Imagine … just imagine a world without love. What would that look like? Well, sadly, you and I don’t have to do too much imagining. We don’t have to look too far from home, to see what a loveless world looks like.

Love is something that we take for granted. It just is. It just exists. It’s always been here, always will be. Love. When I was younger, by far the majority of pop songs were about love.

These days, believe it or not, 92% of pop songs feature sex – it seems that sex sells.

But as much as love is something that’s always been there, something that we take for granted, it’s the lack of love, or the failure of people to love one another that causes most of the pain in this world. And not just on a geopolitical scale. It’s the absence of love, or the failure of love, that causes most of the pain in our lives at an individual level.

Can I be even more specific – in your life and my life.

Think about the things that cause you pain. Okay, there are health issues and financial issues. But most of the pain in our lives is caused by relationship issues.

Anger, resentment, arguments,. Feeling ignored and passed over. People who try to bully you. People who always want to get their own way. Just think about your relationships at the moment. Where do they fall short? What are the things causing you hurt at the moment?

Think … isn’t it all about people failing to love one another the way they should? Absolutely.

My dictionary tells me that love is a strong feeling of affection. That’s it! Well, I don’t know about you, but I think that that’s a wholly unsatisfactory definition of love. My feelings, your feelings, the next person’s feelings – they go up and down, depending on how we feel physically and emotionally. Depending on what’s going on around us.

Anyone who’s been married for any length of time will tell you, there are times in a marriage that your wife or husband drive you completely bonkers. You thought you knew them … then they do … that! No, if love is going to have any meaning at all, it has to be more than a strong feeling or emotion.

So what is love? What actually is it? Come on, if you had to get up and give the rest of us your definition of love in 25 words or less, what would you say? How would you put it?

Well that’s what I want to explore with you this week and next week on the program. Let’s take a journey together to discover what love actually is, Because if, in our heart of hearts we can work that out, then at the very least you and I will have a better sense of what it is to love other people.

And that … that has to be a good thing, right?

So we’re going to spend some time together in 1 Cor 13 – a familiar passage to many, written by the Apostle Paul to the Church in Corinth. Seems that church, which he was involved in planting in the 1^st Century AD, was having some significant problems.

Arguments, dissension. So Paul, who’s off somewhere else at the time, writes this letter to them. These days that letter is the 5^th book of the New Testament. And the reason that Chapter 13 is so well known is that it’s almost the chapter spoken about at weddings. Well, Christian weddings at least.

And it kicks off – talking about love – in rather an odd way. It starts off by describing a life, a world, without love. Let’s have a listen:

1 Cor 13:1–3: If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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 do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

So what God is saying here through Paul, is that it doesn’t matter how clever or gifted you are, it doesn’t matter how much of your life you sacrifice, it doesn’t matter how generous you are, how much faith you have … if you aren’t motivated by love, it’s all completely useless. You know something, I think he’s absolutely right!

We all know people who are incredibly bright or gifted or talented, and yet, they’re not the sort of people you want to be around. Because there’s no love. There’s no kindness or gentleness. For them, it’s all about them. Blow you, blow me, they’re only interested in advancing themselves. And we just don’t like being around those sorts of people.

It’s those sorts of people that ruin relationships. It’s those sorts of people who start wars. If I don’t have love, then I gain nothing. Absolutely. If I don’t do everything out of love, motivated by love for God and for others, what’s the point?

And the love that Paul’s talking about here? Is it some vague feeling of affection? Nope. The original Greek word that he uses here is agape. Agape is a selfless, sacrificial, unconditional of. Of the four types of love spoken about in the Bible, it is the highest form of love.

It’s the love that God showed to you and me by sending Jesus to the Cross to die for us. When Jesus said, no greater love has any man than to lay down his life for his friends, that’s the sort of love that He was talking about.

Rock solid, unconditional love. Love that endures all the up and downs. Love that never wavers or fails, even when the object of that love doesn’t deserve it.

Without that sort of love, all the gifts and abilities in the world mean nothing. Would you agree?

