Without Love, Nothing Has Value

This year, more than ever, God has led me to meditate on love. It may be that when one reaches a certain age, one begins perhaps to reevaluate one’s life and see how one is doing in the important things in life. It was also the year in which we celebrated 25 years of marriage, and it was the year in which one of our daughters got married. And it was the year in which, for the first time, we are experiencing what it means to be grandparents. And all those things make one reflect deeply on how one got there and how one can improve in the future.

And I have discovered that the greatest treasure I have is the love of my heavenly Father. It is the awareness of his presence in my life, the fact that he is the one piloting my plane, that every aspect of my life is under his control, and that nothing escapes him; even what I do not see, he sees. And I want to tell you tonight that God’s love is unchanging. It has always been and always will be upon you. None of us is a mistake, and none of us escapes the loving gaze of our Father.

Our God is a God who seeks; he seeks his children with zeal and passion and desires to have a personal and intimate relationship with each one of you. The Word says in Jeremiah, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” It is a love that never ends. The love of our Father is manifested in every aspect of our lives. It begins with the vision and the future, the destiny that he has placed within each one of us. It is manifested in his forgiveness, in his attention to every detail of our lives, in providing for all our needs, and even in his comfort and affirmation of who each one of us is.

And I have learned that God is very pleased with what we do for his Kingdom, but that he delights even more in who we are in him. He cares about who we are in private, what our motivations and attitudes are. And the moments when I most feel God’s love and God’s presence are not the moments of doing, but the moments of being, when I am his daughter and when I focus on knowing who I am in him and receiving his tender words of love, his loving embrace, and even his word of correction. So those are the most important, most meaningful moments in my Christian walk.

This is the first time, I believe, that we have done this duet. We have to do it more often, as I keep telling you. I am always telling him that he should preach more, isn’t that right? Amen. So I am willing to translate whenever you want.

And I want us to turn to the Word, to the quintessential passage about love, which would obviously be First Corinthians 13. First, we are going to read from verse 1 through verse 3, which says:

“…though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have no love, I become like sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could move mountains, and have no love, I am nothing. And though I distribute all my possessions to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have no love, it profits me nothing….”

So that confirms what I was sharing earlier: no matter how magnificent what we do may be, it is worth absolutely nothing if it is not conceived and bathed in love. And we continue reading in the same passage, First Corinthians 13, verses 4 through the first part of verse 8, where it says:

“…love is patient and kind; love does not envy; love does not boast and is not puffed up; it does not behave improperly, does not seek its own, is not provoked, and keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in injustice, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things….”

And the last part we are going to read says, “…love never fails….”

This is the love I aspire to have in my life. Perhaps many of you have heard that love is not a feeling, right? Although part of it is feeling, it is more a decision. Love must be grounded in a genuine desire to honor God, and when it comes from that source—from God’s inexhaustible love—that is when it takes on supernatural power. Never underestimate the power of the acts of love you perform in the name of the Lord.

And at this year’s end, I want to give you three challenges concerning love. The first is: devote yourself to knowing your Father as he is. Try to discard the worldly image you have acquired throughout your life of who God is. We all have to do that because we do not know God as he truly is, and we often act and react against God in ways that we have learned throughout our lives, based on our experiences in life.

So I want to encourage you to open your heart to God like the heart of a child. Greg was alluding to that same principle: how a little child approaches his loving father. He does it freely, with abandon and trust. He climbs onto his daddy’s lap and nestles against him; he seeks protection when he needs it and comfort when he needs it; he brings him his little broken toy so his daddy can fix it. And many times we have learned to treat God with great formality, even though what he desires is for us to come to him like a child.

So that is the first challenge I want to offer: devote yourself to knowing God and his attributes as he is, because in that you will find freedom.

It just came to mind that when I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, what the Lord repeated to me over and over was the phrase, “A father’s love, it is a father’s love.” For about an hour, God repeated that to me: “A father’s love, it is a father’s love.” And that was when I began to treat God as my real daddy, because before that, to me he was a formal, distant God, a judge. From then on, everything changed. Then I had the freedom to approach him as his little girl and, for the first time, to call him my Abba, my daddy. In my mind, I knew that was the image I was supposed to have, and since then God has continued to reveal himself to me and has placed within me a hunger to seek him as my daddy. That has made me a much better person because he has made me whole and set me free.

The second challenge I want to give you is this: do not settle for the way you love today. Aspire to grow in love. Evaluate where you need to change. Do you love as described in the passage from First Corinthians 13 that we just read? Acknowledge your faults. You know that many of us remain stuck and settle for mediocre love when, in fact, we have all the resources of heaven to enable us to love as God loves and to continue growing in the love of God.

So that would be this: ask God to transform your heart so that you can learn to love like a child. One principle of counseling is that if there is no change, there is no change. So if you want better relationships with your spouse, your children, your siblings, your coworkers, your neighbors, or anyone at all, then you have to make changes. So that is the other challenge.

And as part of that, do not wait for others to change before you change. Many times we remain stuck in the same situation because we point to the other person as the one who must change first, when in fact we can begin. And the wonderful thing is that sometimes, when we do that—when we incorporate positive changes in love and in the way we treat others—we see that this perhaps releases a willingness from God to work in the situation, because we are obeying God by doing what he has commanded us to do.

So the first challenge is: devote yourself to knowing God as he is, to knowing your Father as he is. Aspire to grow in love, and the third is: grow in your demonstration of love toward others. Each one of us is an ambassador of the Lord’s love. A home where love reigns and grace prevails is the greatest testimony there can be to the transforming power of Christ, and it is the place where these children who were here at the front, and so many others, will learn to love.

So, dear brother, dear sister, regardless of your age or marital status, you now have, in just a short time, 365 days of opportunities ahead of you to demonstrate genuine love.

So I encourage you to make the most of every day. Amen. Well, let us pray that it may be so. Why don’t we stand? Let us ask the Lord to make that possible: to grow in the genuine love of God, to manifest it, and also to express it.

Thank you, Lord. Lord, we come before you just as we are, and we ask you, Lord, to help us better understand how to come to know you as you truly are. Father, we come before you as we are, and we ask you to make changes in our lives this year so that we may become more sensitive to your love.

Lord, open our hearts so that we may be more sensitive to your love. Father, help us grow in becoming like children so that we may come to you as you want us to come to you—with abandon, surrender, joy, and love. I ask you, Lord, that there may be a transformation in every home, first through the power of your love, through the eternity you place within the human being, and through your grace upon every life. And Lord, through the changes that each one of us will establish in our homes and in all our relationships, may we truly bear witness to your love.

Help us to love, Lord. Father, when it is difficult for us, help us to love. Help us to love the one who has hurt us, and I also ask you, Lord, to tear down every barrier that prevents us from loving as you want us to love. Father, may your healing love be the mark of every person here, of every family. Lord, teach us, Lord. We cannot do it in ourselves or in our own strength; we depend on you. Like children, we sit on your lap; we ask you, Lord, for your love, and we take refuge in your love. We delight in your love and prepare ourselves to love others as well. Thank you, Father. Amen. In the name of Jesus, amen, amen. Glory to the name of the Lord. A good foundation for beginning the year: remembering the most basic of spiritual principles—the love of God in our lives, manifesting it, feeling it, learning God’s love, and seeing God as he is. Glory to the Lord.