Kerry Shook - Love
I'm really excited about this weekend because I'm starting a new series I've been wanting to do for quite some time. I'm calling it "The Five Things I Want My Kids to Remember Forever". But really it's not a series about kids, it's not a series about parents, really it's five important things that Chris and I have learned over the years that have made the biggest difference in our lives. These are five truths from God's Word. I want my grown kids to always remember and I want my grandchildren to learn and experience the power of these principles in their lives. But here's the thing, here's the thing about these life defining principles. Even though they're so powerful, they are so easy to forget.
Hey, I've learned these things the hard way. Through pain and failures, through not following them and feeling the pain of it. I've learned these things the hard way and they've made all the difference in my life and yet I so easily forget them and I get off track. That's why I need this series, that's why you need this series because if we don't learn these practical truths and live by them, our lives will eventually come all the way off the track. And the first thing we need to always remember is, without love even the GOAT loses. That's a really powerful principle. There's a lot of depth there. Without love, even the GOAT loses. Of course GOAT means greatest of all time and there's always a lot of debate about who's the GOAT in every sport.
In basketball right now, people debate, "Is Michael Jordan still the GOAT or has LeBron overtaken him"? And I just found out this week that the opposite of GOAT is the TOAD, and it stands for terrible on any day. What a terrible thing to call somebody. "You're a TOAD," terrible on any day. Have you ever thought about what you might be the GOAT in? The greatest of all time. I might be the GOAT of procrastination. I can't think of much of anything else, but there are a lot of GOATS that you really don't wanna be. I mean, there's some goats that you just don't wanna be like the GOAT of gossip, or the GOAT of griping or the GOAT of negativity or the GOAT of narcissism.
If you're the GOAT of narcissism, the sad thing is you don't even know it, so you can't celebrate it. You're the greatest narcissist of all time but you don't realize it because you're a narcissist. That's sad. That's sad. You can't even celebrate you're the greatest. Or you really don't wanna be the GOAT of getting divorced, you know, like you've been married seven times, you're getting ready for eight, don't wanna be that. Maybe you could say instead of that you're really the GOAT of positive thinking because you're going, "This one's gonna stick, I just know it. It's gonna be different". If you ever become the GOAT in something that's positive, that's a great accomplishment, I mean, the greatest of all time. But the Bible says, "Without love you lose".
Another way of saying it is, relationships are more important than accomplishments. And I want us go to God's Word and a passage we're all really familiar with, 1 Corinthians 13, but I wanna read the first part as well as verses 4 through 7 that are read at most weddings. And the bride and groom don't really hear it whatsoever because they're just excited about the wedding or nervous and nobody really digs into it. And I think we've used this passage in a way that's beautiful and wonderful but we've just thought about how beautiful it is but we've never really gotten down to the nitty-gritty and that's what we wanna do today. So would you stand in honor of God's Word and just follow along with me.
1 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 1. "If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails".
You can be seated. What I want us to do is really break this down to really dig into it, to see what it's all about so we can put it into our lives. So let's start with verse 1, "If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal". You see, the Bible tells us here you can be the greatest communicator of all time, but your words are worthless without love. Now I want us to do a little math today. And I know some of you get freaked out about math and it's like, "Math, ugh". But it's really simple math but powerful math. Here's what I wanna show you. The GOAT of communication. You may be the greatest communicator of all time. The GOAT of communication minus love, equals zero.
Now, that's pretty simple, I told you it was pretty simple, but it's really powerful. I'm gonna write these things up on the board because I'm your teacher today and I want you to learn these things, I wanna always remember these things I quickly forget. You see, one of the biggest problems in relationships is communication between husbands and wives, parents and teenagers, managers and individuals on the team. Communication is not as much about clarity as it is about caring. Caring enough to get into their life, to listen to them, to seek to understand them, to tell them not just what they want to hear, but loving them enough to tell them what they need to hear.
You see, verse 1 says, it doesn't matter how perfectly I communicate something, if I don't say it in love, it's ineffective, it's not gonna get through, it's not gonna change anything. In fact, it says, it sounds to the other person like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal that just drowns out anything that I'm really trying to say. You can be the greatest communicator of all time but without love, your words are worthless. They'll be totally ineffective and they will never get through. But let's go on. I want us to look at verse 2 of 1 Corinthians 13, "If I have the gift of prophecy and fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, but do not have love, I am nothing".
So what it's saying is, you can be the smartest person of all time, but without love it means nothing. So let's go back to some math here. You can be the GOAT of Intellect. And by the way, I misspelled intellect last night. It was really pathetic which just prove I'm not even close to being the GOAT, that's for sure. You misspell intellect in front of thousands of people. Now, fortunately, I saw it when everybody started yelling, I saw it. But you can be the GOAT of intellect but minus love, it equals zero. Just wanna remind you of that, that it equals nada, nothing, zero.
