Fearlessly Courageous
11/8/2022
Desk of Dennis Piller
Cancer and love that never fails!
I have spent time in prayer and intercession for Pastor Dale Brooks and Traci Watson‘s pastor in London and the young woman who came to the altar recently who had surgery for breast cancer. It is causing me to reflect on the words of scripture that "love never fails". I got to thinking about Pastor Dale's wife Mama K and how her love has stood undeterred over 50 years of marriage. I thought about what it must feel like to battle alongside of the love of your life in a second bout with cancer, that outside of faith could take your soulmate in a heartbeat. I see a love that is patient and kind, long-suffering with a purpose that only true love can fuel.
I read 1 Corinthians 13 "if I speak in tongues of the manner 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 a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing".
Here’s a scripture often pulled out of context and used to illustrate a variety of things but Paul says to us, "when I was a child, I spoke, thought, and acted as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things"
Paul was talking to the Corinthian church in this entire chapter trying to get them to focus on what is far more important, and that is love.
I think diseases can be situations that can lead us along the edges of the valley of the shadow of death and elicit an understanding of love that very few people can’t even comprehend. My thoughts today revolve around the power of love – God's kind of love, and how it never fails!
I have seen Pastor Dales' kind of love as he shares communion with his bride every day. I’ve seen the manifestation of how he loves on her and offers up the love of newlyweds, and her to him, in the littlest of things and sometimes, if looking through worldly eyes, at the oddest of times that often springs to life a smile, out loud. But who can truly understand that kind of sacrificial love more than the person that is offering it up?
As I have tried to envision the filter that the family and the loved ones look through, it has caused me to consider the love in my own life. I would like to arrest your attention to a question:
Are you living a life of love, as described by Paul?
We have to use as a filter for that question, Jesus‘s words that remind us that "priority one" in our lives is love. He said the most important commandment is centered on love, "that we love God with everything we have, our hearts, souls, mind, and strength, and that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves”.
It caused me to think that sometimes I love my neighbors more than I love those in my household. That I give more respect and consideration to others than I do to those that I am the most familiar with. And I think that I am acting more like a child rather than one
who has put aside the childish things of my youth.
And then as I look at Mama Kaye Brooks and the wife of that pastor in London along with their family members, I am certain that is not the attitude they have towards one another during times like this.
So other than praying for them…Interceding for them for healing and complete recovery, what is it that their life should be broadcasting to us about love? Perhaps how the Holy Spirit is talking to us about changing the filter of our lives and perhaps even the genuineness of them.
What I care about today is one thing:
Are you living a life characterized by Christ?
An Agapi love described in 1 Corinthians 13
Has God convicted you about aspects of this love that aren’t really functioning in your life the way they should?– and have you responded with repentance and renewed obedience as a result? That’s what matters to me. Today, our subject is the power of love.
What else can you think of that never fails? This is the stuff that can’t be touched by a market collapse, they can’t be bombed
out of existence by a terrorist.
"Love covers a multitude of sins", but selfishness and common self-centeredness cause a multitude! Take any talent one has and subtract love, and it is worth so little. The Bible says that the spiritual gifts will fade away but love never dies. God doesn’t need faith or hope… but he IS a God of love! Love is the lifeguard to these other parts of our lives..,
because love is what God is.
Paul reminds us, "for I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creative thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord "Romans 8:38–39
I look at the love that these families have towards their spouses and fathers and uncles and grandfathers and then I consider the love of Almighty God who loved us so much more than that by sending Jesus to die so that we could spend eternity with him. Eternity!!! Forever!!!
And because I am loved by God with an everlasting love,
I can love you. I must love you.
Because without love – regardless of whatever else I have and am–
I am nothing. Absolute zero.
Love in the life of the believer is priority one!
We can prove our love for our neighbor by praying for these pastors and their families and by asking the Holy Spirit to open our own eyes to change the filter of what we see regarding the way that we love everyone around us. Lord open my eyes and my heart to more of you so that I might love thee more and love them more too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAiDJZ4cdfA
I have loved you Matt Henry
