Today we’ll be looking at a crazy little thing called love. Well, it’s not really crazy…nothing could be more sane.. There’s many types of love.
Our focus is not, well, on erotic love as in making love… and not affectionate love as in friendship… and not really umm kinship as in love that’s connected to family and relatives… Today we will look at Agape love and how it can be a cure for a horrible epidemic that has been sweeping the globe for a long time. It’s like a disease that cripples peoples lives and makes them un-useful in God’s kingdom and his work. It’s an outbreak of an epidemic called depression.
So let’s begin looking at the cure. Agape love is the highest form of love. It is the type of love God has toward us when he gave his only Son to be paid the wages of our sin. Agape love within our life should come along side of the other types of love I mentioned strengthening the bond between friends as they walk through life together… improving the relationship of a man and wife in marriage and fortifying families making them more resilient.
Some of us may have been brought up by loving families; some maybe not. You may have parents who severely beat or even abused you… Friends sometimes use and abuse us also…
Whatever it was for you in your life, even with the best scenario no one has ever loved you perfectly. No human has ever shown us a perfect example of love. We are all broken sinners… that is, except one. Jesus, God’s only Son.
We’re going to read 1st Corinthians 13 and then make a connection to the topic of depression and see how love can help in a world where depression wants to rule the day.
Love Must Drive The Vehicle
1st Corinthians 13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is Hard and Impossible Without Christ
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; 6 t does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Supremacy Of Agape Love
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.
When we Won’t Need Vehicles
When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
Summery
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
I was thinking about how it seems that one of satan’s major goals for believers is to keep us depressed. Today I want to talk about a cure for one kind of depression.
You might think depression is not the worst problem someone might face in this world but consider how it’s side effects connect us to many other problems that hinder us.
Stroke, heart attacks, insomnia, weight gain, weight loss, feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, irritability, difficulty concentrating, daytime fatigue, drug and alcohol use, thoughts of suicide, self pity… depression hinders good relationships. There can be physical symptoms, such as headaches, digestive disorders and chronic pain.
Out of space... go to braggingonjesus.com for this and more.
