B-log

Link to the previous parts in the series

The previous entries discuss the shortcomings of trying to rush love, and offer a discussion of how real, selfless love takes times. 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 shows how God reveals himself through true expressions of love.

Love never Fails (v. 8)

What a succinct and perfect message. Love never ends. Scripture declares that God is love, and here it tells us that love never fails. Logic proclaims, therefore, God never fails. When it comes to love, you might have seen a pattern of failure throughout your life because at worst, you’ve seen the inept efforts of human loves. At best, you’ve seen noble godly efforts, but they’re incomplete. When all is made perfect - when Christ comes again - you will understand fully because you will be in the eternal presence of love (because you will be in the presence of God, from where all love issues forth), and you will fully understand love.

Love approaches perfection (v. 9-12)

You can live in love because love gives you a glimpse of the future perfection, the promised everlasting of realized love. Some day, you can see love face to face because Christ is coming again. And when he does, love will be fulfilled. You will never have to settle for the characteristics of love, or the symbols of love, or the shadows of love, because you will be eternally living in the complete glory of true, pure, unmatched and unending love. And when that day comes, the Bible tells us here that you will know just as you are known.

What that means is that you will know love either to the full extent that you live it because of your relationship with Christ, or you will know it because you have to spend eternity apart from it because you are known by the lovelessness in your life. It’s not enough to just acknowledge Jesus. The Bible foretells that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. The Bible also says that even Jesus himself said, “Not all who say to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.” You will be known by your love. When that day comes, there will be no excuses. No second chances. So the question is, how will YOU be known?

Love makes faith and hope necessary (v. 13)

Faith and hope are two characteristics of love. Possessing either of these without love is pointless. Who would want to have hope in a god who was void of love? Where is the basis of faith if it is not driven by love? This verse says to “abide in these three” (faith, hope, and love). Abide means to rest in, to live in. Live in your faith of a loving God. Live in your faith of a loving, living Christ. Finally, live today, and live eternally in the love of the God who created you and who loved you so much He provided a simple (kind) way for you to have heaven.

The final word is that love trumps faith and love. Love rules. Love never fails. 

God loves you.

Without fail.

Now, go love others the way he loves you.

Admit it, you read that title with Phil Collins singing in your brain, didn’t you?

If you didn’t, you do now.

Then again, maybe you’re a fan of the Supremes rendition.

But I digress.

For review, read 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Your love must be expressed (in action, not words) by verbs that are expressions of time.

If it is not, it’s fair to question if your love is really love at all (at least in terms of how God demonstrates it perfectly and empowers you to reproduce). In fact, the next 8 expressions of love (after patience and kindness) in 1 Corinthians 13 are shown in the negative. They reveal the bad anti-love results that happen when you hurry love:

Jealousy is the thought that you deserve the blessings that someone else has received. Jealousy is the outcome of an inflated self-estimation and a disregard of the other person’s circumstances.  You see other’s blessings and you don’t take the time to understand why that person is blessed. It is a sense of injustice and greed that you want what the other person has. In the context of love, it is simply impossible to be selfless and sacrificial while at the same time being jealous of that same person.

Bragging. This word is used only here in the entire New Testament and it is tied to jealousy. When you brag, you are actually attempting to make others jealous of you. This can never be confused for love. Philippians 2:6-8 reveals that Jesus, “who being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross!”

When you love others, you don’t brag about yourself. Don’t ever be motivated by the thought of making someone envious of how swell of a person you are. Bragging brings attention to self and is expression of pride.

Arrogance. Arrogance, like bragging, is based in pride. Arrogance is that inclined nose-snobbery that sometimes comes with a sense of accomplishment . Those people who act holier-than-others are making the grave error of placing their emphasis on their part in any spiritual accomplishment, rather than Christ’s grace, mercy, and presence that makes any accomplishment possible. That snobbish elitism is boorish. It contradicts a loving spirit and turns people away from Christ.