So how are you living your life. Is your life mostly about you, or about the love that you have for the people around you? Because when you and I are dead and gone, the only thing we’ll leave behind is the love (or not) that we deposited in the hearts of the people who really matter to us.

I was fascinated recently to read what Mahatma Gandhi thought about Christianity. Gandhi was a Hindu, but he’d read the whole new testament. And strikingly, he had a lot of time for Jesus. This is what he said:

I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

That … that is as sad as it is true. You and I are never going to be perfect, but so often we Christians and the church at large are not, principally, an expression of God’s love. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of Christians do good things. Amazing things. Look at Mother Theresa. And okay, we all know about her, but there are countless Christians today, living lives of sacrificial, unconditional love.

Problem is, there are also countless Christians who are doing the exact opposite. Fighting and arguments in churches. Power struggles. Pride. Dissension. And out there in the world, the place where we get to use our gifts to express the love of Christ in a practical way, so many so–called Christians are using their talents for their own self advancement.

How are you living your life? If God is indeed love as the Bible says He is, if God did indeed send Jesus His Son to die to pay for your sin, if all that is true … how are you living your life.

Is yours a life of sacrificial, selfless, unconditional love? Or are you one of the Christians that Gandhi was talking about?

Hard questions, but questions that need to be asked. So join me again tomorrow, as we take a look at what Christ–like love in my life and your life, really looks like.

You know, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. This series, Love Is …, is all about helping us to live the life of love that Jesus would have us live. And to help you with that, I would love to share more of God’s Word with you.

So, you can listen to each of the messages in this series again, right now, online at christianityworks.com. Just click on the A Different Perspective icon at the bottom of the homepage and you’ll see them all right there.

You can stream them online, download the audio or transcript, even subscribe to the podcast.

And while you’re there, check out the treasure trove of free resources – like the Christianityworks daily eDevotional. Words of inspiration, hope and encouragement delivered right to your inbox, on your smartphone, tablet or computer each weekday.

It’s all about helping you live out each and every day in the victory that Jesus came to give you. And, like everything else on the site, it’s completely free. That web address again is christianityworks.com.

Remember, this series is all about helping you to discover the amazing love that God has for you, a love that He wants you to live out, each day, in this tough, brutal world where so many people are in desperate need of the love of Christ.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m Berni Dymet and I’ll catch you again, same time tomorrow, with … A Different Perspective.

The world is moving faster and faster. We wish things would slow down, but they don’t. It just gets worse. And the faster and more frenetic things get, the more transactional, the more impersonal our relationships become.

I recently attended the funeral of a close friend of mine. Warwick Isherwood. He was a lawyer who worked in several top tier law firms. Many years ago, I had worked for a firm who had used his services, and then, when I had my own company, we used his legal services as well.

Over the years he became a close friend, and sadly he passed away all too young from pancreatic cancer. What amazed me though as people got up to speak about him at the funeral, and as I chatted with different people at his wake, was how many other former clients of his had become good friends.

He was just that kind of guy. A tough, insightful lawyer, but patient and kind as well. He stood out head and shoulders above his peers, because he cared for other people. He delighted in mentoring young lawyers. He delighted in relating to people.

I left the funeral and went back to the airport, to fly home. I had a couple of hours to kill, so I sat down in a large food hall area in the airport, pulled out my laptop, did a bit of work, walked around. Now I love watching people in these large busy airports. All the food vendors selling their different meals. People wandering in, looking at the illuminated boards above the checkouts deciding which salad, or burger, or kebab they were going to have.

Going and sitting down at a table, most of them on their own, and wolfing down their dinner. At one fast food outlet, people even place their order on large touch screens.

It was all so … impersonal. So transactional. So typical of life today. People racing from one place to another, through the airport. Dinner time, food, race to the gate, airline staff in their uniforms. Transaction after transaction after transaction.

As I was boarding my flight, I couldn’t help but be struck by the stark difference between the way Warwick lived his life, and the transactional, impersonal world that we live in. In fact, it’s precisely because of that stark contrast that Warwick Isherwood stood out from the crowd.

And as I sat on the flight back home again, I had to ask myself, do I stand out from the crowd for those same reasons? Or am I so lost in this high speed world of impersonal transactions, that I just blend in with the crowd?

