Love is life's motivator

If you have ever been to a wedding I am sure you are familair with 1 Corinthians 13.  I was reading through my Love Dare Day by Day Devotional and it asked me to read these verses but then to take part of them and add my name.  It makes it much more personal, more convicting, more real.  I often read The Message version of the Bible and I think in these particular verses it is a fresh look at  what we hear a lot.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

2 If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.

3 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

4 Jodi never gives up. Jodi cares more for others than for self. Jodi doesn't want what she doesn't have. Jodi doesn't strut, Jodi doesn't have a swelled head,5 Jodi doesn't force herself on others, Jodi isn't always "me first," Jodi doesn't fly off the handle, Jodi doesn't keep score of the sins of others,6 Jodi doesn't revel when others grovel, Jodi takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,7 Jodi puts up with anything, Jodi trusts God always, Jodi always looks for the best, Jodi never looks back, But Jodi keeps going to the end.

8 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit.9 We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete.10 But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

11 When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

12 We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.


Wow I have some work to do. My  prayer:  Lord fill me with your Holy Spirit, let His words be my words and remove anything that is of me and make me more like Him. Amen

In His Grip,
Jodi