1 Corinthians 13

1. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than a loud trumpet or crashing cymbal.

Even a dog can tell the difference between a good person and a bad person. When we have been broken by God and have learned to love others more than ourselves, then the deep things inside of us connect with the deep hurts inside of other people. People will then say, “Here is someone that I can trust to help me.” Psalm 42:7

2. If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that strong faith which can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all.

Knowledge makes us feel important, but love makes the church stronger. 1 Corinthians 8:1

3. If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing.

Money can be given to make yourself look good. Offering to die for a different reason than love does not impress God.
4. This love of which I speak does not give up! It looks for a ways of helping others. It is not looking out for itself. It does not try to make itself look good and does not think of itself as important.

True love is slow to lose patience. God has not given up on us so we cannot give up on each other. True love puts others first. “If sinners must go to hell then let go them go with our arms around their legs pulling them back!” Charles Spurgeon

5. Love has good manners and does not put itself first. It is not touchy. It does not keep a record of evil.
Goods manners shows respect for others. When a guest comes to your house you show them respect by offering everything you can do to make them comfortable. You are not thinking of yourself but are happy to sit on the floor just to make them feel welcome!

We do not show the love of Christ when we worry too much about the things that bother us. We do not keep track of the things that people have done to us, but we seek to forget about them the way that God has forgotten about our sins. Love covers a mountain of sins. 1 Peter 4:8

6. or laugh about the evil of other people. Instead, it is glad with all good men when truth wins!

Do not laugh when your enemies fall; do not be happy when they stumble. For the LORD will not be happy with you and will turn His anger away from them. Proverbs 24:17 – 18

7. Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope;

Many waters cannot stop love, rivers cannot drown it. Song 8:7

8. Love can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen. For if there are prophecies they will be fulfilled and done with, if there are “tongues” the need for them will disappear, if there is knowledge it will be swallowed up in truth.

Those who are covered by the blood of Christ will not go through the days of God’s wrath on the earth (1 Thessalonians 5:9), but Jesus told us there would be birth pains that warn us that the day is coming.

There will be hard days before He takes us to be with Him in the rapture. During these hard days, we need to find a way to love each other, or things will only be harder for us.

Nation will go to war against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in many parts of the world. But all this is only the first of the birth pains, with more to come.
“Then you will be arrested, persecuted, and killed. You will be hated all over the world because you are my followers. Matthew 24:7 – 9

9 – 10

For our knowledge is always incomplete and our prophecy is always incomplete, and when the complete comes, that is the end of the incomplete.

Anyone who thinks he knows all the answers does not really know very much.
1 Corinthians 8:2

11. When I was a little child I talked and felt and thought like a little child. Now that I am a man my childish speech and feeling and thoughts do not mean anything to me.

Do not be as children in your thinking. 1 Corinthians 14:20

12. At present we are men looking at foggy reflections in a mirror. The time will come when we will see what is real face to face! Now all I know is a little part of the truth, but the time will come when I shall know it as fully as God now knows me!

For if you listen to the word and do not obey, it is like taking a quick look at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you saw.
But if you look carefully into God’s Word which sets you free, and if you do what it says and do not forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing this! James 1:23 – 25

13. In this life we have three lasting things —faith, hope and love, but the greatest of them is love.

People who have a hard time loving others are selfish. The reason that they are selfish is because they have fear. The reason that they have fear is because they think that somebody is trying to take something away from them.

Whatever it is, God knows that the only cure for this disease is to take this thing away from them and then they will have no choice but to surrender themselves together with the rest of us in true love.