It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13:7)

Dear Friends and Members of IBC, In Sunday’s sermon, we explored the parable of the Good Samaritan and its teaching on Christian love. For this week’s Word for the Week, I would like to turn to one of Scripture’s defining passages on love: 1 Corinthians 13. Here, the apostle Paul offers a rich portrait of what love truly is. Today we will dig into one of the fifteen descriptions Paul gives us—the truth that love perseveres. The NIV translation says that love perseveres, the Greek word can also be translated as endures. It keeps going. There is the idea that it stays behind even after everyone has ran away. Love remains. When we see all of Jesus’ disciples abandoning him in the Garden of Gethsemane, when we see Jesus’ closest friends fall asleep, at a time when their Messiah most needed them to stay awake, maybe we think, “I wouldn’t have run away, I would have stayed alert.” But sadly, for many of us, we don’t stay behind after everyone has left, we join the crowds, and give in too easily. There is a song I appreciate by the musician Crowder, called Forgiven, which includes the lyrics: “I'm the one who held the nail. It was cold between my fingertips. I've hidden in the garden. I've denied You with my very lips.” Yes, the disciples ran. They didn’t endure. And neither do I. Off my own strength, I give up pretty quickly on things. This is why we must recognise that to love in this way, we must have supernatural help. We can’t love like this ourselves. Look within yourself. What have you got? Not on a Sunday afternoon when you are singing the songs and feeling good about life, but on a Wednesday evening when you are drained of energy, the baby won’t stop crying, you are worried you might lose your job, and the opportunity presents itself again to patiently endure, to do a kind act or to deny yourself. This requires effort, and we need supernatural assistance for this. This is especially so when we look at the world around us today. How can love persevere in these current conditions? When we see how many abortions take place every year. When we see the injustice of human trafficking that still goes on. When we see that over a billion children in the world currently live in poverty. These realities may rightly make us angry or cause us to grieve. But the question is, how do we not compromise on truth, knowing that love only rejoices with God given truth, and still keep a compassionate, loving heart through all this? How does love endure in a society that often seems like it is imploding? How does love keep going in the best of times and the worst of times? Only with supernatural help. We need God’s help to love in this way. So we look to Jesus. Only Jesus could have gone to the cross and died for us. No-one else could have done it. Only Jesus could have suffered patiently, protected the oppressed, never sought his own comfort, and endured to the very end, despite the agony and the very real temptation to give up. And this Jesus will give us the love to love like He always does if we ask Him. God Bless you James