Be more like John the Baptist, who totally subjected himself when Jesus arrived on the scene. John had every opportunity to be arrogant. He was the predecessor to the Messiah; he had his own following of believers. Instead, John confessed that he wasn’t even worthy to carry Jesus Christ’s sandals and he said to Jesus, “I must decrease so you can increase.” John was not arrogant because he loved people and he knew and was secure in who God had made him to be.

Unbecomingness. A simple synonym for this is acting rude. Rudeness comes in so many forms, demonstrating both a lack of love and a total lack of respect. Whether you are rude to people by ignoring them, by replying with smart-aleck answers, whether you belittle them, or are just plain mean or insulting, rudeness is the ugly face that proves that love has no home in your heart.

When you start looking at every person as God’s precious creation, remembering that each person is just as valuable to Christ as you are to him, rudeness is replaced with cooperation, patience, care, concern, and ultimately, Christ. 

Seeking Your Own. Seeking your own is also called selfishness. Much of the time, we make good excuses saying things like. “You know, I really do love people, but I don’t want to talk to them about God (or Jesus, or faith, or church, etc). I don’t know what to say, or I might get rejected. Besides, I have to spend Sunday nights getting ready for work.” What you are doing is putting selfish motives (or fears) ahead of the need of that other person. Imagine if Jesus had acted this same way. He never would have left the glory of heaven. He could have said, “You know, I really like it up here. People down there are so mean. I know I’ve got that cross waiting for me, but really, I’m just in no mood to go through that. Besides, I’ve got a lot of other things I can do instead.”

Fortunately for you, Jesus said, “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.( Matthew 20:28)” 

Provocation being incited to anger. If your temper explodes at a moment’s notice, you’ve got a problem. Never minimize your anger with a statement like, “I get angry a lot, but it’s always over in a few moments.” The bombs that destroyed Nagasaki and Hiroshima only took a couple of moments and their devastation was immense. Anger can be just like that.

If you are ever going to be angry, do it biblically. Be angry without sinning. Only get angry at the things that anger God. Be angry at sin. Get mad at injustice. Then, do something about it. Fix it. At the same time, show incredible grace and compassion to other people.

Keeping Account of Wrong Suffered. Garth Brooks has a song called, We bury the hatchet, (but leave the handle stickin out) The Greek verb represented by this antithesis of love is the negative of a permanent recording of an accounting calculation. It’s like the other person’s offense against you is marked down with indelible ink in your life’s ledger, forever unreconcilable.

If you belong to God through faith in Jesus, the record of your offenses against God have been reconciled. They are no longer there.  The Bible declares that every record of your rebellion has been removed as far as the east is from the west. God has forgiven you and remembers your defiance no more. Ephesians 4:32 therefor exhorts, “And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.”

Rejoicing in Unrighteousness. Finally, the last negative attribute may just be the most evident of a loveless life. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of examples of people who make bad choices. Even or especially Christians. When you catch news of another “good person” making a bad choice, how do you react? If there is any small part of you that rejoices at the misfortune of another (especially if it is self-inflicted), you demonstrate evidence of lovelessness.

This ugly rejoicing may be expressed in many ways: Hoping that others will slip up or fail, Gossiping or tolerating gossip (by the way, tolerating gossip is cowardice), responding to the news of others’ misfortune with a sense of satisfaction or happiness or justice. 

When love is rushed, love is absent.

It’s easy to define distance in terms of time. You can ask, “How far to the airport?” and the answer could very well be “20 minutes.” You can’t turn that around though…If you ask, “What time can I pick you up for our date?” and the answer will never be, “About 10 miles.” It just doesn’t work that way.

Similarly, people try to define love in terms that just don’t work. A person can ask their spouse, “Do you love me?” and the typical answer might be…

• I bought you flowers a couple of years ago, didn’t I?
• I kiss you every morning no matter how your breath smells
• I pay the bills, don’t I?
• I went to that romantic comedy (or action movie, as the case may be) with you, remember?

People continually try to define love in terms of activities. However, Scripture consistently teaches that i love…true biblical love in all its forms…is always defined as an expression of time.