You see, you can graduate Magna cum laude and have an IQ off the charts with three PhDs, but without love, it's meaningless. I didn't graduate Magna cum laude, I graduated thank the laude, and I did. My family thanked the laude. Hey, knowledge is a good thing. We need knowledge desperately but the Bible says, "Without love, knowledge just makes you proud". I know people who've memorized the whole Bible. I mean they can read it in Greek, in Hebrew, but they don't love people. And that's a bad advertisement for Christ. That's a bad advertisement because "God is love".
So let's go back to 1 Corinthians 13:2, the second part of the verse, "And if I have faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing". He's saying, you can be the most religious person of all time, but without love, it's meaningless. Now this one is really interesting to me. You can be the GOAT of faith but minus love, you know what it equals, zero. But I want you to keep seeing it, so simple, but we forget it all the time. But wait a minute, faith, Kerry, faith is only good. To have a great faith, how can faith equal zero? Having faith, isn't that a good thing? Well, being a Christian is not about following all the rules, it's not even about just believing in Jesus. Sure we believe in Jesus. But the real question is, do you love him? Do you love him? And have you placed your trust in his love and grace?
Now let's go on, verse 3, "If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship until I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing". Now you can't love without giving. I mean when you love someone, you give to them. When Chris and I first fell in love, I was giving all the time to her, giving things all the time. You know, I just loved giving to her and I still do. And when you love someone, you give to them. When you love God, you give. I mean you give when you love God because it comes out of love.
So you can't love without giving, but you can give without loving. You can give and do it with the wrong motives. You can give to create favor, you can give to get noticed or get your name on a plaque. You can give to gain power, you can give out of pride or you can give trying to control someone. But he's saying, you can be the greatest philanthropist of all time, but you won't gain anything that matters without love. Without unselfish loving actions, it is worthless. And so, we go back to math. You can be the GOAT of giving, but minus love, it equals zero.
Well, let's go on. What it's really saying as we look at all the first part of 1 Corinthians 13 is talking about, the point is you can pile up achievement after achievement, and you can accomplish more than anyone else in the world, you can have unbelievable success, but relationships are more important than accomplishments. Success without love is empty, prestige without love is meaningless, wealth without love is worthless, fame without love is destructive. You can be the greatest in your field of expertise or business and everyone is in awe of you, but if you don't love, it doesn't count. You can be a success in every area of your life, but if you fail at relationships, you're a failure. It all comes down to love. You love God with all your heart. How well do you love your family, your friends, people that are hurting, people who need you? At the end of your life, that's all that's going to matter.
Here's how it all ends up. At the end of your life the only thing that's gonna matter is, how well did you love? How well did you love? Now I'm not talking about our modern concept of love. We talk about love all the time and have no idea what it means. I'm talking about what love really is, what the Bible tells us love is, which is countercultural. It's totally different from what society believes love is. And in this passage we get a definition that's amazing at what real love is.
So look at it with me. In verses 4 through 7, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres". Now this is the definition of what real love is. Here's the point, love's more than a feeling, it's an action. So focus on actions rather than emotions. This is really important because I forget this all the time. I just let my emotions, my feelings guide me before I do loving actions but you focus on actions rather than emotions.
Have you discovered the amazing truth that your focus and your actions can change your feelings? It's amazing. Now science is catching up with what the Bible has always said, that what you think about and focus on and what you act on, really changes how you feel. When our counseling team counsels couples who say, we just don't feel it anymore, we just don't feel in love anymore, they always give them some actions to do that are loving, whether they feel it or not because they know if you wait for loving feelings to come back before you act, it won't happen.
And it's amazing that you can change the way you feel by changing what you focus on, think about, and what you act on. It's kind of like this, let's just call this the love train. And this is the love train. I didn't say I was the GOAT at art, okay? This is the love train and the engine is the truth the Bible talks about, about love. What love really is, not what we think love is, but what love really is, what God's Word says. Remember, it's an action, that you see this in action all the time. In this definition it's always an action because some people feel these loving feelings but they never act on it, and so it's not love. That's not love. It has to be an action so we see what real love is from God's Word.
And so that's the engine but then you have the coal car and the coal car is actions. And so we read in God's Word the truth and then when you act on the truth, then that fuels the engine. And then the caboose is feelings. That's the caboose, and so you act on the truth and then the feelings come along it's amazing. Feelings, these powerful feelings many times are produced when you act in love, what love really is. And then the feelings come along. But what so many of us do is we let the caboose drive the train. We're waiting to feel loving before we act loving. And if you let the caboose drive the train, you're gonna go off track. It's gonna be so destructive in your relationships and in your life.
If you just act when you feel like acting, it doesn't work but when you act in love and you do loving actions according to God's Word, feelings come along. But if you're waiting for that loving feeling to return it's not gonna return until you act in loving ways. It is a powerful truth from God's Word to focus on actions rather than emotions. And so let's look at these actions. First it says, "Love is patient". So when I feel impatient with someone but then I choose the act of patience, like, "No, I'm gonna focus on something else and just be patient. I'm gonna focus on maybe what they're going through and be patient, but I sure feel impatient right now". And then it says that, "Love is kind".
