Notes
If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13
Most of what you do is defined by your heart. To make a difference in the world, you have to pair your heart with the talents God has given you. The enemy is after your heart, so we have to guard it above everything. We do that by holding on to the eternal things 1 Corinthians 13 lists: faith, hope, and love.
1) Fertilize your faith
If you have a plant you want to grow and prosper, you fertilize it. You need to feed your faith the right food so it can grow. A heart filled with faith gives us the courage to use our gifts and talents. We can strengthen our faith by obeying God in the small things so that when the big things come around, we are prepared.
2) Have higher hopes
Our highest hope should be that God is going to do what He said He would do. Hope gives us the motivation to keep working with our gift. This life is not the end!
3) Leverage love
A heart filled with love gives us the compassion to leverage our gift, and to continue when things get difficult. Without a strong love for people, like God has, you’ll quit in the face of adversity. Love them as they are, and love them too much to leave them captured by the power of sin. Love never fails.
Group Questions
Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.
Proverbs 4:23
- Read Proverbs 4:23. What does it mean to guard your heart?
- How do we fertilize our faith?
- In what ways does hope in the right things give us motivation?
- What does it look like to love people as God loves them?
Prayer
We want our lives to display faith, hope, and love to everyone we meet. Help us to apply these eternal things to our lives and to use them to permeate our community with the Good News.