Read verses 4-7

In these three verses, God beautifully illustrates the components of love. In three verses, God demonstrates the breadth of love like light through a prism. These verses reveal fifteen hues of God’s love. These are fifteen petals of a flower that is love. Alone, they possess limited nobility; together in its whole, it is beauty that possesses its possessor.

In describing each of these fifteen characteristics, Paul always chose verbs instead of nouns. Verbs are expressions of actions. Actions fill time and space, and accordingly, love is always an expression of time. The description is not so much of what love is, but what love does (and does not). Breaking these three verses down into their component parts is akin to taking your day and breaking it down into the hours, minutes, and seconds from which it’s made:

Patience. The Greek word for patience, makrothumeo is a verb that is always used exclusively with people, rather than circumstances. When you love, you must be patient. Patience has to overcome so many differences:

• opinions
• experience
• education
• gender
• background
• expectations
• prejudices
• personal preferences
• and on and on….

You can never successfully be patient in a hurry. You can’t rush it. You can’t force it. You can only develop it from a foundation of love.

Kindness. Kindness is similar to patience because there is a superficial sort of kindness like there can be a superficial sort of patience. A loveless kindness is just like a superficial patience that is nothing more than just putting up with other people. That’s not patience. Being superficially kind isn’t really being kind, either. In fact, the Greek word for kindness is chrestuomai which means a useful, serving, gracious type of kindness. It’s kindness that takes time.

It’s the type of kindness that took Jesus 33 years to express, where he exchanged his holy, eternal, invincible body for a weak, frail, terminal human body. Where he exchanged the everlasting accolades of heaven’s angels for the hate-filled scorn of humanity. Where he exchanged his crown of gold for a crown of thorns, his royal robes for bloody rags, and the throne of heaven for the cross of death.

He took the full measure of time that was required to extend this kindness to you. He doesn’t want you to miss it. And once you claim it for yourself, he empowers you to reproduce it.

That, dear friend, is kindness.

 ”I may not be a smart man, Jenny, but I know what love is.”

  -Forrest Gump

We all might know what love is, but none of us knows on our own how to really make love.

You might be saying, “Speak for yourself, McAnally.” I’m not talking about that kind of “making love.” After all, this is pastor’s blog, not a screenplay based on a Nicolas Sparks novel.

I’m talking about the kind of “making love” that is reflected in the old Kentucky Headhunters song Always Making Love to You, which recounts how the singer’s love for his lady is “made” in the time while they are apart from one another, or when they simply think of one another, rather than in times of cuddlin’ and smoochin’.

Using this as the shore from which to wade into the shallow end of potentially deep theological waters, this type of “making love” is not the romance, eros, the physical manifestation of love that is commonly expressed between two people. Rather, the “making of love” or the creation of love is only possible because God makes or creates his agape love and expresses it to his creation (at least according to 1 John 4:9).

Ultimately, God expresses the love he makes not in creating us, but in redeeming us, through the death and atonement of Jesus.  The love that God creates is selfless. It’s sacrificial. It’s timeless. It’s epic.

This is the standard. This is the model. This is the ideal. We can’t “manufacture love” the way God does. However, because he loves us, we have been commanded to access the love that he has manufactured, and with it love others sacrificially and selflessly. 

We don’t have too look far to realize that far too often, we fail miserably when we attempt to create love and nurture loving relationships in our own lives.  These failures befall us in so many places:

• More than half of all marriages fail.
• Millions of pre-born children around the world are aborted.
• The euphemism named euthanasia (meaning, literally, easy death) is growing in social acceptance and frequency each passing year.
• Children are growing up in an epidemic of fatherlessness.
• War rages on around the world, replete with genocide, rape, torture, and forced starvation. 

This is the indictment against humanity. It falls upon your shoulders and it rests heavily upon mine. Our total inability to make, manufacture, manifest, build or create love from our own motivations or mechanisms illustrates the vast disparity between God and humanity.

In the posts to follow, we’ll dive into 1 Corinthians 13, perhaps the most famous passage on love. I hope it will help you love God, love others, and love yourself more fully and appropriately. I hope it will help you “make love” better. 

