The Pillars of Christian Character: Love

00:00:01:18 – 00:00:09:14
Clint Loveall
with Michael out. Michael is on his way to a conference. A conference in Disney World?

00:00:09:17 – 00:00:38:14
Clint Loveall
Well, in its. Yeah. I mean, partly Disney World. So we’ll hope that goes well for him. The conference part. I don’t. Yeah. You’re gonna hear this. So when he gets back, everybody asks a lot of questions about the conference to see see if he actually went to any of it. But tonight, we are continuing to think about Christian character.

00:00:38:16 – 00:01:14:18
Clint Loveall
The the idea of who we are, not who we act like, not who we pretend to be, but who we truly are. That that’s the defining characteristic of character is that it’s the genuine story of who we try to be. And of course, we’re Christians. That’s rooted in the person of Christ, our ongoing task as faith people is to try and be as much like Jesus as we can become.

00:01:14:21 – 00:01:28:18
Clint Loveall
And tonight we look at, I think you could argue, what is the defining element of Christian character, which is love. It is our highest ideal.

00:01:28:21 – 00:02:05:06
Clint Loveall
Though at times, it’s probably a little fuzzy. But Christians celebrate many traits truth, justice, forgiveness. All of those are to be a part of the Christian life. We hear those things every week. We encounter them in Scripture all the time. But perhaps the thing that Christians should be known for more than any other thing, is the thing Jesus was celebrated for, which is love.

00:02:05:08 – 00:02:38:20
Clint Loveall
And unfortunately, as you know all too well in the church, that is sometimes not the thing we are known for. There is far too many instances where Christians display evidence of not being people who are loving. Now, that’s not always our fault. Sometimes we find ourselves with the reality that what we talk about us love as Christians, is different than what other people mean when they say it.

00:02:38:22 – 00:03:14:16
Clint Loveall
So when we take a stance on something we believe in. There are times people would misunderstand and tell us that we’re not being loving. Occasionally, it is not our fault. My experience is that most of the time it probably is. Most of the time when the charge of being unloving is leveled at Christians. It’s probably fair. We have often failed to be loving.

00:03:14:19 – 00:03:38:13
Clint Loveall
Now, love is one of those words that can be difficult to define, particularly in our culture, for, I think, two reasons. First of all, the word love is tricky. In in English, we’re going to talk about the Greek in a minute, and I’ll try not to beat you down with language stuff, but there is a good bit of it tonight.

00:03:38:15 – 00:04:06:17
Clint Loveall
In the English language, we have taken all the concepts of love, and we’ve shoved them really into that one word so I can love soup and love my children. And we use the same word, which is an odd concept that that we try to take this word and cover the whole range of human emotions, which is the second difficulty in the word.

00:04:06:19 – 00:04:37:19
Clint Loveall
We most often associate love with how we feel. This is the conversation that is inevitable as people get ready for their wedding and learning that emotional love is great, but it’s not the whole that’s not the whole story. So you you probably know, but the language of the New Testament is Greek, and in Greek there are several words for love.

00:04:37:20 – 00:05:11:11
Clint Loveall
So I’ll just run down a few of them. There’s the word eros, which is our word erotic. It’s romantic. Passionate love. On the far other end of that, there’s a word pragma, which is our word pragmatic. It’s mature, commitment, kind of love. Enduring. There’s mania which we get manic or maniac from. And that’s obsessive love. Excessive infatuation.

00:05:11:13 – 00:05:38:12
Clint Loveall
So if you are. If you are, oh, if you overdo a love of something, that’s mania. There’s fill us which is family love. Specifically brotherly love. If you know Philadelphia city of brotherly love, it’s also friendship, mutual affection. There’s a word called store gay, which is kind of parent child love or long time friends. It’s a it’s a bonding love.

00:05:38:12 – 00:06:03:23
Clint Loveall
It doesn’t have romantic elements in it, but it’s a committed love. There’s a fill out the which is self-love or self esteem. And it has, the good of confidence and at its worst, it’s narcissism. So there is a balancing act there. And finally, there is a Greek word agape, which I think many of you have probably heard.

