1 Corinthians 13:4-7 

4 Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious. Love does not brag, it is not puffed up.

 5 It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful. 

6 It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth. 

7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

 

 

Growth may come

 

 

Natural affection is mostly on the rampage

It embraces wants and wishes in a clear direction

It fulfills self and builds on many feelings

It hungers to be satisfied and despises affliction

 

Feeling good or better is the center of its target

Fulfillment is based on environmental perception

It dwells on the surface and it fits into circumstance

Presented as in self-contained pretension

 

God wants our love to be in His control

A love beyond our comprehension

Only then we can love our enemy

and pay mankind proper attention

 

He’ll replace the love called natural

with a better without self-determination

A love that just flows out from us

unbridled and free in God’s destination

 

To love what God loves ... is the answer

To love others as we love ourselves

To love unblemished just for God’s sake

so He can move untouched through self

 

Spiritual growth will come when God guides my affections

For without my Lord and Savior I am undisciplined and wild

I will bounce around with no sense of direction

and my end for certain will be classified “defiled”

 

We can only love God under the Spirit’s power

far beyond the caliber of natural affection

Worldly power can’t contain the purity of God’s shower

That the Lord releases in the redeemed for true perfection

 

Jan Wienen