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In July of 1961, 38 members of the Green Bay Packers gathered for training camp. They had lost the NFL Championship the previous year to the Philadelphia Eagles. Their coach, Vince Lombardi, decided they needed to get back to the fundamentals of football. He began the meeting by holding up a football and saying, "Gentlemen, this is a football."
Sometimes in our quest for something new and exciting, or to try to fit in with the trends of the times, we can focus so much on those things that we forget the basics. This is true not only in sports, business, and other areas of secular life, but it can carry over into our spiritual walk as well. We can get so caught up in seeking the newest teaching or revelation that we lose sight of the basic truths of the faith that we need to build our lives on.
It is true that we are to grow and go onto maturity, but there are some basics that we should never get far from. The main one we should never get far from is the cross of Jesus Christ. Our entire faith is built upon the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If we stray from that, we have gotten off course.
I believe the most important thing after this is the love of God. We must know the love God has for us and we must love Him with our whole hearts. But right behind this is the love we are to have for others. Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was. He responded by saying, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and foremost commandment. The second is like it, 'You shall love our neighbor as yourself.'" (Matthew 2:37-39 NASB)
I Corinthians 13 is known by many as the "Love Chapter" as it defines how true agape love(the God-kind of love) expresses itself. We can know and live many of the truths of the word of God, but if we get away from love, we are nothing more than a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal (I Corinthians 13:1) In fact in the next verse, Paul says that without love we are nothing. That is a powerful statement!
It is time for us to get back to the basics. It is time to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind and it is time to love our neighbor with God's unconditional love. Our lives and our world would be so much better if we allowed God's love to be expressed through our lives. You may think you can't love the same way God does, but you can if you have Jesus living in your heart by the Holy Spirit. Romans 5:5 (NASB) tells us, "The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us." The words "poured out" there mean "a pouring forth, a spilling out, something dispersed in abundance." All the love of God is in us; it's up to us to allow Him to love through us.
I Corinthians 13:4-8 are great verses to meditate on. In fact, it might be good for all of us to regularly check our love walk by reading these verses. If our lives don't line up with these verses, we need to ask God to help us allow Him to live His life through us.
"Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance." (NLT) I especially like the second part of verse five in the Amplified Bible, "Love (God's love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]."
Can anyone else say, "Ouch?" God's love through us will ever be selfish, touchy, and does not hold grudges. I think all of us need to be reminded often of how we will know if we are really allowing God's love to be expressed through our lives. What if all of us decided to read and mediate on I Corinthians 13 every day for a month? I've heard it said that if you do something for 30 days it becomes a habit. What better habit to have than to allow God to love others through us?