3 Remarkable Traits of Love that Reveal Healthy Faith

What is love? An old story illustrates it well…….kind of. 

There’s an elderly couple at a MacDonalds. They order one Big Mac, one fry, one pop, and an extra cup. The man sits with his wife and proceeds to cut the burger in half, pour out the fries and divide them in half, and pour half the pop into the extra cup. 

There’s a man sitting at the table next to them who sees all this and thinks they might be financially destitute and end up hungry. So he decides to take a chance. He says, “Listen, I’d love to buy you a second meal, if you’d let me.”

The elderly man smiles and shakes his head. He says, “No, thank you. My wife and I have shared everything for the last 50 years. But much appreciated.”

So the guy who made the offer goes back to eating his meal. But he can’t help notice the wife isn’t eating. Only the husband is eating. So he inserts himself again and asks her why she’s not eating.

Her answer illustrates one very important aspect of love.

We need to know what love is. There’s a lot of confusion today about what love is, and there always has been.

In our passage for this weekend’s sermon we read a famous line from the Bible, a fundamental truth—”God is love.” In fact it’s stated twice.

And there’s also this phrase, “This is love,” and the phrase, “This is how we know what love is.” And it goes on to tell us what this thing is that is love and how we can know what love is.

I hope you can make this weekend as we explore the traits of biblical love, the love God calls us to.

Oh, you might be wondering what her answer was.

Sorry, but I’m saving the punchline for the weekend! But maybe you’ve already guessed.

Photo by Nhia Moua on Unsplash

3 Sources of Strength and Courage in Dark Times

Christine Caine and her husband, Nick, founded a global anti-human trafficking organization. That means she and her team often voluntarily enter into really dark, hopeless places to bring the light of Christ. And when you bring the light of Christ into dark places, the dark places often don’t like it, so it becomes dangerous. But it’s what she does. 

A few years ago, when I heard her explain how she does it, she talked about her little 4-year-old daughter who was normally afraid of the dark. But a transformation happened when she had a flashlight in the dark. Even the smallest beam emboldened her.

So one day she and her daughter were in Walmart buying a flashlight. They finally picked one out, and on their way out the doors her daughter says, “Mommy, can we please go find some darkness?”  

Then Caine expounded in that idea. She explained that It doesn’t take much light to dispel the darkness. But we have more than a flashlight beam, we have the light of Christ! And Christ is compelling us to go into the darkness with his light. It would be a lot easier to stay in the light of Christ and simply shout down the darkness out there. We all do that from time to time, and we’re all tempted to do it. But we can’t give in.

We’re not just tempted to stay out of the dark places and simply shout them down, sometimes all we can muster is despair, and so we lose hope. And other times we’re tempted to just give in and get along.

But none of those responses are the way of Jesus. 

The Apostle Peter saw first-hand the way of Jesus because he followed him for close to three years. He saw how Jesus reacted to opposition and how he brought the light of God into dark places. 

In 1 Peter, a letter Peter wrote, he seeks to encourage a group of Christians who are undergoing a dark time of persecution. For this group that’s tempted to despair or just give up on their faith because it’s become too hard, he reminds them of three sources of strength and courage in dangerous and dark times. 

That’s what we’ll be looking at this weekend from 1 Peter 2.

Do you know someone who is tired of or afraid of or losing hope in the darkness? Invite them to join us for worship this weekend.

Photo by Isaac Davis on Unsplash