Love is the foundation

A couple months ago I began a series of teachings on the three foundational qualities of the Christian life; faith, hope and love. The Bible is very clear that Love is the overarching theme of everything God has done for us and created us for. It is very plain in this in multiple passages, but I think the most obvious case is 1 Corinthians 13:13 - And now these three remain; faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I have pondered this verse for quite a while in my walk with Christ, read many commentaries and writings on it and have come to a conclusion about why it is the greatest of the three. It is the foundation upon which the other two are built. Just as Jesus is the foundation for our "faith", love is the foundation for our faith. The reason this must be so is that if it is not the foundation then our faith and hope quickly become nothing less than extremely selfish tools that we use in our prayer life for ourselves. Jesus is very clear that genuine love (Christ-centetered love) always puts others first, even going as far as to die for the love of someone else. I'm afraid it seems as though the majority of the time faith is simply taught as a key that we can use to unlock the door of "whatever we want", which most of time is something that has a materialistic value to it. I would challenge to you think that this type of selfish faith is not the faith that Jesus spoke of and taught about in the majority of His ministry. Please don't misunderstand, I am not saying that God does not give us the desires of our hearts, He does and it is His great pleasure to do so, but I think we need to re-balance ourselves and our "faith praying"; to not only include standing in faith for others that we love as brothers and sisters in Christ, but to make that the majority of our faith praying.

How much more wonderful would it be to live in a Christ-cenetered community that teaches this type of selfless faith. Instead of praying and standing in faith for yourself all the time, you could stand in faith for other brothers and sisters in Christ that you are sharing you life with and know that they are stading in faith for you. It is clearly laid out in scripture that the power of two, three or more praying is exponentially greater than the power of just one. Over the last year I have begun to see this work in a practical way in our church community and it is an amazing thing. My prayer for you is that after reading this you would be challenged to stand in faith for your brothers and sisters more than you do for yourself and have confidence that as they learn what love-founded-faith is that they are standing in faith for you as well.

As a challenge why not try to pray for nothing in regards to your own needs, but only pray for the needs of those around you in your community of friends that you have. See what happens, you never know, you might actually see a miracle or two...

peace,
the rev