This week, we invite you to explore the journey of understanding love through the lens of the timeless biblical passage, 1 Corinthians 13. Embrace the complexity of love with its depth and power as we uncover its characteristics like patience, kindness, and an unyielding faithfulness that transcends time. Discover how embodying love influences behaviors, cultivates positivity, and ultimately leads to a life of greater purpose and peace. This episode challenges us to embody love, letting it lead our actions and decisions, and highlights the inextricable link between the divine and our everyday lives. Engage with us and reflect on
The Crawford Stand. February brings us Valentine’s Day and a great opportunity to talk about all aspects of love. All this week, the president of Crawford Media Group, Don Crawford, talks about the greatest of all things, God’s love.
SPEAKER 01 :
The greatest of all things is love. The greatest, says the Apostle Paul, agreed upon by the world’s greatest thinkers, artists, and poets. Love is best. The Bible book 1 Corinthians 13 is Paul’s finest expressions of love by far. To really know what love is, says Paul, can only occur as a result of a meaningful, loving relationship with God. The longer, the deeper the relationship, the more the meaning of love becomes clear. Love is good. In fact, good is defined by love. For no mere mortal can do good without love. One may intend to live right, perhaps following the Ten Commandments and other great moral precepts, but mere intention, the act of the will, is not enough, for it lacks the energy, the conviction, the power of love. There really is no definition of love. That is no simple one. Words like affection, attachment, emotion, even ultimate feelings are seemingly inadequate. So Paul says, let’s begin by defining love as patient. Love is long-suffering because love is eternal. Then Paul says love is kind, love is gentle, love is easy. It avoids meaningless confrontation and struggle. Love thinks on those things which are good in gentle ways. There is no such thing as gentle or kind. without love. God’s love in us does not insist on its own rights or its own way. A loving person, on the other hand, is giving, open, caring. These standards are extremely high and virtually impossible for any human being to accomplish, as Paul says, without the love of God. Love even allows us not to take account of the wrongs or evil done to us by others. Boy, that’s a hard one, isn’t it? Love even allows us to love an enemy rather than to seek vengeance. We can lovingly forgive even as a loving God forgave us. Love rejoices when right and truth prevail. Ah, how wonderful and joyful it is to lovingly live in truth at all times. For to know the truth of love is to be set free And it allows us to live a life rejoicing and praising. And love protects and defends. It guards the hearts and the minds of the young. It trains up children in the way in which they should go. It shows them the way of the Lord, the path of righteousness. Ah, how necessary that is today. Love is loyal, says Paul. Love is trustworthy and trusting. Real love, says Paul, always hopes for the best, especially the best in others. Love at work creates belief that all things will work together for good for those who love each other, and especially those who love God. And that, says Paul, is an absolute truth. It’s absolute. For love never fails. It endures now and for all eternity. It overcomes the greatest evils in this world, which combined can never destroy love. Ah, there’s so much hatred in our world. So much violence, killing, and death. So much evil at work. The remedy, the antidote, is not war. It’s not guns. It’s love. But the Apostle Paul in his great treatise in 1 Corinthians 13, please read that. You should read it every day. It’s such a blessing. Paul tells us again in 1 Corinthians 13 what love is not. Paul tells us that love is not talk, no matter how eloquent. even the language of angels, even the words, I love you. Those words are like sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, hollow and meaningless without real love. And Paul says that even the gift of prophecy, knowing the future, discerning the divine will and purpose without love, all of that means nothing. One cannot even give to the poor. and find blessing without love. One cannot even be willing to die, or for a body to be burned, or lay down a life for another without love, for all such acts are meaningless without love. The Apostle Paul goes on to say in 1 Corinthians that love is not, not envious. Love is not jealous of others. Love desires the best for everyone. Love rejoices when the best things happen to other people. Love never craves or lusts. It is content, no matter the circumstances. And love is not controlling, says Paul. It lets go. It never holds on. Love never demands and always reasons with an open heart. Love is never possessive. Love is always ready to share, to give, and to understand. And love never boasts or brags. Love has no ego. Love wishes to be known and loved by God and not man. It is not about me, but about Him. And Paul says love does not behave unseemly. Good behavior. Love allows one to live modestly, humbly, and joyfully. Love builds and sustains character. And love is not easily angered, says Paul. Not that one never gets angry. That’s not what Paul is saying. We do. And sometimes there is righteous anger, which is justified. But that anger is slow to wrath. When one is possessed, consumed by love, that loving person cannot be easily provoked. And perhaps so very importantly, Paul reminds us that love does not keep any record of wrongs. We the humans have such long memories, do we not? Especially when things go wrong, when we are wronged. But love, says Paul, keeps no record of those wrongs. Love holds no grudges, none whatsoever. No get-even factor. Don’t we all have that? Love allows us to do good to those who persecute us, defame us, slander and abuse us. That All of that is real love. We are told that God is love. And the more of that love of God in our lives and in our hearts, the more we can live by love and in love. You and I, says Paul, we see things imperfectly. You know, like that image in a mirror. We see things imperfectly. We now understand imperfectly. But someday… we will know when we see the source of all love face to face. Do you believe that? Do you believe that one day you will see God face to face? And then we shall know that perfect love, which passes all understanding, to stand in the holy presence, the source of all love, is to know completely what a day that will be. Love is a process, as is learning to love here and now. But love will be fully completed in the dawn of that eternal day. Praise the Lord. And finally, Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 13. Please read it over and over again. 1 Corinthians 13, that there are three great things in life. Three. The very best of all things in this life. And they are faith and hope and love. No matter how important faith is, and it surely is, that is, the conviction and belief with respect to man’s relationship to God and divine things, love is greater. Love is greater than faith. And no matter how strong the force of hope, the joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation, and as important as that is, and it is, love is even greater. The greatest of all things is love. Love. That is true affection for God and then for man. Affection growing out of God’s love for and in us. Praise the Lord. The greatest of all things is love because love never fails.
SPEAKER 02 :
Mr. Crawford would love to hear from you this week and to know your thoughts on God’s love. You can tell him in your email to stand at CrawfordMediaGroup.net. When you want to review what you hear, go to our website, CrawfordMediaGroup.net. By the way, when you write to Mr. Crawford, be sure to tell him on what station you hear the stand. His email address again is stand at CrawfordMediaGroup.net. The Crawford Stand is a public affairs presentation of Crawford Media Group and this station, serving God and country. I’m Bill McCormick.