00:06:03:26 – 00:06:30:27
Clint Loveall
This is a word that came to be for the Greeks, the idea of unconditional love or selfless love. A love for all people. For all of humanity. And it was the highest thought to be the highest form of love. Now, this is significant. When the Bible speaks of God’s love, it always uses that word agape. John 316 God so agape aid the world that he gave his son.

00:06:30:29 – 00:07:00:29
Clint Loveall
And later, when that son Jesus says, Love God and love your neighbor. It’s the word agape. And it wasn’t as if this word meant that originally Christians were in the process of learning a new language. Christians, in the aftermath of the resurrection, were trying to figure out how to talk about things that were new to them. And the best equivalent they could come up with for what they were trying to say was this word agape.

00:07:01:04 – 00:07:27:04
Clint Loveall
And so in the Christian faith, agape becomes exclusively that word for godly love. They adopted it, and they used it to describe what they felt like Jesus meant when he said, love one another. By this you will be known. By this they will know you belong to me. And they used this imperfect word to describe what was for them.

00:07:27:04 – 00:07:57:07
Clint Loveall
This kind of perfect concept. Ancient Christians considered love the chief virtue, the highest good. And they believed that it was not something that came natural to people, but something we had to practice. It had to be rehearsed. It was not our natural state. It was not some innate ability. It had to be learned. It had to be developed.

00:07:57:10 – 00:08:22:15
Clint Loveall
I mentioned premarital counseling. And in my position, I get to be involved in weddings, and we try to do this, this preparation, which, of all the things I do, I think I think it’s the worst. I don’t know. I don’t mean I, I don’t mean I don’t mean it’s the worst thing to have to do.

00:08:22:15 – 00:08:47:05
Clint Loveall
I think I do it the word. I think it’s the thing that’s hardest to do. Because you have these two, generally 20 somethings who are in love, love. And they’re sitting there and I’m saying, how do you handle conflict? And they go, oh, we don’t really have any conflict. And, and I say, well, where what do you do really well to get oh, we communicate really well.

00:08:47:11 – 00:09:14:24
Clint Loveall
We understand each other. I say, well where do you miss each other? And they go, oh, we, I guess we don’t really miss each other. And I and I think, what are we doing here? Right. Like I have no I feel like I’ve, I’ve developed no bridge that would allow them to see past where they are. And so you’ve some of you have heard this my favorite story.

00:09:14:27 – 00:09:36:24
Clint Loveall
This is many years ago sitting with a couple, and I’m asking how it’s going with the each other’s families. And is there good agreement? Everybody’s happy. And we talked for a little bit. And the groom, usually the groom, the groom says her family’s fine, but I don’t see what difference it makes. I’m marrying her. I’m not marrying her family.

00:09:36:27 – 00:10:00:06
Clint Loveall
And I’m trying not to laugh in the poor kid’s face. I think I said, well, I’ll talk to you around Christmas time and we’ll see if you think you married a family or not. Right. So you just you had the inability to communicate what love is going to need to look like over time. And it’s not their fault.

00:10:00:09 – 00:10:16:12
Clint Loveall
They they probably couldn’t know that. I’m sure we sat in marriage counseling thinking the same thing, like, oh, don’t know. Why do we need conflict skills with you? I’m easy to get along with.

00:10:16:15 – 00:10:55:15
Clint Loveall
Is so. So we we have always understood as, as Christians that that our task is something we have to seek. We have to look for it. And that task is to embody literally to be an example, to be an embodiment of God’s love, which, if you think about it, is a crazy tall order that we are called to in the way we treat other people, reflect the way that God has loved us.

00:10:55:17 – 00:11:40:04
Clint Loveall
A love that Jesus says even extends to our enemies, to people we don’t like, people we think are wrong. To people who have done wrong to us. Probably, possibly. The hardest thing asked of Christians love those who don’t love you back. When we get down to trying to define what that looks like, it’s difficult. We would use words like, well, you know, be kind, be nice, don’t wish harm on people, forgive people, don’t speak against them.

00:11:40:06 – 00:12:24:28
Clint Loveall
And, those are all good. But my suspicion is if we asked even Christians, what does it mean to love other people? What does it mean to have love as a cornerstone of your character in Christ? I think most of us would struggle to some extent. What does that look like now? Luckily, and I don’t want this to be a sermon this evening, but luckily we have a good bit of help from the place that you’re probably aware of in, New Testament, the first letter of Corinthians.