Read parts 1,2,3,4

This season of my life began in April 2010 with the unexpected, painful news that I was being laid off from my church after five years of fruitful service where we had seen God grow the church numerically and spiritually. I was blindsided by the separation. I thought I was insulated from the possibility of termination because of the biblical mandates related to my responsibilities, but that obviously wasn’t the case.

These last words on what has brought me here is my attempt to share some insights that will be helpful and hope-filled for those of you travelling down your own river of discontent, whether it be job loss-related or any other trouble of adversity.

My discoveries and take-forwards, in no particular order:

• God loves me, even in my unlovable moments. It was a tough, tough experience to have the church and ministry taken from me. It caused me to do all kinds of introspection and reflection, evaluation and examination. It was painful to feel affirmed in my call as a minister, but to have no ministry. I had to battle bitterness continually as I became increasingly aware of churches that tolerated being shepherded by pastors who have settled for mediocrity. I had to fight against anger every time I read a headline about another pastor who had admitted to immorality or criminality…and their church endorsed that bad behavior even at the cost of its own integrity.
  
  Upon getting my “walking papers,” we immediately began visiting several other churches. We went to bigger and smaller churches, familiar and unfamiliar churches and churches where there were ministry possibilities. We “settled in” in two different churches in Flower Mound. We didn’t “find a home,” because we always felt like God was moving us (which made the season feel continually unstable, like we didn’t want to plant roots that would have to immediately be torn out in a relocation). The two churches were similar while being starkly different. They were both good, healthy churches. And because of that, I could see myself there…wanting it, presuming that God had executed my separation from my previous church to move me into either one of these new opportunities.
  
  Neither of those opportunities came to pass. I was the runner up for one and never considered for the other. And I confess, I was mad at those churches for choosing someone else. In a lot of other rejections, I was totally okay with it because I didn’t know much about the opportunity…but in these two places…I had wanted to be there. God’s Spirit was there, and it just hurt to know that I wouldn’t get to be a part of what he was doing there.
  
  At some point along the way, God showed me that I was so consumed by my experiences that I was was looking at everything going on around me, but I had taken my eyes off of him. He graciously smacked me upside the head and showed me that I was being petty, selfish, and immature for being angry at the men God had placed in the positions that I had wanted. God showed me that in the end, I was really angry at him. God was patient with me. He dealt with me and overcame my anger with his love.
  
  Once I quit wallowing in what I didn’t have, I was freed to be grateful for all the ways that God had continued to bless me. In shifting my focus off of my self and back to him, I was able to move forward. We stayed at one of the churches that had “passed on me,” and I came to treasure what God had to offer through their new pastor. I was nourished again by the the worship and teaching. I was able to release my pain, my hurt, and my doubts and again rest in his assurances and promises and blessings. God had never left me. He had never forsaken me. He had led me into this season, was guiding me through it, and provided for me throughout.
  
  
• Pruning is painful. My life verse has been John 15:5. For all the years of following Christ, I’ve understood my faith life in the terms of God as “vine dresser,” Jesus as “the vine,” and myself as “the branch.” And for all my years as a minister, I’ve experienced increasingly abundant results as I’ve I’ve abided in Christ. And over the years, I’ve been pruned a little here, and shaped a little there…to positive results.

In April 2010, I was really “cut back.” God saw fit as he assessed my life to cut away the thick, leafy foliage that was my ministry and leave me with only the most essential aspects of my life: my faith, my bride, my children, and a retirement account that would provide our livelihood for the foreseeable time ahead. 

I didn’t know it at the time, but God was undertaking an action that he determined was necessary for my long-term health and growth. I said early on in my time at my previous church that I could stay there until the Lord called me home. I was saying that as a statement of satisfaction, but now I’m convinced that God knew better that it was a confession of complacency. If I had remained there, my dependence upon him may have lessened as my influence increased. My need for him may have waned as time went on. My desperation for him may have slackened as I grew comfortable with success that might have been pleasing to the congregation but not anywhere near what God could do with me otherwise.

