're easily provoked and touchy, it's because we are wrapped up in ourselves. He says for those of us who understand the love of God to experience that, let them say what they want to say, do what they want to do. We don't have to defend ourselves. We can just love them in return no matter what. Then he says this love that we're speaking of here, he says it does not seek its own.

It's not provoked. It does not take into account a wrong suffering. Now, listen very carefully. Did you know that one of the primary problems in people's relationships is an unforgiving spirit? You know what Paul says in this passage when he speaks here of does not take into account wrong suffering?

Here's what he's saying. That love enables me to forgive. It empowers me to forgive no matter what. Think about this. An unforgiving spirit is a spirit of bondage. An unforgiving spirit is a spirit of imprisonment because you cannot keep score without being imprisoned by what's on the scoreboard.

And God does not intend for us to act that way. Let me ask you a question. How many sins have you ever committed that God has not forgiven you for? Not a one. Well, let me ask you this.

What right do you and I have? Is it even fitting to you and me as believers, followers of Jesus Christ, that we are such that we can't forgive someone for something that God has forgiven them for? If a person is a believer, they live in the forgiveness of God.

Now, he'll bring about discipline to remind them of what they've done and correct their conduct and their actions or sense of direction. But forgiveness isn't a choice on my part. Forgiveness is just a part of being a believer, forgiving. The unbeliever has a real difficult time with this. But for the child of God, we have God's love on the inside of us flowing through us.

He enables us. That's the power of love. Probably 95 percent of people who have problems in their relationships, if not more, have problems with an unforgiving spirit. They just can't forgive. But Paul says love enables you and me. If you've got a scoreboard, love enables us to erase it.

On what basis? He says when he pardoned us, he pardoned us from all sin, past, present and future. The crucifixion took care of. He says it keeps no score of wrongs, no matter what it may be. Forgiveness is the only way godly people can live, no matter what. Do you have the capacity to do it in your own self?

No. But there's somebody inside of you who is willing to let that love flow through you, no matter what. And you see, if you have an unforgiving spirit, you're a prisoner. And it's amazing to me how people hate and have animosity and bitterness and resentment and hostility and all these things going on inside of them. And they think that that's legitimate.

It may be legitimate from their perspective, but what it's doing is poisoning their whole system. A person who is living with an unforgiving spirit is a person living in poison. And what's happening is that poison has absolutely saturated everything from their mind, the top of their head, the bottom of their toes. This poison is dripping out. And you know what will happen? When a person is like that, you don't have to be around them very long before what happens.

They begin to pour it out. And so he says, love does not keep, does not take into account wrong suffering. He says, likewise, love doesn't rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices of the truth. We do hate evil and injustice.

We're supposed to hate that kind of thing. The thing that sin does not hate the one who is committing the injustice, but hate the evil itself. For example, in spite of everything we see on the outside, the real truth is this.

Every single person God's ever created has within them the capacity to become something. But so often the way they grow up, so often the way they're treated, so often the what they learn and what they have not learned, what they've been exposed to, what they've not been exposed to. All of that is a part of this poisonous system that has caused them to be so corrupted in their morality, so corrupted in their view of life that they want to destroy someone else. But deep down inside of that, there is somebody.

Let me ask you a question. Why is it that you and I have not committed these atrocious crimes? Because by the grace of God, the goodness of God, the love of God, and by things you and I don't understand, we didn't grow up in that kind of a situation. Somebody taught us better. We learned better. We had parents or one parent or maybe didn't have any parents around us, but somehow we received enough truth, got enough of the right influence.

We don't we don't participate in that. But there are people out there. That's all they've ever known is grab, stab, climb, beat, shove, push, get it no matter what. Does that mean they don't have the capacity to love?

It means that it's been so covered up for so long, it may appear they have no capacity, but God created them with the same capacity that you and I have naturally. Then when we find the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, then we know how to love someone. But the most unlovable person is worth saving no matter what. And the reason I know that is because when He said, For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him.

The most unlovable, despicable kind of person. God loves every single person equally. Does He treat us all alike? No. Will He save anybody?

Yes. God does not have any kind of slates, scoreboards He's keeping on anybody. He just loves us.

And you know what? He wants us to love in the same way. And, He says, in rejoices of the truth, love wants to know the truth about itself. You see, when you and I are loving, we want to know the truth about us as well as other people.

