Love Is | Week 1 | Full Service · Rewind

Love Is | Week 1 | Full Service · Rewind

Pastor Daniel Goulding · Nov 21, 2022

Big Idea

God's greatest weapon to reach the world is love, and His chosen instrument for that love is you and me — starting with learning to love patiently.

Love isn't ours to define by feeling or culture — God has already defined it in 1 Corinthians 13, and He calls us to live up to that standard even when it's hard. Pastor Daniel focuses on the first word Paul uses, patience, showing that our differences as believers are meant to be understood and leveraged, not divided over, because the world is watching how we love.

Key points

1
1Love is the one mark Jesus said would identify His followers, so it can't be left up to personal definition.
Pastor Daniel opens with the challenge of defining love the way you'd explain it to an alien, then points to Jesus telling His disciples that love — not church attendance, politics, or Bible knowledge — is the distinguishing mark of His followers, summed up as loving God and loving neighbor.
2
2God's plan to reach the world is love, and His instrument for that love is us.
He explains that people are drawn to Jesus not through shame but through His kindness and patience, and once rescued, God turns believers into a living epistle — a testimony of His goodness to people who don't know Him yet, including the frustrating people in our everyday lives.
3
31 Corinthians 13 gives the actual definition of love, and without it even good spiritual acts are worthless.
Working through Paul's letter to the wild, gifted, divided Corinthian church, Pastor Daniel shows that prophecy, knowledge, tongues, and sacrifice mean nothing without love, and that of faith, hope, and love, love alone lasts into eternity.
4
4Love's love is patient (macrothumia) means a long-suffering love modeled on Jesus, who was never in a hurry.
He digs into the Greek word macrothumia, long-suffering, contrasting it with his own impatience over Chick-fil-A lines and Amazon shipping, and points to Jesus' unhurried life — walking on a donkey, welcoming interruptions, waiting thirty years to begin ministry — as the picture of patient love.
5
5We're all wildly different — in gifting, heart, ability, personality, and experience — and the goal is unity, not uniformity.
Drawing from 1 Corinthians 12, he walks through five kinds of difference among believers and warns that the church's real danger isn't disagreement but treating difference as division, when Jesus prayed for His church to be united, not identical.
6
6Growing in patience starts with remembering how patient God has been with us.
He points to Paul's own testimony to Timothy — that God used him, a murderer of Christians, as proof of His patience — and applies it to parenting and everyday frustration, arguing that forgetting God's patience with us is what makes us impatient with others.
7
7Patience grows out of understanding, and understanding grows out of listening rather than needing to be understood.
Using Proverbs on wisdom yielding patience, he applies this directly to political and cultural division, urging people to seek to understand those who land differently on issues rather than writing them off, since our hope is in Jesus, not in any political side.

Application

Pastor Daniel frames the ask as choosing to love with an adult, long-suffering love instead of a childish, feelings-first love.

Remember how patient God has been with you
Before reacting in frustration this week — with your kids, coworkers, or Thanksgiving relatives — pause and remember God's long-suffering patience with you in your own mess.
Seek to understand instead of being understood
When someone lands somewhere different than you, especially politically, ask questions and listen to their story instead of writing them off or venting on social media.
Stop treating differences as division
Recognize that different spiritual gifts, hearts, abilities, personalities, and experiences among believers are meant to be leveraged for unity, not treated as reasons to divide or switch churches.
Check what's really offending you
If something said from the stage or by another believer offends you, ask whether you're offended at the person's words or at what Scripture actually says, and give room for clarification and reconciliation.

Take it into your week

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7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

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Day 1

It is easy to assume that doing the right things in the right ways is enough. Show up. Serve hard. Say the correct things. But Pastor Daniel opened this series by surfacing something Paul makes impossible to ignore: without love as the actual motive, the most impressive spiritual activity amounts to nothing in God's economy. Not a little less — nothing. That is a startling standard, and it is meant to be. Paul is not writing to discourage; he is writing to reorient. The question is not whether you are doing good things but what is driving them. Are you serving because it earns you standing, relieves guilt, or keeps the peace — or because you genuinely love the people in front of you? This is not a pass/fail audit of your heart. Most of us are a complicated mix of motives on any given day. But the invitation here is to pause and let Paul's words do their work. Love is not the decoration on top of a spiritual life; according to Paul, it is the foundation beneath everything. If the foundation shifts, everything above it shifts too. Spend some time today simply sitting with that, not in guilt but in honest reflection.

For reflection

When you think about the ways you serve or give to others, what motivates you most honestly — and what would it look like if love were more fully at the center?

Pray

Pray for an honest look at your own motives, and ask God to realign your heart toward genuine love rather than performance.

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

Paul opens 1 Corinthians 13 not with a warm feeling but with a standard — a definition of love that God has already set. This message invites us to look honestly at what that standard actually asks of us, starting with the very first quality Paul names: patience.

Discussion questions

1
In 1 Corinthians 13:1–3, Paul says that spiritual gifts and even radical generosity amount to nothing without love as the motive. What does that tell us about what God is actually after when He looks at how we live and serve?
2
Paul uses the Greek word makrothumia — sometimes translated 'long-suffering' — to describe the patience love requires. Based on how Pastor Daniel unpacked that word, what does it suggest about the kind of people and situations this quality is actually designed for?
3
Proverbs 19:11 connects patience directly to understanding. What does that link suggest about why patience tends to break down — and what might need to happen before it can grow?
4
In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul describes believers as wired differently — different gifts, personalities, backgrounds, and convictions. Pastor Daniel drew a distinction between unity and uniformity. What does a community built on unity rather than uniformity actually look like in practice?
5
Pastor Daniel pointed to 1 Timothy 1:16, where Paul holds up God's patience toward him as a pattern — a picture meant to stay with us. How might regularly returning to that picture of God's patience change the way a community of people treat one another across real differences?
6
Pastor Daniel suggested that for some people, the patient and loving way we treat them may be the clearest picture of Jesus they ever see. What would it look like, in the ordinary relationships around us, to take that seriously — not as pressure but as purpose?

Pray together

Ask God to bring to mind His patience toward us — and to let that memory become the starting point for how we love the people in front of us this week.

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Topics

God's Love Standard Love as Motive Patience and Long-Suffering Understanding Others Unity Across Differences

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