Those are questions that we should all be asking ourselves. I think. So what are the attributes of this genuine love that make a person stand out from the crowd for the right reasons. Well, let’s look at the first two that we find in 1 Cor 13:4

Love is patient; love is kind.

We don’t have to go to a dictionary to get a definition of patience and kindness. We all know what they are, right.

I remember when I first read that verse, it was like a dagger in my heart, because I am not naturally a patient or a kind person. Before I became a Christian I’d spent 20 years building a career as an IT consultant, and my plan was to climb to the top. I would roll over anyone who got in my way. I would climb over the top of anyone to get where I was going. I’d made grown men cry I was that tough and that brutal.

And let me tell you, that doesn’t all magically change the moment you become a Christian. Patience and kindness are things that I had to learn, and, let me tell you, are things that I am still learning.

I want you to imagine for a moment, a world in which everyone is patient and kind. Just stop and think what that would look like. In the traffic, rushing through the train station, at work, in the supermarket. So instead of people getting angry about the slow person walking in front of them, they slowed down a little bit, cut other people some slack.

Imagine the stress that would evaporate, instantly, if everyone were patient and kind. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Berni, get real. That’s never going to happen. And I agree with you, it’s not. But now imagine your world, if you consistently showed patience and kindness towards everyone else.

Think of the person who frustrates you most. Instead of getting hot under the collar, you just accept them for who they are and show them patience. And that rude individual that you deal with day after day, you make a decision to be kind to them. Not because you have to, but because that’s what love is … and Jesus died for you on that Cross bearing your sins when you didn’t deserve it.

How different would your world be? How much of the tension would just disappear out of your life if you just lived out this one half a verse of the Bible? How much more would people look at you and say – Wow, I like being around that person?

Psalm 86:15: But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

That’s what God’s love to you and me is like. And I think right there is a good definition of patience: it’s being slow to anger, instead of flying off the handle. And in this high–speed, impersonal, transactional world, I sometimes think that patience and kindness, as simple as they are, are profound and amazing expressions of love. They are so rare in the supermarket and the train station and the airport. They stand out. Much in the same way as my friend Warwick stood out.

So here’s the challenge for you today. Take this short, half a verse and start living it. Love is patient; love is kind. Because when we start loving the people around us the way God loves us … the world starts to change. Their lives start to change. They start wanting to know what it is that we have that they’re missing out on.

How about it? Be patient, be kind … and see what happens.

Now I’m not saying it’s easy. No. Not at all. I have to think about it all the time. Why? Because of my nature. I have many weaknesses, but one of my strengths is that I get things done quickly. I’m the sort of person who helps others crash through obstacles to achieve what they want to achieve.

It’s just how I’m built. But that strength, has an equal and opposite weakness. It’s so easy for me to become impatient. In simple, silly little ways. I don’t know how it is where you live, but where I live, our trains are down in a subway. That means long, steep escalators up and down.

Now I like to stay fit and I hate to waste time, so I never stand still on an escalator. I always walk, preferably run, up and down them. The simple convention is that people who are just standing stand on the left, so that those who want to move quickly can do so on the right.

But time and time again, people break that convention, so I’m stuck. My instinct is to push pass them and make a gruff comment on the way through. Not because I hate them, but because they’re in my road, and remember, I’m the guy that crashes through obstacles to get things done. That’s my nature.

Do you see how simple and practical this is? Love is patient, love is kind. Now, I have had to find ways to deal with this underbelly of the crashing through strength in my life. And you need to find your Achilles heal, and figure out a new way of reacting and behaving to the triggers that cause you to lose your patience and become nasty.

I’ll say it again, patience and kindness is what love looks like. It stands out from the crowd. So … how about it?

I would love to send you a free copy of our latest life application booklet here at Christianityworks. It’s called Love Is – and it picks up some of the teaching in this series, and adds some questions at the end of each chapter, to help you apply God’s Word to your life.

You can request yours right now online at christianityworks.com. You’ll see that free offer right there, front and centre on the home page. Just click on it, pop in your name and email, and it will be winging its way to your inbox in just seconds. It really is that easy.