So he pruned me. And it hurt. Badly. When pruning happens, it can look a lot like discipline…especially from the perspective of onlookers. What I’ve learned that while being pruned is painful, it is not an act of cruelty. It is humbling, but not humiliating. It left me figuratively naked, but covered by God. It left me tender, which made me sensitive to the hurts of others. It has left scars that you cannot see, which remind me of the loving work of God in my life. Pruning hurt, but I am incredibly thankful for it. I continue to abide, looking forward to the new yield Christ will produce through me.


• Nothing is mine. I’m writing this final entry about these events and what God has shown me through it all from the air-conditioned environs of my new office in my new church in my new ministry in my new city in my new state….in my new opportunity. But I know they’re not mine. These new things are no more mine than the previous things were mine. I was given oversight responsibility over things and people for five years in Texas. As I strove to be faithful, God gave me oversight over more things and people. Proving it was never mine to begin with, after five years of building up and adding to…it was all taken away in one afternoon’s meeting. 
  
  At the beginning of the lay-off, we knew that the church was providing a severance, and that we had retirement.We boldly said, “we’ll spend all our retirement if we have to,” never thinking that we’d have to. But as the months wore on, we saw that God tested us in this. Would we be willing to spend everything to wait for his best? When the financial end was in sight and it didn’t match up with the end of our season, our faith was tested. Would we still trust in him? 

We chose to walk by faith, and not by what we could see. And God proved himself. He showed us that he doesn’t work by what we can see, or understand, or figure out, or manipulate. He is not bound by the things that bind us, nor is he limited by the things that limit us. Our “dollars and cents” issues are not resolved, but we have his provision. We have new hope, new resources, and new opportunities…all of which he brought to bear at his time in his way that does not allow us to take credit for it or rob acclaim from him.

I better understand that nothing is mine. I’m blessed to be occupying this office in his church for a time. I hope it is a long time, with increasing responsibilities and opportunities. I get to serve with and lead his people in his work to experience the results that he established before time existed to happen at this time in history.

• While life is a matter of exchanging one set of unknowns for another, what matters is what you get resolved on this side of eternity. Being unemployed was scary. We didn’t know what the future would hold. We didn’t know where we were going or what we’d be doing. We had a long lists of sentences that ended in question marks, and not many that ended with a period or an exclamation mark.
  
  Once we learned that our season of waiting was ending, putting periods and exclamation marks to our questions, we found out that we had a whole new set of questions to replace the ones that had been answered. With a huge sigh of relief we had questions about finances and provision answered, but we had new questions about where to live, who would be our friends, what opportunities would await, how will we be successful, and on and on and on.
  
  You know what…that’s life. We will never stop having questions until this life is over. We will always wonder about what comes next until the last thing happens…the event that immediately follows the end of life. So it’s okay to have questions. And to have more questions after the previous questions are answered. What really matters is that you get the most important matter resolved…the security of your soul. 
  
  God loves you very much…the essential you…the you that endures through adversity, that withstands the pains of life. He has provided hope for the eternity safety for your soul through Jesus. When your soul is secure, you can persevere, and you can grow even through difficult times. I hope that you know whether your soul is secure, and if you do not, I urge you to connect with me so I can share with you how you can know for sure.
  
  There are many, many things that I do not know about what comes tomorrow, or in the time ahead. However, I know that my soul is secure and that God is good. Every other answer that I learn is just another blessing along life’s journey.

• If we knew what God knows, we’d want what God wants. This is a proverb coined by my first pastor, Rick Ferguson. I just experienced it in a new way. If on the day I had been laid off, God had revealed himself in a burning shrub as I exited the building carrying out my office decor in boxes, told me to take off my dress shoes and meet with him…well, I would have.
  
  Imagine if God would have put me on my face and said, “Bryan, I’m going to use this upcoming season to strip you of all the things that have made you comfortable and complacent. I’m going to take away all the good things you have so you are available to receive the best things I have in store for you. I’m going to use this time ahead to make you more humble. I’m going to make you a better husband, father, and minister through this. I’m going to develop your passion for the hurting and the oppressed. I’m going to show you my love in new ways that you’ve not experienced in a long time, if ever. I’m going to turn your priorities upside down and lavish grace and mercy upon you. I’m going carry you and sustain you when you are weak and tired. I’m going to affirm you and empower you and assure you. I’m going to be your Lord and your God for every need. And…I’m going to provide a new place for you to use all these things that I’m giving to you in this season to so I can accomplish great things through you in plans you wouldn’t believe even if I went into even greater detail!”
  
