Relationship Goals Week 5: God’s Way

⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

1 Corinthians 13:4-5

This week, our 1 Corinthians 13 conversation continues with the second part of “Love does not insist on its own way.” Last week, Pastor Yami drew our attention to the way that we often approach love in a self-seeking manner, actually using love as an excuse to get our own way. This week, he challenged us on this further, even confessing how much we in the church have used this concept that God loves us unconditionally as a weapon against another, twisting the meaning of unconditional love to ask others never to want us to change or grow. Fortunately, we didn’t stay in the land of hard challenges this week though. In our desire to learn to love in God’s way, rather than our own way, we look at the relationship between the Father and the Son which is the ultimate expression of love in human history. This exchange reveals a love that is affectionate, gives itself away, exalts the other, and, to our surprise, obedient. How Jesus loved the Father, lived out that love, and talks about the way the Father loves him, are beautiful guides to us as we continue to learn to love like them.

Our next steps for this week:

1. How are you loving others?
2. Where do you need to commit as a sign of your love?
3. Commit to a relationships this week in line with what God is inviting you to.

The reality of life is there is no life apart from relationships. Your relationships might be with stuff, not people, but your life is relating itself to STUFF. So our heart and our goal in this series is to just be at a place where we ask the hard questions, we get into the space of trying to understand what is love really like. Now when you get into scripture, scripture has a lot of stuff to say about love. So we are are looking at some few amazing things that God has said in his word in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 of what love is.

Catch up on earlier Relationship Goals sermons: Week 1 , Week 2, Week 3, Week 4