And while you’re there, don’t forget that you can have instant access to the free eDevotional – words of inspiration, hope and encouragement delivered right to your inbox each weekday. It’s all about helping you to live each day in victory.

So, the name of that free booklet is Love Is … and that web address, is christianityworks.com.

Remember, love is patient …

There are people in this world who seem so … confident, that it borders on over–confidence. Boastfulness. Arrogance. Even rudeness.  You know the sort. So … how much do you enjoy being around those people?   

It makes the world go round. Countless songs have been sung about it. And yet it seems to me that in this modern day world, many of us have forgotten how to love.

People are working longer and longer. Add to that the traffic, the commute, the crush at the train station, the crush at the local shopping mall, and nerves are frayed, tempers are boiling over.

It wears you out, doesn’t it? It’s tiring, exhausting. So we withdraw into our shells and try to shut it all out. You know that feeling of plonking yourself down on the couch at the end of a hard day and just being glad that the rest of the world is out there and you’re in here.

So you get to the end of a hard day like that, perhaps the end of a hard week, and you think to yourself, who are the people that I’ve encountered who stand out from the crow? Who treated me well? Who treated me badly? Have you ever done that? Why not do it now. In your mind do a quick stocktake of the people who’ve treated you well, and those who have treated you badly.

For most, there’s a real imbalance between the good and the bad there. And my theory is that the reason for that, is that we’ve forgotten how to be a community in our clamour to get ahead. We’ve forgotten how to love one another.

And in a sense, that’s what this series is all about – a rediscovery of what love is. Going back to God’s Word, since, after all God is love, and rediscovering from God what love was always meant to be.

Love is patient, love is kind. We’ve looked at that. But right now, let’s go to the second half of that verse in 1 Cor 13:4, which tells us what love isn’t. This is what it says:

Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.

That’s quite a list isn’t it? Envy, boastfulness, arrogance, rudeness all bundled in together. I wonder why. Well, it turns out that they’re all symptoms of a much deeper malady. And that malady is insecurity.

Think about it. What makes you envious? Someone else has something that you don’t. They’re better looking, they have a better spouse, more money, bigger house. They seem to be more happy and content than you are. They have more friends. They enjoy their job. Whatever it is they have something that you don’t. So you compare, and you covet, you desire, you envy what they have.

Never mind that you have this and that and the other thing that they don’t have. Out of a deep sense of insecurity, you envy them. And so then, to bolster yourself up, you boast about what you do have.

Boastfulness is the other side of the coin to envy. People talk themselves up, they tell others how good they are, they name–drop, they …

It’s a vicious sad cycle. Those people come across as being arrogant and rude, all because deep inside, something is missing. It’s insecurity. It’s discontentment. It hurts and so it comes out as envy, boastfulness, arrogance and rudeness.

Let me ask you simply and kindly, do you have any of that in your life? Come on, be honest with yourself. Take a good hard look. Because if that’s happening in your life, you are going to struggle to love other people, the way Jesus loved you.

Before I came to Christ, I was that guy. I wanted everyone to think well of me. I wanted everyone to be impressed with me. I remember the deep sense of envy I felt, when someone else succeeded. It felt as though their success was my loss. It’s a terrible state of affairs.

And so I would boast about my success, and, I’m told, it came across as arrogance and rudeness. You can’t build healthy relationships like that. You can’t show love like that.

For me, it began to change when I met Jesus. When I started to experience His love. I don’t mean that in a clichéd kind of way. Seriously, I remember sitting quietly in prayer, during the dark time in my life, being filled by His Spirit and His love.

The Bible says that God’s perfect love conquers all our fears. And that’s how it was for me. You see, I couldn’t stop that envy, boasting, arrogance and rudeness until I experienced healing inside. It’s not enough to say – don’t do those things, change your behaviour, because our behaviour is simply a manifestation, a symptom of what’s going on in our hearts.

Murder begins in the heart Jesus said. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And unless and until we experience the amazing love of Jesus for ourselves, we can’t heal ourselves. The world will tell you – modify your behaviour. Simple, done.