  The fact is, God didn’t do that. But I believe all those things are true enough that he could have said them. And part of the beauty of living by faith is trusting in the invisible and daily seeing these invisible things being made real. I tell you sincerely that I want what God wants. My problems lie in the reality that I don’t know what God knows, and it is better that I don’t. However, as God graciously unfolds his plan before me, the best and wisest thing I can do is recognize that he is sharing his divine insight with me and building my faith as I go.
  
  
• Faith is both impossibly difficult and incredibly easy. Well, this has gotten much longer than I intended, and I’m resisting the urge to break this part up into smaller parts. If I haven’t lost you by now…thanks…and stay with me for this last point.
  
  Walking by faith is difficult because everything natural is opposed to it. My natural reaction is to respond to what I see, what I hear, what I think, or what I understand. My supernatural (faith) reaction is based solely on what God says…which often opposed by what I see, hear, think, or understand. This is the battle I waged in my spirit. And it was often difficult. I wanted at times to give up. I cried out to God and asked for him to end this season early. I can’t tell you how many times I said audibly, “I just don’t understand.” Walking by faith is difficult because it is impossible to do it with the natural resources we possess.

Nonetheless, we walked by faith through this season because it is all we know to do. I believe that God rescued my soul from hell back in 1992, when I called upon Jesus to accept God’s wrath on my behalf for my rebellion against him. I believe that Jesus is God and he paid my penalty in full. And because of that, I am fully accepted by God, and that my soul is secure. Because I am able to trust God with the safety of my soul, I am much more so able to trust him with the lesser matters in my life, such as my health, my life, my ministry, my salary, my possessions. Walking by faith is incredibly easy exactly because it is naturally impossible. Faith is an entirely supernatural experience. Every iota of my faith is a gift from God. I cannot manufacture it. God has birthed it, nurtured it, and in this season of adversity, he has grown it. The faith that carried me through the last fourteen months is the faith that I will return to and rely upon as we face the challenges and the unknowns that are ahead of us. 

There were times when my faith felt incredibly fragile, and times when it felt like was so big that it could move mountains. I’m not smart enough to know if my faith right now is small or big, weak or strong. I know my faith is the matter of God making real the things that I hope for based on his promises, and it is the evidence of what I cannot see. My faith is in the Christ…my God and my Savior.

No more bullet points of insights…but I close with perhaps the most fitting one of all….God works “hands on” in the messiness of life. I’m certain that more lessons are still to be discovered, possibly even more precious and important that what I’ve shared here. God never promised a pain-free, difficulty-void, adversity-proof life. In fact, he promised the opposite. But he also promised that he’d be with me through it all. And he has been. And he offers the same for you. I hope you know him in this way. I hope you have this type of relationship with him. Thanks for going with me through this journey. I’m here for you, too, to walk with you in whatever season you find yourself in as you have read this.

Note: We only get to the second question before realizing that the questionnaire has not 56 questions as numbered, but actually 86 questions, because many questions have multiple parts. I’ll be treating these as single questions with my response…because 56 is plenty, thankyouverymuch.

2. What does it mean for a person to love God? In what ways do you see true biblical love toward God demonstrated in your life? Do you see true biblical love toward God in the lives of your wife and each of your children?

Loving God is relating to God personally through faith in Christ. Love for God is expressed in obedience to him and worshipping him in spirit and truth (John 4:24; 14:15). I am able to love God only because he loved me first and best through Jesus (1 John 3:16). I love God by falling headlong into his grace, realizing that there is nothing good in me apart from him (Ps. 16:2). My love for God is expressed by worshipping him with the wholeness of my life, by serving others to bring renown to him, and by pursuing the best that he’s prepared for me.  As, for the third part of the question…yes.