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    Jan 29, 2017

    Love...Always

    Passage: 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

    Speaker: Janice Holsonbake

    Series: Falling in Love is Easy

    Category: Relationships

    Good morning church! My name is Janice Holsonbake and it is my honor to be here today to wrap up our Staying in Love series which started at the beginning of the month. Pastor Vivian and Rich are on vacation for a week in Ocean City getting ready for the chaos of next weekend’s ROCK retreat when we will meet up with them (and 4000 other teens)! I hope she’s getting some much needed rest! She’s going to need it!

    Vivian approached me about 3 or 4 months ago and asked if I might be interested in helping her this weekend to talk about the topic of staying in love. Since it was November and January was so far in the future, I said, “Hey why not??!” I received the book from Andy Stanley and began the preparation process…began watching the video and I have been truly humbled and amazed by how God works in a person’s life. Many of the topics that Vivian has discussed in the past several weeks in her messages have spoken directly to me and have been areas of weakness within myself and my marriage. Just to let you know that if at any time I start going on a tangent about my marriage, the sound guy in the back of the room will cut me off (who happens to be my husband).

    So let’s just take a little bit of time reviewing the past several weeks:
    During week one, Vivian talked about how it doesn’t take much more than having a pulse to fall in love, but to stay in love for the long haul takes a plan, and is quite frankly, more work than any of us bargained for. We feel in our souls that long term relationships can happen and we even crave them – whether long term romantic relationships or long lasting friendships. We are actually wired this way for this is the relationship that God craves to have with us!

    Jesus gave us the foundation for love when he said this in John 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

    Jesus makes the word “love” a verb in this statement when we usually think of “love” as a feeling or just an emotion – or something we “fall into.” Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 5, verse 21 explains love as a verb as “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” In other words, love your beloved as Christ loved us – He submitted His will for us.

    This is a conscious decision, and a choice, one that we make every day…to submit to our partners, to be sure that the other person is our priority and we are placing our priorities under the other person. (You first, no you first). Sometimes even though we don’t feel like doing that in the moment, we do it anyway and then the feeling will come or return.


    In the second week of the series, we looked closely at Philippians 2: 3 – 4 “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.

    We discussed the importance of trying not to compete with each other, trying not to be right, to not only put 50% into the relationship, hoping that our partner puts in the other 50% - no, we both put 100% into the relationship; we show respect and even awe of that special person (you know that we all did that at the beginning of the relationship so we are capable). We learn about the interests of the other… Why think that we stop doing these things that we did at the beginning of our relationship??

    Philippians 2: 5 – 8 continues: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
    (slide 4) And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on the cross.”

    Jesus who was equal to God but came to this earth and made himself nothing by taking on the very nature of a servant… “Jesus emptied himself” … and sometimes aren’t we just so full of ourselves?

    Last week, we talked about “Feeling It.” This didn’t pertain to “feeling it” in our relationships, but talked about looking deeper within ourselves to discover what it is that makes us feel… for example, anger or frustration at our beloved or friends? Is it something that they said or did OR did it hit a place in our fragile hearts that causes us pain due to a past hurt or frustration? We are rather good at monitoring our beloved’s behavior and perhaps, not so good at looking deeply at our own hearts.

    Proverbs 4:23 says to “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you a deceitful mouth and put devious speech far from you…” I know that there have been many, many times when Brian’s words or actions have put me in a tizzy and I will lash out but realize later that I was feeling insecure and perhaps unloved in the moment and it had nothing to do with what Brian’s actually said or did. This passage reminds us to think what is truly going on inside our hearts before we speak with words that could really cause some damage. Identify the emotion and then say it out loud for then it Ioses its power! Explain your feelings to your partner and we hope your partner will respond with, “Thank you, I’m glad you told me.”

    And now for the final points that Andy Stanley wishes to make.
    Today’s scripture comes from the well-known love passage in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13, verses 4 – 7.

    “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth; IT ALWAYS PROTECTS. IT ALWAYS TRUSTS. IT ALWAYS HOPES. IT NEVER GIVES UP.”

    When Brian and I got married, I guess we thought we were love experts and didn’t even bother to have this passage read at our wedding. We just typed it up real pretty in our bulletin.  I mean we were in love and thought we knew all about love.

    After almost 20 years of being together I look at this with new eyes. In truth, I understand the first part of this…yeah, yeah… love is patient, love is kind and not jealous…got it and sure we always can get better in this area… does not brag or isn’t arrogant…yeah, I got that and need to work on that… yes, don’t be unbecoming, don’t seek my own and don’t keep records of wrong…I can always work on that one…does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth… ok, celebrate the good stuff and don’t camp out on the mistakes… ok got it.
    When looking at the last part of those verses some red flags emerge. How can love ALWAYS protect, ALWAYS trust, ALWAYS hope and ALWAYS persevere? Doesn’t that make love blind? Couldn’t this lead to some unhealthy things like co-dependency? In my house, I’ve learned that the words ALWAYS and NEVER are never great words to say. “You ALWAYS forget….” Or “You NEVER do…” I have learned that those works can start a fire faster than a _____________.”