Yet people see psychologists and counsellors for years … years and they don’t see improvement. There’s a reason for that. It’s because only the love of God in Jesus Christ can bring you that healing. I looked and I looked everywhere. I was successful on the outside but lost and empty and insecure on the inside.

I can tell you … I looked everywhere. And over two decades ago now, when I encountered Jesus for myself, that’s where I found the healing on the inside that I was looking for. The healing that I so desperately needed.

Psalm 34:17–20: When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and rescues them from all their troubles. The Lord is near to the broken–hearted, and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord rescues them from them all.

That’s simply what God does. That’s why Jesus came, to give sight to the blind, to bind up the broken–hearted, to set the captives free.

And perhaps you’ve never experienced this perfect love of God. Perhaps you’ve been listening today and you ache to have that love heal you on the inside, to set you free to truly love others around you.

Well, I’d like to give you that opportunity today. If you want to accept Jesus Christ into your life, why don’t you pray this prayer with me:

Father God, I’ve been listening today about your amazing love. And I know .. I know that I need some healing on the inside. I’ve been searching and looking and today, as I’ve heard about Jesus, I feel like I’ve finally found what I’ve been yearning for. Please forgive me for all the stupid things that I’ve done in my life. I’m so sorry. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe that He did come to die for me so that my sins could be forgiven. I believe that Jesus rose again from the grave so that I could have a new life for ever. I accept Jesus as my Saviour and my Lord. I put all my trust in Him. Please accept me today just as I am, and heal me from the inside out. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

If you just prayed that prayer with me, you are forgiven. You’re set free and the Holy Spirit will come and live in you to make that healing start to happen.

Go find yourself a Bible–believing, vibrant, faith–filled church that preaches Christ, that serves and loves the poor and needy. And you will grow immeasurably, as Jesus deals with all of the things in your life that you yourself can’t deal with.

God loves you more than words can say. Let that love transform your life. Love isn’t envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. God’s perfect love is gentle and kind. And I guarantee that as the weeks, months and years pass by, that love will transform you into who He always meant you to be.

I’m so excited to know that God’s love is working in you right now. My prayer for you is that as you get to know Him more and more, you’ll discover the hope that you have in Christ, the rich inheritance you have for the future, and the immeasurably great power that God will pour out on you to transform your life.

An that’s my passion, to see your life transformed and the lives of many others. That’s why this program that you’ve just been listening to is heard not just here on your station, but through over 1300 stations in 160 countries.

And that’s also why you can access so many more free teaching resources online at christianityworks.com. Like the Christianityworks daily eDevotional. Words of inspiration, hope and encouragement sent to your inbox each weekday, to help you live in the victory that Jesus died and rose again to give you. You’ll see the eDevotional icon on our homepage.

And there are so many other resources there. Free downloads. The audio lounge with thousands of messages sorted by categories to make it easier to find what you need right at the moment.

That’s all, online at christianityworks.com – everything on the site is completely free. Because I want to see you experience the amazing, transformational love of God through Jesus, not just so that your life will be changed, but so that God’s love will flow out through you into this lost and hurting world.

It’s been great to be able to spend this time with you today. I’m Berni Dymet and I’ll catch you again, same time tomorrow, with … A Different Perspective.

Have you ever met someone who’s life’s credos is … my way or the highway. Course you have. It’s not a lot of fun, is it? But seriously, how do you get on when you don’t get your own way?    

I remember a soccer game when I was in fifth grade. Mr Moore, he was my favourite teacher, took the whole class down to the park at the end of the street where we lived.

He broke the class into two teams, and we had a game of soccer. All good, until he made a call that the ball had gone out, that I absolutely new was wrong. Never mind that there were no lines marked on the field. He called it out and I called him out.

Hey Sir, that wasn’t out. He just blew his whistle and called it out. So I carried on, he called me over and said, “Look Berni, if you don’t like it, you can go and sit under that tree.”

Well, even at a young age, I was a man of principle and I did just that. I, in my immaturity, thought I was doing the right thing. Of course, it was stupid. I was living out the credos – it’s my way or the highway. And sadly, my life headed in that direction until my mid thirties.

