Today, we're going to take a posture of peace by receiving love.
Hi, I'm Lindsay Van Zale.
Posture is a podcast that serves as a short, audible fist bump to remind you that God is
in everything.
Together, we're going to be emboldened to take a daily posture of perfect peace.
Okay, you know I couldn't spend a whole week talking about God's love without sharing
the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13.
And today, I'm going to be reading this chapter from the Passion Translation.
I love this translation because it takes a very familiar chapter for me and opens it
up once again.
As I read, try not to just concentrate on the words.
Feel the words as you listen.
Receive them as you listen.
Especially as I read the description of what love is because the Bible says God is love.
This is who God is.
And we have His empowering presence in us.
I spoke about that before in episode 43.
And the Bible says He never leaves us and He never forsakes us.
So in other words, this is a love that never withdraws itself.
This love is here to stay because He is here to stay.
And because He is in you, you are now empowered to love in this way.
Our starting point to an empowered life is first receiving this radical love for ourselves.
So let's take a moment and once again receive His love.
First Corinthians 13.
If I were to speak with eloquence in earth's many languages and in the heavenly tongues
of angels, yet I did not express myself with love, my words would be reduced to the hollow
sound of nothing more than a clanging cymbal.
And if I were to have the gift of prophecy with a profound understanding of God's hidden
secrets and if I possessed unending supernatural knowledge and if I had the greatest gift of
faith that could move mountains but I never learned to love, then I am nothing.
And if I were to be so generous as to give everything I owned away to feed the poor and
to offer my body to be burned as a martyr without the pure motive of love, I would gain
nothing of value.
Love is large and incredibly patient.
Love is gentle and consistently kind to all.
It refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else.
Love does not brag about one's achievements nor inflate its own importance.
Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect nor selfishly seek its own honor.
Love is not irritated or quick to take offense.
Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong.
Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others.
Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up.
Love never stops loving.
It extends beyond the gift of prophecy, which will eventually fade away.
It is more enduring than tongues, which will one day fall silent.
Love remains long after words of knowledge are forgotten.
Our present knowledge and our prophecies are but partial, but when love's perfection arrives,
the partial will fade away.
When I was a child, I spoke about childish matters, for I saw things like a child and
I reasoned like a child.
But the day came when I matured and I set aside my childish ways.
For now, we see but a faint reflection of riddles and mysteries as though reflected
in a mirror, but one day we will see face to face.
My understanding is incomplete now, but one day I will understand everything, just as
everything about me has been fully understood.
Until then, there are three things that remain.
Faith, hope, and love.
Yet love surpasses them all, so above all else, let love.
be the beautiful prize for which you run.
Did anything I read today, did you feel it resonate in your spirit? Like,
I need that. You've got it. And of course
1 John 4.19 tells us we love
because He first loved us. Everything
flows first from His love, not the other way around. We can't
love Him to get Him to love us. We can't love others to get Him to love us.
He loves us because He loves us, and because He loves us, we can love.
This is what makes this love so uncommon because
unlike the love we experience in the world, which
often loves for its own advantage,
the level of God's love is in its own realm.
So we get to choose which realm do we want to live in. This is a beautiful
invitation.
This is a freeing truth. You know, our starting point
always is receiving from God Himself.
As we receive His love, His love
becomes our love for Him, and it also empowers us to bring this love to others.
So today,
there's no striving. There's no
taking offense for the love
that we so want from others that they're unable to give us.
There's no stressing out
about all that we perceive to not have
when it comes to love. No, no, no, no. We love because He first loved us,
and He's with us always.
He's not leaving us. He's not forsaking us.
So today, there's no striving.
There's just receiving.
The promise of perfect peace
is found in Isaiah 26 3, and in Hebrew
it is shalom, shalom, meaning
complete wholeness. Nothing missing,
nothing broken. This is who you are in Jesus.
Let's declare this together.
Today, I am kept in perfect peace. With my whole heart,
I trust the Lord. I am strong, I am victorious,
I am whole. Remember, friend, you are a living testimony of Jesus'
ultimate win. Not because anything you did, but because of what He did for you.
With every step you take today, you're putting Jesus' victory
on display, and Satan's defeat on replay.