    Andy Stanley states: “But Paul is giving us a trustworthy way to respond to the disappointments we will all inevitably face in our relationships.”

    In every relationship there is going to be a gap, sometime, – there will be one. It will be a gap between your expectation of what should be done, or should be said, or how things are “meant to be” and then the actual behavior our beloved or friend truly does. You might have expectations based upon what was said earlier in your marriage vows, or what was agreed upon, or your history of other relationships, or what was modeled to you in your past (i.e. dad mows the lawn, mom makes a 3 course meal for dinner). It doesn’t matter if these expectations are deep, shallow, specific or general but along the way, they will not get met. (i.e. he’s late again, she overspent again this month, he didn’t get the trashcans at the end of the driveway, he’s supposed to be more romantic….) (Is my mic still on?) I’m sure we are very good at knowing what our spouses or friends do not do. Right? In fact I bet you are thinking of them right now….

    What comes next is our decision. It comes from right here (our minds). We can either do one of two things…. We can Believe the Best or Assume the Worst. Give examples (assume the worst: he’s late again - I knew it! He doesn’t care! He thinks his time is more valuable than my time... or there he sits on that phone again, or, yup, she didn’t pay that bill again - her mother was never really good with money either and I have to do everything around here!) or examples of believing the best (i.e. he’s late again, but I know that he has a lot on his plate or it’s raining and the traffic is awful in the rain or she must have had a lot of her mind with ….).

    Our minds can go in either direction based upon OUR decision! It begins in our heads. Some of us either by intuition or we’ve learned how to do this, go towards believing the positive and are successful with this. Some of us, are not that lucky.

    People who have healthy relationships and who stay in love LEARN to do this. There will always be gaps in relationships, good and bad both, but how we react to this is what will determine the health and longevity of these relationships. People with healthy relationships are generous in their explanations. “She’s not impatient, she’s just intense!” “He’s not insensitive, he’s just focused!”

    So now… Where are you? Where do you go? Where do you go with your closest relationship? Your mother, father, sister, brother, co-workers…church family?

    Andy Stanley referenced a study of happy couples who had been in love for 10 years or more and found out that not only did the couples give each other the benefit of the doubt but actually had an unrealistic view of each other’s talents. In a survey they actually rated the other’s talents higher than the individual rated themselves. And believed it! This in turn “created an upward spiral of love.” Love really was blind.

    Andy Stanley stated “The illusion created a conviction and the conviction fostered security. Security foster intimacy and intimacy fostered love.”

    If and when you assume the worst about your beloved, this easily goes into a spiral of negativity – however, you will be right! And sure, your negative thoughts can be justified! Sometime we might even like it when our partner is wrong so we can be right! But you might be on the way of losing the most important relationship of your life.

    Don’t think I’m saying that you let everything slide – conversations need to occur about expectations and behaviors but then once resolved, healthy couples will slide back to believing the best and keeping the margins wide open.

    Let’s go back to what Paul wrote in verse 7: Love always protects (yes, the integrity of the relationship); Love always trusts (yes, looks for a generous explanation); Love always hopes (hopes that there is something that will explain the situation); love always perseveres (always looks for the good). I am admitting that Brian is much, much better than I am when it comes to this and I am grateful. I’m still learning and practicing.

    The last thing we want to do is disappoint our beloved, and/or our closest friends. If you are showing constant disappointment with your beloved or friend by always assuming the worst when your expectations are not met, eventually you will lose their heart.

    However, if you are saying to them by believing the best through your positive attitudes and words: “I trust you. I trust you. I accept you. I accept you. You have not disappointed me.” It will draw that person nearer to you. Come my way, move my way… I bear all things. I believe all things. Our hearts are drawn towards environments of acceptance for God made us that way.

    Isn’t this how Jesus draws us to Him? He has every right, every justification to assume the negative! “Oh, there Janice goes again… I can’t believe it! after all I’ve tried to teach her! etc…” Instead he says, “I love you, I trust you, I have hope in you, I believe in you!” and when that happens, I just want to draw closer and closer to Him, every moment.

    Jesus says in Luke 6:31 “Do to others as you would have them to unto you.” Don’t you want your beloved to accept you and give you allowances for your mistakes? And love you anyway?
    How does Jesus love us? Does he assume the worst in us? Or believe the best?  What kind of impact could we have in the world is we all just accepted each other and assumed the best??

    One more idea – when we are filled up with God’s love, it takes the pressure off of our beloved or friend to fulfill all of our expectations (it will never happen plus it’s unfair to you and to them) plus you begin to understand how to love each other as Christ loves us! Seek God first for only he can fill all of your expectations. Philippians 3: 19 states “And my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

    And in the meantime, let’s try to draw closer towards each other and our Lord and Savior by believing the best in each other! What a world it could be!