00:12:24:28 – 00:12:52:10
Clint Loveall
There’s this chapter late in the book that gets called the love chapter. Ironically enough, it’s almost always used at weddings. Paul calls it the most excellent way. In fact, if you read the end of chapter 12, he says, now I will show you a more excellent way. And that was that is prelude to the entire 13th chapter, which is devoted to the idea of love.

00:12:52:13 – 00:13:20:26
Clint Loveall
And I know that it’s mostly at weddings and it’s a good wedding passage. That is appropriate. But it’s also kind of a shame because unfortunately, when we hear that word over and over and over again with two people standing in front of one another who love each other, we kind of associate loving with people we already love, right?

00:13:20:28 – 00:13:53:16
Clint Loveall
The idea that we we live up to that and we treat those people well, which is true. That’s good. But it is worth remembering. Paul doesn’t write this for a wedding. Paul writes this to the messiest church that he dealt with. The church in Corinth was a wreck. They were splitting in half. They were in conflict. They argued a lot.

00:13:53:17 – 00:14:27:26
Clint Loveall
They were judging one another. They were making a mess of Christianity. I have no way to prove this. But somewhere on the order of 72% of Paul’s headaches came from the church in Corinth. They were that church. They were those people for him. And it’s in that context that he writes this beautiful illustration of how they should be treating each other a better way, a more excellent way.

00:14:27:27 – 00:15:08:16
Clint Loveall
You’re doing it this way. It would be better if you did it this way. And so I want to walk through the passage for a few minutes, and I want you to notice, maybe three things. First, how big Paul’s concept of love is. Secondly, how practical or challenging it is. And thirdly, and I think for particular importance for our conversation, how many other things that we would consider virtues, Paul thinks are covered by love?

00:15:08:19 – 00:15:39:06
Clint Loveall
In other words, if you have the umbrella of love out, there are lots of other things you’re getting right as well. And Paul seems to think that those things are almost built in, so that love creates other kind of virtues in Christians, as well as just love. So, if you know the chapter, chapter 13, Paul begins with what is incomplete or what we lack.

00:15:39:09 – 00:16:04:27
Clint Loveall
If I speak with the tongues of men and men and angels, if I have all the knowledge that can move mountains. If I give my body over to be tortured. But I lack love. Does anybody remember what he says? I’m a noisy gong. I’m a clanging cymbal. I am nothing. So interestingly for Paul, for the Christian, a life without love is unfinished.

00:16:05:00 – 00:16:42:07
Clint Loveall
It’s incomplete. And he’s not talking here about marriage and family. Those. Those are good things. Love here is that character part of us. The inner part. If I lack that, I may have lots of other great things. I may be nailing it in all these other areas, but I’m just a symbol making noise. If I don’t have the foundation, if I don’t tend to the core, the other stuff doesn’t matter.

00:16:42:09 – 00:17:17:15
Clint Loveall
Remember, agape is not generic love. It’s godly love. And then the descriptors start. And this is that if you’ve been to a wedding that I’ve done that had this passage, I also only have one wedding sermon. Really? If people use this verse, the thing I asked them to to realize, which I think is hard at the time, is that none of these words are feeling words.

00:17:17:17 – 00:17:55:24
Clint Loveall
You can read the entire chapter of the 13th chapter of First Corinthians. And Paul’s not talking about emotion. Paul isn’t talking about how we feel. He’s talking about how we act. All of the language, as Paul moves on to describe love, is verb language. Paul is most interested in what love does and what love does not do, not how we feel about it, not how it makes us feel.

00:17:55:26 – 00:18:28:17
Clint Loveall
It is our actions that ultimately show our character and the character of love. So does anybody know where he starts? Love is patient. Yeah, the worst one right away. This is a compound word. It means it’s two words. The Greek shoved together, and one is long and one is anger. So it means to put anger down the road to to have a long fuze, to endure long suffering is the old translation.

00:18:28:17 – 00:19:03:04
Clint Loveall
To bear with the short version is love doesn’t get mad quickly, which again, easy on your wedding day. Multiple years down the road, a little tougher at work on a Monday morning with people who drive you crazy. Little tougher. Love does not get angry quickly. You can’t get more practical than that. Secondly, Paul says, remember, love is kind.