Now, you don’t have to be Einstein to figure out that if each of the several billion people on planet earth lived their lives that way, there’d be an awful lot of chaos. Well, actually, there is an awful lot of chaos, have you noticed? At any one time around 45 to 50 wars are being fought. Yep, that many.

There’s conflict on the road. There’s conflict in the workplace. There’s conflict in the home. All because everyone wants to have their own way.

We’re in the middle of a series of messages at the moment that I’ve called simply, Love Is. It’s all about rediscovering exactly what love is, in this busy, chaotic world in which we live, by going back to the source of love, God Himself. So we’ve been poking around a bit in 1 Cor 13 – a familiar passage to many, since it’s almost always used in wedding ceremonies.

So, let’s have a bit of a listen to it so far:

1 Cor 13:1–5: If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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 do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way …

So the upshot of all that is that without love all the gifts and the abilities and the sacrifices and the successes in the word are completely meaningless. We all know good looking, successful, intelligent people … who are an absolute pain in the neck right?

No, instead, love is patient, love is kind, love isn’t envious, or boastful or arrogant or rude.

And, the thing we’re going to unpack a bit more today, love does not insist on its own way. Now the truth is, that in this world we don’t get to have our own way all the time. When we’re children, we’re subject to our parents, and our teachers. They’re job, in great part, is to teach us to be submissive to authority.

Now, you see, that’s not a particularly fashionable notion these days. And you speak to a lot of teachers these days, and they’ll tell you that their hands are bound, by and large, in disciplining children at school. Many parents have abdicated their role of teaching submission to authority … and so we’re turning out young adults, not all of them but a lot of them, who think they can all have their own way.

They get into the workplace, and they have a rude shock. God talks a lot about submission and obedience, not because He wants to put us under His thumb. No, actually, He let’s us choose which is pretty amazing isn’t it.

But He knows that submitting to authority is an important part of growing up and being mature. Have a listen to this little one for instance:

Ephesians 5:21: Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.

That’s talking about mutual submission between a husband and wife. And again, it’s pretty obvious that for a marriage to work, there needs to be mutual submission. So, what exactly is that submission thing?

Well, to put it plainly, it’s giving up what you want, and letting the other person have their way. We do it out of respect for authority every day. It may well take my fancy to drive down the wrong side of the road today. But I don’t because it’s against the law and because if I did, it would cause absolute chaos. I don’t steal from the local supermarket for similar reasons. You see we do it every day without even thinking.

But then, all of a sudden, we run into a situation like my childhood soccer match, we run into a situation where we just want to dig our heals in. I’ve seen it at church council meetings where people have torn into each other like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve seen it in marriages and families. I’ve seen it in the workplace. Hey, I’ve seen it in the car park at my local supermarket. It’s my way or the highway.

Now … let’s just stop and think about that for a minute. What’s going on there? At first we might imagine that we have a right to stand on principle. And to be sure, there are times when that’s necessary. I answer to a Board here at Christianityworks. They’re a great bunch of Godly leaders with great wisdom. But every now and then, someone will come up with an idea that isn’t workable, and I have to push back.

To their credit, when that happens, 99 times out of 100 they’ll yield, they’ll submit to my experience. Just as I have to yield to their godly wisdom. See that’s mutual submission. And we do it out of love. We do it out of reverence for Christ. Mutual submission preserves and indeed strengthens and deepens relationships. Remember, this comes in a passage which sets out to define what love is. That’s why this series is called, “Love is.” And love does not insist on its own way.

If we’re operating out of love then we don’t approach the day, a situation, a relationship, with a “my way or the highway” attitude. Now, here at Christianityworks I’m the over all leader. And whilst I involve the team in decision making, at the end of the day, I have the final call.

Sometimes, many times in fact, other people have a better idea or a better approach to the one that I had. Under those circumstances I’d be a fool to insist on my way. Other times, I can see the bigger picture, and I make the call to go in this direction rather than that one.

Love operates out of wisdom. Love looks for mutual submission and when you have two people who work that way, say in a marriage, it’s going to be a fantastic marriage. If you have a team of people working that way in a ministry, or at work, it’s an exciting place to work.

