February….the month of love
Greetings to all of God’s saints at CCF.
February is the month of Love on many levels, and understandably, we expect an excerpt about love. Saint Valentine comes to mind for example, but we won’t go there this time. Love for the Christian hopefully falls into a different category. For the masses, love tends to be selfish, like it or not. Hopefully, that does not include any of you. But……sometimes that hits closer to home for most of us than we like to admit. I am talking about the selfish side of love that appeals to our consumer nature. It is satisfied by what another does for us, what we get out of it. We think, I love so and so based on how they improve our lives, but we won’t admit it. For the Christian, Love is a service we provide to another. Love is a sacrificial act we offer to those in our lives, regardless of what we get in return. Christian love, by nature, is labor. It takes effort, sacrifice, and suffering. Try marketing that product!!
Pauls sells us love in this way in his letter to the church in Corinth:
4 Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant. 5 It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered, 6 it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Practice this form of Love, and I guarantee an improvement in your spiritual walk. People will be drawn to you, but your family will not recognize you. You will be called a demon, a winebibber, and a sinner by the religious elite, like they accused our Lord. It will be worth it, I promise. The Christian evaluation of love is to lower yourself and elevate others. The practice of this establishes a culture that turns all faces towards God and leaves you in the shadows. In this way, you decrease, and He increases.
“Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen”.
God’s Blessings to you all,
Pastor Jason Kinnick