00:19:03:04 – 00:19:35:25
Clint Loveall
Good. Yeah. Kind, is a word that means useful or beneficial. It was a word that they used to mean employed. If you had a job that was the root of this word. And in the verb form, it is. And I’m quoting here, active goodness that meets real need with gentle grace, which is a great sentence. Kindness is an attribute of applied to the nature of God, that God is kind to us.

00:19:35:28 – 00:20:04:00
Clint Loveall
And we think kindness, is performed on others, which is true. And I don’t want to. Again, sorry about the English teacher stuff here, but this verb in Greek is in the middle voice, which means it’s an action performed on yourself. So while we think that kindness helps others, the very word itself reminds us that kindness is the gift we give ourselves when we are kind to another.

00:20:04:03 – 00:20:38:00
Clint Loveall
Yes, we’re helping them, but we’re doing good also for ourselves. We are growing. Kindness benefits us. And then it’s probably a stretch. I don’t want to claim that this is in the word itself, but I love this idea of employment. To think in terms of kindness is our job. As Christians. You and I get up tomorrow morning and go about our job to be Christians and on our job description is to be kind to people.

00:20:38:03 – 00:21:07:00
Clint Loveall
There this quote gets it gets attributed to different people. I learned it as a quote from a guy named Philo of Alexandria, and he said something like or somebody said something like, be kind, because everybody you see is fighting a battle you don’t know, to be kind. And again, Christians are sometimes not known for our kindness, but we should be.

00:21:07:00 – 00:21:31:12
Clint Loveall
It’s literally in the job description. We move from there, to several things. That love is not. Love is patient. Love is kind. It is not. And I think this is significant because Paul could define love here only by what it does. But I think by adding what he doesn’t, he shows us where the fences are. He shows us what’s on the other side.

00:21:31:15 – 00:22:03:25
Clint Loveall
Anybody know where we start? Love is not. Yeah. Jealous. Envious. In the old language, the word here is the word zeal. It means to boil or burn. So it can be again. It can be good or bad. Here it’s the negative form. It’s jealousy to, compare ourselves. If love is a call to serve others, you can’t serve others and compare them to you at the same time.

00:22:03:27 – 00:22:45:21
Clint Loveall
Right. So love is not a comparative. Love serves. Love has zeal. It has energy. It it boils. Then love does not. Boast. Brag. This word means lift up yourself. Put yourself in the middle. People who love are not people who need much attention. No better example. I think of this in our lifetime than Mother Teresa. The stories you can read about Mother Teresa, her, she’s not meek by any stretch of the word, but she’s humble.

00:22:45:23 – 00:23:09:15
Clint Loveall
She didn’t accept awards. She didn’t receive prizes. She literally seemed not to care about those kind of things. My favorite Mother Teresa story is that a a very wealthy man called her and said that he wanted to come down and learn from her. And she said, take the money you’d spend to get here and give it to the poor.

00:23:09:16 – 00:23:13:24
Clint Loveall
You’ll learn more from that than you will from me.

00:23:13:26 – 00:23:39:02
Clint Loveall
I don’t know if that’s true. I know I think the story is true. I don’t know if it’s true that he would have learned more giving the money away, but I’m also not one to argue with Mother Teresa. Love doesn’t lift itself up. It lifts others. Love is not proud. Literally. This word is a great word. It means to be puffed up, swollen.

00:23:39:04 – 00:24:10:09
Clint Loveall
And love isn’t chest out with pride. Sometimes it’s translated arrogant, which is probably fair. Love isn’t that. Love isn’t rude. It doesn’t act unseemly. The word here means does. It’s not without form. It’s without shape. In other words, it doesn’t cross boundaries. Probably. Practically speaking, it means love doesn’t violate another’s dignity. Love doesn’t laugh at someone for at their expense.

00:24:10:11 – 00:24:47:05
Clint Loveall
Love doesn’t step on someone to get ahead. Love isn’t self-seeking or. I’m sorry. Love isn’t rude. Love isn’t self-seeking. That’s next. It doesn’t look for or isn’t obsessed with things of the self. Love is not about me. This, I think, is one of the things that ultimately has to be learned in the context of our relationships. Specifically in marriage.