Now, just a quick footnote, to letting the other person have their way. The key to submission, is to do it gladly, willingly, joyfully. “Alright then, have it your way!” is not what we’re talking about here. Passive aggressive behaviour, undermining a decision, resisting it at every turn is not what we’re talking about here.

If we’re operating out of love, we won’t insist on our own way. We will persuade, guide, yield and submit out of a good heart. And when that’s the way you live, man, people respect that. They delight in that. Because what they see there, is love.

Don’t forget about the free life application booklet that I’ve been telling you about. It’s called “Love Is” and each chapter contains teaching and some life application questions to help you to apply God’s Word to your life.

You can request your free copy right now, at christianityworks.com. You’ll see that free offer right there, in the middle of the home page – you can’t miss it. Just click on the offer, pop in your name and email, and it will be on its way to your inbox in a flash. It really is that easy.

And while you’re there, don’t forget to check out the audio lounge. A treasure trove of teaching resources, arranged by topics that will interest you. You’ll find the Audio Lounge in the Resources section of the site.

But back to that free life application booklet. It’s called Love Is … and the web address, is christianityworks.com.

And if you’re able to stop by at christianityworks.com don’t forget that you can have instant access to the free Christianityworks daily eDevotional – you’ll see it right there on the homepage.

I’m Berni Dymet, it’s been great to spend this time with you today, and I’ll catch you again, same time tomorrow … with A Different Perspective.

You know how things niggle away at you sometimes. They just start off as small things in a relationship and before you know it … they’re tearing you apart.

I remember when Jacqui and I were married many years ago now. It was back in the days when toothpaste didn’t come in the plastic tubes that it comes in now, but these soft metal tubes.

From when I was a little boy I’d been taught that you squeezed the toothpaste from the bottom and as the lower parts of the tube became empty, you’d roll it up. The aim was to get the maximum out of your tube. By the end, the whole thing was rolled up, except the very top, where you squeezed the very last bit out, before you started a new tube.

Well, we get married, we move in together, I’m thinking we’ll share a toothpaste tube in the bathroom. But to my shock, to my horror, SHE just squeezed the old tube from the middle – and it was this mangled mess.

I … I was speechless. After a few weeks, I decided that, for the sake of marital bliss, we would need to have separate toothpaste tubes, something that continues to this day.

Crazy isn’t it?! And yet, as Solomon writes in the song of songs, it’s the little foxes that spoil the vine. It’s the little things that can niggle away at a relationship, that can destroy things. Certain things annoy each one of us. The things that annoy you are probably quite different to the things that annoy me.

If you really want to annoy me, be late to a meeting, waste my time. Why does that annoy me? Because I’m an achievement oriented, outcome oriented kind of guy, who plans his time down to the last minute.

Sometimes we find other people’s habits annoying. The way the speak, or some aspect of their body language. And it irritates us. Think about how you behave when you’re irritated. It’s not nice is it. You’re not nice to other people. None of us are, when we’re irritated.

And, let me say it again, it’s often the little things that rub us the wrong way. So, how do we love others in that situation? Because that’s what this series of messages is all about. Love. How to love, what it means to love someone. And it’s down here in the weeds, down here in the middle of the nitty–gritty little things of live, where we either love people or we don’t.

We often think of love as some grand thing, supported by grand or romantic acts. And that’s fine. Love is a grand thing and sometimes we do big things, make big sacrifices, to love people. But have you noticed how 99.9% of life is just the mundane humdrum. The same old, same old day after day?

Here’s what God says about the whole irritability thing:

1 Corinthians 3:4,5: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.

If you love someone, if you want to show the love of Christ to a work colleague, to a friend, to a child, to a spouse … then irritability and resentfulness – we’ll talk about that second one in a moment – have no place in the relationship.

Anybody who’s been married for any length of time knows how the little foibles of their soul–mate can drive them nuts. I remember being at a church in Accra, Ghana a few years ago, and the pastor was preaching on this very thing. He told how all their marriage, his wife would just come in the front door, kick off her shoes and leave them there.

