Heard a wonderful sermon today based on:

1 Corinthians 13 New International Version (NIV)

13 If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

https://flic.kr/p/28vWo91

On the Importance of Love
by Michael Romani

There is no place we might go
That we cannot feel God's flow
Loving us despite our ways
Carrying us through in all our days

Three pillars are there to be found
All by faith are these chased around
In our faith we find all things possible
This first pillar makes things probable

Faith found in walking troubled waters
Faith is the known love of all Fathers
Assurance in all that we may not yet see
The believe in the power of possibility

Hope then next is fundamental to life
It' s what we all need to get through strife
From the world's Pandora Box we find trouble
Until the butterfly of hope soothes us redoubled

Faith, hope and love with love as best of these
Holding to these are what bring us to our knees
And from there up onto our feet toward victory
With praise on our lips and eyes on His sweet mercy

Take away love and there is nothing to ever learn
This is the greatest truth that we must discern
Faithful in this in all that we say and that we do
Keeping this in heart in mind is how we keep true

This then is the love of God, true and eternal
A gift offered freely to deliver from the infernal
All for us, He gave for our sake His only Son
This given with forgiveness despite things we've done

(c)  September 30, 2018  Michael Romani
All Rights Reserved