00:24:47:07 – 00:25:33:13
Clint Loveall
If I’m only able to think about what I get out of that relationship, that relationships probably have trouble, right? I’ve said this before. No amens from the corner back there. It only took me about 22 years. 25 years? I realized I don’t I didn’t listen. I don’t listen to my wife. Hold on. I what I mean is, I realized at some point that when Jane and I are having a marriage discussion, I’m listening.

00:25:33:19 – 00:26:04:09
Clint Loveall
So I know how to respond. I’m not actually listening to what she’s saying. I’m listening to win an argument. I’m listening so I can I can find the holes in it and go to work. I learned that’s not listening. Love isn’t self concern. I knew a gentleman when we lived in Texas.

00:26:04:11 – 00:26:27:06
Clint Loveall
He was in a second marriage, and it was one of those situations. He was a little bit older, married a girl who was younger. So he had, like, out of the house working, taking care of themselves, children, and had a four year old and I, I asked him at one point, like what? How? What are we how you do that?

00:26:27:09 – 00:26:50:06
Clint Loveall
What’s the difference? And and the thing he said that always helped me, stuck with me is he said, I’m so much better at it this time because I realize it’s not about me. When the first kids would act up, I would get tense and nervous, thinking they made me look bad. Now I’m old enough. I can just be their dad.

00:26:50:07 – 00:27:16:12
Clint Loveall
I can just be the dad. And I’m not. I’m not worried about myself as much. And I thought that was a really good answer. Love is not easily angered. This is the word for sharpened. The root word means to sharpen it. Something along the lines of it doesn’t cut easily. Love is not easily provoked or upset or angry.

00:27:16:15 – 00:27:46:15
Clint Loveall
Another way of saying it is love is not thin skinned or overly sensitive. Which, you know, is a struggle, but it makes sense. You can’t be on the edge all the time, ready to explode and have a loving relationship with somebody. You can’t really show love and be angry at the same time. Those two things are kind of opposed to one another in general.

00:27:46:15 – 00:28:08:18
Clint Loveall
At least they don’t help one another sometimes. Love doesn’t keep record of wrongs. This is a great word. It’s the word logos. Remember, the Gospel of John says, in the beginning was the word. That’s this word. Logos is the word word. And this is the verb form, which means to write down and essentially it means for you finance people.

00:28:08:21 – 00:28:44:24
Clint Loveall
This is an inventory. Love doesn’t have an inventory. Love doesn’t keep a ledger. Love doesn’t compute or take into account or keep score. Yeah. I don’t know if that lands on anybody else. We were in, We’re in the youth group. We were in youth group last week talking about, forgiveness and holding a grudge. We’ve been working through the seven deadly sins, and we were talking about anger or wrath, and I just asked the kids.

00:28:45:01 – 00:29:06:00
Clint Loveall
And keep in mind, these are anywhere from, oh, 15 to 18, 14 to 18. Ask the kids, how many of you can remember somebody who did something and you’re still unhappy about it? And they and so they said, how many how many of you did that happen? More than a week ago. How more than a month ago?

00:29:06:02 – 00:29:33:12
Clint Loveall
Anyway, they’re 14, 15, 17 year old kids. We got to in some cases, ten years. Now imagine we do that here. We’re not. You’re off the hook. But some of us would say, oh, yeah, I still got some stuff. It’s pretty old. It’s. I’ve been carrying that around a long time. Love keeps no record of wrongs. He just kind of slips that in there like it’s nothing.

00:29:33:14 – 00:30:05:08
Clint Loveall
That’s a tough one. Love doesn’t keep a ledger. It doesn’t keep score. It’s not about the pluses and minuses. Then finally says love takes no pleasure in evil, no joy in what is wrong in doing it or seeing it, even if it happens to others. Love doesn’t take joy when somebody else gets what they deserve. Love cannot celebrate the misfortune of others.

00:30:05:11 – 00:30:41:12
Clint Loveall
Rejoices in the truth. Continues the last thought bears all things. This word means it builds a roof. Builds a shelter. A place to wait to be. To persevere. It believes all things. It hopes all things. And it endures all things. Love doesn’t give up. And then, in summary, Paul says, love never fails. Now we know that’s not literally true.

