Love, The Underlying Bedrock

1 Corinthians 13

There are many ways that we can please God: We can be manifesting the Holy Spirit's gifts, we can be the most gifted teacher, or be able to encourage all we meet; We may be doing all the things that we think should please Him. We may even have put all of our faith in Him so that no circumstance moves our eyes off of Jesus, and we may have a generous spirit and one of compassion to feed and cloth the poor. We may be obedient and have counted our own lives as nothing to the point of dying for His name. All of these things are pleasing to our Father. All of them Jesus portrayed while on earth, but there is one thing that if we are missing...all of these things we do in vain. There is one thing that is required for us to have under all the service and manifestations of the Holy Spirit. That one thing is love.

I believe the love that is spoken about in 1 Cor 13 is the total sold out love we should have for Jesus. All of these things that please Him should spring up only out of our love and devotion to Him. Love of Him should be the basis of our works for Him. Our love for Him has to be the underlying bedrock of all the good things we do for Him. If it is not...when all the good works pass away...we will be left with pride, selfishness, and dead works that really did not please Him at all.

The motive of the heart is very important to our Father. To be love-motivated is the only way to please Him...anything else is only done out of our attempt to somehow make ourselves worthy, and that is a road that will only end in vain--without pleasing Him at all.

We love Him only because He has first loved us. The love we have for Him needs to be obtained from Him. We, in ourselves, cannot or do not have it. He is the one we have to go to get this kind of love. We have to ask and then receive, and then believe that He has given it to us. There is no greater love than the love of our Father...He gave His Son's life so that we may live. This is a powerful love, one that when it is in full bloom, will cause all good works to please Him.

Not only will the love of God in us spring forth dedicated love for Jesus, it will also cause us to love others as He would love them: kindly, without envy or conceit, without self-gratification, or to seek it's own glory, with patience, without evil thinking, loving truth, hating sin, bearing all things, believing all good things, enduring all things, and never failing. In our natural love, we can attempt to have this king of love...we can attempt to manifest all these things by our own flesh, but we will fail. We can only get this type of love from Jesus through His Spirit. It is a process of letting go our natural love for His supernatural love-carnal love for eternal love. This is the only thing that will last; All other things will pass away.

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1Co 13:13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
It is interesting to note that the word charity in the above scripture is the word:

G26
ἀγάπη
agapē
ag-ah'-pay
From G25; love, that is, affection or benevolence; specifically (plural) a love feast: - (feast of) charity ([-ably]), dear, love.

A love feast. That brings to mind that we have to go to Him to partake of it, and to be filled with it. Only when we are full of His love are we able to share the feast with others.