Now kindness is just meeting someone's need; finding out what it is exactly and meeting that need. And when I feel overwhelmed, I need to choose to meet someone's need. Find out what it is and meet it because we think when we're overwhelmed, oh it's crazy, we focus on ourselves. But choose to meet someone else's need in the middle of you're overwhelm. And then it says, love does not envy. So when a friend of mine gets blessed with something I wish I had been blessed with, the first thing I feel is a little bit of envy, "Hey, come over and look at my new car, it's amazing I know you love cars and you'll like it. And it's like, come on, I wanna take you for a drive". And it's like, "Why? It's your car not mine".
You know, I mean, oh, we usually don't feel that bad but it's like, you know, if something you really wanted to get blessed with and they get blessed with it, first thing you think is, "Man, I wish I had that," you know. It's okay to feel that a little bit, but don't you dare focus on it. You choose to celebrate with him, you say, "Yeah, I'm coming over to see that. That's amazing, praise God". Because there's enough of God's goodness to go around. Just because someone gets blessed doesn't mean God's taken away your blessings. He's gonna bless you, he's gonna give you what you need so you choose to celebrate it and then you feel it and you get excited and if you only celebrate the victories in your life, you're gonna miss out on a lot of celebrations.
So you celebrate the victories in the people's lives around you and it changes your life. And then it says, "Love does not boast". So every time I'm in a conversation and I kinda wanna throw something out that I've done or something that's, you know, kinda cool or maybe name drop because wow, they'll think that's impressive or I know exactly you know what they're talking about here and I can kinda one up them and you just kinda wanna do that instead. No, I'm gonna ask them about something that they've done, that they're doing. I wanna let them speak and say something and build them up. But you feel like bragging, you choose to brag on someone else.
And then it says, "Love is not proud". And that's when I feel like I know the answer to something and I know the answers here and they need to listen to me. Instead of just giving all the answers, I stop and go, "Oh, I feel like I know the answers, you know, they need to know these things," but I choose to ask questions instead. So love is not proud. And then it says, "Love does not dishonor others". That means that I'm always looking for ways to value people that I'm always being careful when I feel upset at someone and see something wrong instead of criticizing them, nitpicking them, and by the way, this goes on in a lot of marriages. There's a lot of nitpicking, a lot of criticizing and tearing the other one down and if you're married, you're one so you're just cutting yourself down.
And so, we need to look for ways to build them up, to honor them, to value them. And then, love is not self-seeking and this is the big one because we so easily get focused on our needs and our wants, but when we really need something, it's like, "Man, I really need this, I really need that, I really need you to do this for me". The first thing I need to do is go, "What do they need"? And try to meet their needs. It doesn't mean you shouldn't share your needs, you should be humble and honest about that but first you seek to meet their needs. And then, love is not easily angered.
Have you ever heard something that someone did? Maybe it was against you or it was just something that made you mad and just get all angry about it but you don't go to the person and talk about it and figure out what was going on in their life. 'Cause there's probably something going on in their life that, "Oh, I get it. Spent two days being mad at you". No, it's not easily angered, it's like give people the benefit of the doubt, talk to them. And "Love keeps no record of wrongs". This is huge too that love forgives.
Love forgives and when you feel like not forgiving and hold on to resentment, which every time I've forgiven someone, I never feel like it but I choose God, I choose to forgive them, I don't feel like it for my sake, so resentment doesn't eat me up so you don't feel like it and then the feelings come along. And then, "Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth". And that is every time you feel like shading the truth or saying little lie that makes things easier for you or makes you look better, you stop and you go, wait a minute, I feel like you're kind of embellishing that, I feel like telling a lie there. I feel like you stop and you go, tell the truth, the whole truth nothing but the truth regardless of the consequences because that pleases God rather than people, and it is loving to tell people the truth in love.
Now look at 1 Corinthians 13:7. It says, "Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres". Did you get that? Always, always, always, that's the kind of love God has for us. I don't always do these things. I fail to love Chris at times, I fail to love my family at times, but God always loves us in these ways. Isn't that amazing? I want to always, always, always. That's my goal, but I fail at times. But we're to practice, and practice, and practice, and keep practicing. But God always loves us these ways. God doesn't say, "I love you if," that's what we do many times. We put conditions on it.
God doesn't say, "I love you if you love me back, I love you if you follow all these rules, I love you if you believe in me". No, God loves you even if you don't believe in him because his love is unconditional. Now he wants you to trust him. God loves you when you sin, when you don't sin. it hurts him deeply when you sin because it's devastating in your life and in your relationships. It's devastating when I disobey him, but his love for me doesn't change. His love is unconditional and perfect and that amazes me. He always, always, always, always, so this is describing God because the Bible says, "God is love," it doesn't say, "God loves" it says, "He is love," that's who he is.
God always loves us in these ways. We've looked at the definition of what love is, but if you wanna see a clear picture of what love is, you gotta look at 1 John 3:16. It says, "This is how we know what love is; Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters". So if you wanna know what love is, look to the cross. Jesus on the cross shedding his perfect sinless blood so that we could be forgiven. His heart being crushed with all of our sins so we could have whole hearts. That's what love is, that's what true love is, that's the greatest love of all that he laid down his life for us.