00:30:41:14 – 00:31:16:17
Clint Loveall
But love is never wasted. The effort to love is never wrong. Not agape. Not godly love. That love, by definition, is always in the right. And so it doesn’t fail. We fail to do it. But of itself it is of such character that like something precious, it is always good. He goes on to say, you know, not everything is like that.

00:31:16:17 – 00:31:41:22
Clint Loveall
Prophecies. They stop tongues, knowledge. Those are all lesser than love. They’re all temporary. We outgrow childhood and we grow into love. And then the line, you know, at the end, faith, hope and love and love is the greatest. And again, I don’t think Paul here is being comparative. I don’t think he’s saying, you know, love comes in first and faith and hope or second thought.

00:31:41:24 – 00:32:16:22
Clint Loveall
He’s saying that when love is in place, the other things are in place as well. If you pursue love, you’re going to learn gratitude. You’re going to learn generosity. You’re going to learn compassion and graciousness. You’re going to forgive our highest calling also builds the most character, because those many things that we would talk about as virtues are embodiments of trying to love people.

00:32:16:24 – 00:32:37:26
Clint Loveall
And so if we pursue that, other things will fall in place. We will act the right way. We will speak the right way. We will treat people the right way.

00:32:37:28 – 00:32:58:16
Clint Loveall
Yeah. Hold on a second. Let me let me stop there. Thoughts? Comments? Questions. I covered a lot of ground. Sorry for that, but, What what strikes you? What? What rings a chord, if anything.

00:32:58:18 – 00:33:08:05
Clint Loveall
You were there. I remember that wedding.

00:33:08:07 – 00:33:15:16
Clint Loveall
I think you told me you didn’t believe that.

00:33:15:18 – 00:33:27:01
Clint Loveall
Yeah, right.

00:33:27:03 – 00:33:34:28
Clint Loveall
Yeah.

00:33:35:00 – 00:34:00:17
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I do. I do think it’s a near impossible task, and I. I’m glad to hear that. It made some sense at some point. Okay. And by the way, by the way, I would argue that’s a good I would say your your marriage really should be one of the easiest days of the. I mean, that’s a good that’s not a bad thing.

00:34:00:19 – 00:34:03:07
Clint Loveall

00:34:03:10 – 00:34:28:14
Clint Loveall
I think the, the struggle there, I’ve often thought that if I could write and again, I don’t want to lock this into marriage, but it’s it’s an easy place to think about love and some of the difficulties that we don’t always see. I thought that what I would love to do. I wish I could just tell couples would do your premarital, premarital thing.

00:34:28:16 – 00:34:51:21
Clint Loveall
And then I want you to write me a check for $500. And I’m going to put that check in the safe. And and sometime after your one year anniversary, you come back in and let’s do some of this again, and then I’ll just give you your check back, because I think at a year you might have something to talk about, right?

00:34:51:23 – 00:35:18:14
Clint Loveall
I’m tired of picking up the dang shoes. You know. Okay. Yeah. All right. Now we can. Now we out something, now we. We’ve got something to work with. But yet, I think to your to your point, Katie, some of that is just.

00:35:18:17 – 00:35:47:05
Clint Loveall
Yeah. Good luck. At, when we sat with our guy who did our wedding, which was Jane’s pastor, he asked about. He was trying to ask about household chores. I’m like, we’re going to look at you because I can. I can feel this. He was asking me about household chores, and I think I said, well, I just I plan on doing more.

00:35:47:05 – 00:36:15:27
Clint Loveall
So I he said, how much do you think you expect? You. And I said, I probably do almost 75%. She’ll she’ll be working. I’ll be in school. I’ll be around. Well, I didn’t yet know that my 75% of my wife’s like, we don’t have the same thought of what what needs done. So when I said it, I had something very different in mind than than Jane did.

00:36:15:29 – 00:36:56:24
Clint Loveall
He hasn’t brought that up for a while. She used to bring that up once in a while, but I haven’t heard 75% in the in a few years. I, I think that, I, I think that it is. You know, it’s it is so it is so powerful when the church lives this calling out, when the church shows up in the midst of disaster and says, how can we help when somebody struggling in the church shows up with food and babysitting and whatever they need and they just say, look, we got you.

