Faith, Hope, and Love:
Essentials of a Healthy Heart Life
1 Corinthians 13:13 “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
- Faith, Hope, Love: These 3 can be discussed on their own merit, but I’d like to take a look at how they relate to one another. We can see how they work together to bring us to God, as well as how they continue to breathe life into our spirits as we follow Jesus.
-Love will help your faith remain hopeful and your hope remain faithful!
-Faith and hope are intertwined and are both essential to a follower of Jesus. But we also need to know that we’re not on our own, not alone – that’s where love comes in. Love is always about someone else. If it’s just about me, that’s not love. That’s self-centeredness! Love gives! God so loved the world that He gave…. Love must express outward, away from itself.
-In 1 Corinthians 13:13 Paul wrote about these enduring words: faith, hope, and love. They make up a triad or trinity of truths about God and us. We continuously need these three factors, which is what "abide" implies. Our need for them never ends in this life. We live by faith, and the other two are directly connected to faith. They are, in fact, the three building blocks of a successful, abundant life. They are inextricably bound, tied to our relationship with God, and they are the qualities that make us run or work correctly.
Think of it this way. We are God's invention. He built us, and as our manufacturer, He designed us to function and produce. Automobiles run on gasoline. They do what they do because of the way they were designed and built, and they move only when fueled by gasoline. Movement is a key here: We run—move—on faith, hope, and love. These qualities nourish us, giving us strength to function as God intends. Every living human being who has ever lived, was intended to function by these qualities, but only the faith, hope, and love that comes from God will work to produce true success. (Adapted from John W. Ritenbaugh)
-As we examine these 3 essentials, I’m going to rearrange their order to remind us how God works in us to produce spiritual life and health
I. God’s Work in Us
1. Loved!
-Love is the only truly eternal, self-existent attribute of God. All other qualities have to do with us or this world, either comparatively or in relation to. But God’s love was always in action through all eternity past. His others attributes did not come into play until creation. Listen to some powerful words from Dr. Stanley Grenz, one of my favorite Bible scholars who passed on a few years ago. The Bible says that God is love. Stanley Grenz unpacks this like no one I’ve ever heard, and he also helps us understand more about the Trinity. Let’s listen in. (8:48 to 15:03)
-So our relational God is love with or without us, but what is amazing is that He wants to give us His love! And as this teacher points out later in his lecture, when we come to God, He puts us smack dab in the middle of Christ, on whom He is showering His unending love without measure. He cares about every human, but only those who are in Christ are gaining the full benefit of His love! We are loved by our Creator, which is why He took all the steps necessary to invite us into His love. The next step is up to us. Will we receive His love? What will we do with His life?
2. Inspired!
-To give hope is to encourage or inspire; To inspire means to breathe into, giving life, instilling courage or strength of purpose. Inspired people inspire people!
-The Bible refers to God as the God of hope. We all need hope just to make it from one day to the next. We need a reason to go on, with the thought that there must be something more! Dreams die, life beats us down, and sometimes we lose sight of why we are here. God wants to breathe hope into your heart today! There is more to this life than just work and play, eat and sleep, buy and sell, live and die. We have a purpose that will extend beyond this life into eternity: to glorify God with our lives and enjoy Him forever! God has huge dreams and plans for each of us and for all of us together as His church! So He uses all kinds of means to inspire us, to give us hope, to catch a glimpse of the eternal. As the Bible says, Deep calls unto deep. Something deep within cries out with the desire to know the life of God!
-There is hope! There is life! There are answers! There are solutions! There is meaning! One day we will understand!
-But none of these things would carry any weight without the love of God. God’s love gives us hope that somehow we can make it. His love gives us hope for a meaningful life that goes on forever with Him!
-In the play, The Man from Lamancha, which is about a knight, Don Quiote wanders in an imaginary world fighting for right and bringing hope to those in despair. Maybe his words can be ours as we live in the real world, bringing hope into lives filled with despair.
To dream the impossible dream;....to fight the unbeatable foe....
To bear with unbearable sorrow....to run where the brave dare not go....
To right the unrightable wrong...to love pure and chaste from afar....
To try when your arms are too weary....to reach the unreachable star!!!...
This is my quest, to follow that star, ....No matter how hopeless, no matter how far....
To fight for the right without question or pause....To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause!!!...
And I know, if I’ll only be true...To this glorious quest, that my heart will lie peaceful and calm...
When I’m laid to my rest...And the world will be better for this....
That one man, scorned and covered with scars...
Still strove with his last ounce of courage....To reach the unreachable stars!!!!"
-Folks, there is hope! The best is yet to come, if you receive the life of God that He offers to you!
3. Trusted! God trusts us with the most precious gift He could give – His life! Jesus laid down His life so we could receive God’s life in us! And when God extends His gift to each of us personally, it is not offered without the risk of rejection or failure. When God offers you His name, inviting you to become a God-follower or a Christian, He knows that there might be times when you will not represent Him well to others. But I love what Jesus said to Peter, just a few hours before Peter’s epic fail: Luke 22:31-32 31 "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."
-Jesus had confidence in Peter that even though he would fail, he would turn back and be able to strengthen and inspire many others to keep following Jesus!
-God shows us how to trust by entrusting His life to us!
-Loved, Inspired, and Trusted!
II. Reciprocity
-God expects something back from us, not so much as a demand, but as a natural response to the work He does in us. Because He loves us, inspires us, and trusts us with His life, we give Him our love, we find our hope in Him, and we learn to trust Him completely!
-One important thing to remember here is that God is the initiator! When we get the idea that somehow we have to initiate our own salvation by doing things for God, we get all messed up! A works mentality sells God short in so many ways! It says that He didn’t do enough to save us and that we must step up and take matters into our own hands. In essence, we must become our own savior, if we believe that we are saved by doing enough good things. That is false doctrine! Only through faith in Jesus and His work on the cross can we gain access to the life of God! That’s what salvation is! It is where our life (as we know it) ends, and God’s life begins in us!
-And as God’s life increases in us, and we decrease, our service for Him increases. Why? Because it is powered by His life, not by our best efforts.
-So, reciprocity is all about responding to God’s work in us (we are loved, inspired, and trusted by Him). In turn, we love Him, we hope in Him, and we put our faith entirely in Him!
III. God’s Work Through Us
-It is one thing to say that we love God, but the Bible makes it very clear in 1 John that our vertical affection for Him must also find horizontal expression for others.
-1 John 4:11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
-1 John 4:8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
-1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us.
-Now love is more than residual sentiment for someone. It must find expression and take action. Sometimes love will be expressed by meeting a physical or practical need. That is why we do benevolence and help those in need. We help people with food, clothing, and shelter as we are able.
-But in addition to meeting the physical needs of the poor out of love, we can also pass on the other 2 elements of the faith, hope, and love triad. We can offer hope, encouragement, and inspiration, and we can lead people to a place of being able to trust in the Lord!
-These dynamics should be evident within a healthy church, as we encourage each other and build up our mutual faith in God. And the more that people are loved, inspired, and trusted, as God does this through us, the more people will find the keys to a healthy heart life. We need the life of God in us! That is what Jesus came to offer. The Bible calls it eternal life. It is a free gift that is received by faith. Did you receive it yet? Are you living it? Know that you are loved by God! Realize that there is hope for you! Put your trust in Jesus Christ, and live a life of love, the life of God! Faith, Hope, Love…