It used to cause a huge amount of tension in their marriage – drove him crazy. Why can’t she just pick up her shoes and put them away?! Until one day, He was praying about this, and God spoke to Him. God said: And why can’t you just pick up her shoes and put them away for her?

Since that day, that’s exactly what he’s done, with a glad and willing heart and the tension is gone. You see, if we allow this irritability to go on and on, it turns into something worse. It turns into resentment. No resentment is a nasty thing. It’s like a cancer that eats away at a relationship. When you start to resent what someone does, it brings up bitterness and unforgiveness.

It’s interesting to go back to the original Greek language that this verse was written in: love is not irritable or resentful. Quite literally, it says that love is not easily provoked (that’s the irritability bit) and, here’s what it says about resentment: it doesn’t think about, dwell on or reckon evil.

And that’s exactly what resentment is. You dwell on it, you turn it over and over and over in your mind, you think about how bad this person really us, and you ascribe to them, you reckon to their account, evil.

And here’s the absolutely crazy thing: we do this over stupid little things like how you squeeze the toothpaste. You think about the people who irritate you, the people towards whom you feel resentment – and ask yourself, what is the thing that irritates me? What is the thing that I resent in that person?

And ninety–nine times out of a hundred, it will be some stupid, insignificant little thing that, in the scheme of things, really doesn’t matter.

Listen again and listen carefully this time: love is not irritable and resentful. So, how do we overcome that? How do we get over irritability and resentment? The answer, plain and simple, Is forgiveness. Here’s what Jesus had to say on the subject:

Matthew 18:21,22: Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy- seven times.

See this speaks directly into this sort of irritability and resentment that goes on day after day as someone’s habits rub you the wrong way. When you think about it, we’re a lot like Peter here. He thought that seven times was an awful lot of times to forgive someone. But Jesus reaches into His hyperbole bag and says, no not seven, but seventy–seven times. Over and over and over and over and over again. Get the picture.

If we truly want to love someone, really, then we forgive over and over and over and over again, just as God forgives us. Is it hard? Sure it is! Forgiveness is always hard. Look what it cost Jesus to forgive us – death on a Cross. That’s why Jesus said:

Matthew 16:24–26: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life.

The whole crux of love, the whole point of love is that it’s not about us, it’s about the people whom we’re called to love you and I. There are two ways to live, for ourselves with the big ME in the centre of the universe, or for God and others.

And what, according to Jesus, is the single most important thing in life?

Mark 12:30–31: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. ’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself. ’ There is no other commandment greater than these.

And as I said, all that begins down here in the weeds, in the little things, where the little foxes want to ruin the vine that bears the fruit of love in your relationships.

It’s sobering stuff isn’t it? So who’s irritating you right at the moment? Towards whom do you feel resentment, right at the moment? It’s time to start praying about those relationships, and your reactions and the forgiveness and acceptance that needs to come into your heart. Because … that’s what love is.

It’s simply not easy this whole love thing, when you look at loving people who irritate us, loving people towards whom we feel resentment, forgiving those people who don’t deserve it. That’s why God’s Word is so important. The Word of God has the power to transform your relationships and your life.

So to help you with that, you can listen to each of the messages in this series again, right now, online at christianityworks.com. just click on the A Different Perspective icon at the bottom of the homepage and you’ll see them all right there. The series is called “Love is”.

You can stream the individual messages online, download the audio or transcript, even subscribe to the podcast.

And while you’re there, don’t forget that you can have instant access to the free, daily Christianityworks eDevotional. Words of inspiration, hope and encouragement delivered to your inbox on your smartphone, tablet or computer each weekday.

It’s all about helping you live out each and every day in the victory that Jesus came to give you. And remember, like everything else on the site, it’s completely free. You’ll find the eDevotional icon at the bottom of the homepage at christianityworks.com.

Love is forgiveness. Love is getting before God and confessing the irritability and dealing with the resentment. Because I tell you only He can. When we take His Word to heart, when we let the Holy Spirit bring God’s healing to our lives.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m Berni Dymet and I’ll catch you again, same time on Monday, with … A Different Perspective.