00:36:56:27 – 00:37:17:17
Clint Loveall
We got it. When when the church welcomes people who are struggling and they come into church and we all know that they don’t fit here and they know they don’t fit here. And we say, we’re glad you’re here. What do you need? How can we help? You will sit with me. Can I take you to lunch when we’re done?

00:37:17:20 – 00:37:45:17
Clint Loveall
When those kind of things. When the church gets this right. How we are so good. We are. It is such a message, such a witness. But it’s hard. It is desperately hard because it’s not just doing it. It’s counter to us. And keeping our self out of the way and serving others and not keeping record of wrongs.

00:37:45:17 – 00:38:26:14
Clint Loveall
And, didn’t we help you last time? You know, it, it it is such a high standard and, you know, lately. Lately, one of my frustrations with Christians has been that a lot of our public speech and action seems divorced from separate from anything that looks and sounds like love. And one of the things, again, not not to make this all about marriage, I actually don’t want to do that.

00:38:26:16 – 00:38:51:27
Clint Loveall
But one of the things I say to every couple is if you have to hurt your partner to prove you’re right, you’re not. You’re not right. You may be right about the thing, but that’s not love it. Love doesn’t have to hurt to win. And so when Christians allow themselves to talk like that, we do not sound like Jesus.

00:38:51:29 – 00:39:29:27
Clint Loveall
And, I’ve been. I’ve been disappointed with the character of Christian speech in the moment we’re in, because sometimes I just don’t hear agape in it. But when we can do that, when we can live up and when that’s generally genuinely a part of a Christian’s character or a church’s character, I, I literally don’t think there’s any better advertising campaign.

00:39:29:28 – 00:39:55:13
Clint Loveall
I don’t think there’s any better evangelism. This is the foundation of Christian character and the thing to which we should all aspire. So sorry I got on soapbox again. What else? Comments or thoughts?

00:39:55:15 – 00:40:07:28
Clint Loveall
Of the, do’s and do nots. Which ones do you find most difficult?

00:40:08:01 – 00:40:16:11
Clint Loveall
Yeah. Yeah, it’s a tough one. I wish that one wasn’t in there, to be honest.

00:40:16:14 – 00:40:29:15
Clint Loveall
And I tried I, I tried to, you know, learn a different language, hoping it said something else. No, it says what it says.

00:40:29:17 – 00:41:04:08
Clint Loveall
I should, there’s one. I kind of short changed. There’s an interesting one. When when Paul says love believes all things. Again, we think of belief as sort of our mental a an assessment of things. An accepting of things. But that word belief is, in Greek, the exact same. It is the word faith. Now, in English, we can’t use faith that way, because faith isn’t a verb.

00:41:04:10 – 00:41:29:28
Clint Loveall
But in Greek, faith is a verb. Believe you can faith things which I wish was true in English because that’s what we used to say. So love Faith’s all things. That’s literally what it says. And we translate. It believes because we have to make a decision based on our own language. But, but when Paul writes it.

00:41:30:00 – 00:41:53:18
Clint Loveall
That it’s faith, love, faith’s things. Not just some things. All things. Love does. Faith in all things. That’s. That’s really good. All right. Anything else? Beautiful day. Itching to get outside?

00:41:53:21 – 00:42:22:26
Clint Loveall
Let’s close with prayer. Yeah. Lord, thank you for loving us. For knowing us and loving us and for not loving us in some generic way. But. In the fullest meaning of the word. We confess to you that it is an incredible challenge.

00:42:22:28 – 00:43:02:19
Clint Loveall
That you call us to love others in the same way. Even those closest to us, even those we love the most. This is hard. And yet you call us to love even our enemies as Christ did. Humble us with this only so that we might be willing to be guided and helped to do it. And we pray that love would be seen in us and through us as individuals, and together as church.

00:43:02:21 – 00:43:30:00
Clint Loveall
That of all the things we might be known for. May love be the top of the list and the foundation of our character. And if all that could be said about us is that we loved well or tried to because of Jesus, it would be the highest praise. Thanks for this time together. Thanks for this food and this fellowship.

00:43:30:02 – 00:43:39:00
Clint Loveall
May we, learn and grow from all of it. Through Christ we pray. Amen. Thank you all.