Because we want to become the persons God wants us to be. Then He says, Love bears all things. Now what does that mean? That word really means to cover things. Love, the love of God within me, empowers and enables me to hear bad things about people and keep it to myself. Covers a multitude of sins. You see, if you're the kind of person who gets to the telephone just as soon as you hear something bad, that's not loving. When He says love covers a multitude of sins, it means no matter what's bad in your life. I don't want to just share that with the world. I want to help you deal with it if I can.

Or I may not be able to do anything but keep my mouth shut. Love covers a multitude of sins. If I love somebody, remember what that means? If I love someone, genuinely love them, I'm looking out for their happiness, their security and their well-being. Now their well-being may cause me to go to that person and say, this is not right and you need to correct this and I'm willing to help you if I possibly can. Because you see, I want you to become the godly person God wants you to be. And I'm willing to help you build those characteristics in your life that God wants so that you can become the person you want to be.

But being openly critical, gossiping, caustic criticism, none of that has to do with love. But it also does mean to be willing to bear someone else's burden. Move over to Galatians chapter five. You recall in this passage when Paul is talking about people making mistakes and stumbling in their life in the earlier part. Then he says in the sixth chapter and he says in verse one, Brethren, even if a man or woman is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such one in the spirit of gentleness, each one looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted, bear one another's burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ. Now what's the law of Christ?

Remember what he said? He said, all the law and the prophets hang on this. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, strength, and thy neighbors yourself. He says, now we're to bear each other's burdens and when you and I are willing to get up under somebody else's load, it may be an emotional load, it may be something in their finances and the job it is making them is what it is. He says, love is reaching beyond itself, willing to bear to help to cover if necessary, willing to protect, willing to get up under that load and share that load with someone else. Then he says, it bears all things, it believes all things. Does that mean that love, that if we are loving people, that we're just gullible, we believe everything we hear?

No. Here's what it means. Love enables me to believe the best about someone no matter what. That's what love does.

You see, love isn't suspicious, always looking for some reason to criticize. Then if you'll notice, he says that love hopes all things. That means simply this, that love enables me to hope for the best in you no matter what's going on. Now think about this for a moment.

Tell me something. When you're undergoing difficult and hardship and trial and suffering in your life, what is it, what is it that gives you the most hope? When somebody loves us and we know that they love us and we feel their love and we're experiencing their love, you know what, it doesn't make any difference how bad, how difficult, how deep, how dark, how dingy it may be. There's something that stimulates hope and invigorates and brings to birth hope in our life when we feel loved by someone else. He says love hopes all things. And then he says love endures all things.

What does he mean? Listen to this. That when you and I love, there is a strength.

Listen to this. There is a strength. There is a power. There is an energy. There is a source of strength within us that flows through us that enables us to bear up and to bear and to receive and to go through. The troubles, the trials, the heartaches.

You know what happens? Somehow he keeps us steady. The truth is when the love of God is flowing in your life and mine, we're tapped into this inexhaustible resource and God's love can flow through us.

And what's happening? We're not settling ourselves. We're thinking about other people. And so we endure by the strength that God gives. It is the love within us that enables us to endure. And then he concludes this part of this passage by simply saying in verse eight, listen, love never fails. That is, love is unending. When you and I have the love of God within our hearts, let me ask you, when is it going to run out?

It's not going to ever run out. Here's what it means ultimately. That no matter what's going on and how long it goes on, no matter what troubles us and trials and heartaches we face, no matter what people say, what they do to us, he says the proper response is always love. That never fails. It never fails. You see, because if my response to difficulty and hardship and trial abuse or whatever it may be, if my response is always to love the other person, here's what that means.

Watch this now. That means that no matter what they do, I am still a free man because I don't allow them to imprison me with my bitterness and resentment and anger and hostility and unforgiving spirit. And if I should ask you, do you want to be free or imprisoned?

Everybody wants to be free. And my friend, if you want to be free, the love of God must flow in your heart. And I believe that he wants us all to be walking fountains of love, his love flowing, overflowing in us and through us to other people who are hurting all around us. And somehow when I'm giving myself away to someone else, I'm not thinking about me. And when I've given myself away to someone else, the love of God is so flowing through us that we don't feel like we've given away because the love of God is continually replenishing all that we give. Love is the eternal gift of God that keeps us the free children of God, which brings him the glory that he's seeking. Thank you for listening to part two of The Power of Love. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.