Transcript of the video.
About 45 days ago, maybe two months now, I started praying and asking God to show me how to have the First Corinthians love, that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And what I didn’t realize was that, you know, my prayer was sincere, but what I didn’t realize is that the journey looked a lot different than what I was praying for. And, so God has just opened the door for a remarkable experience. And I want to share that with you if you truly want to enter into the kind of love that God has for us, the kind of love that’s described in First Corinthians Chapter 13.
And if you have not read that chapter, actually, let’s just read it right now, because I think, to gain a fuller understanding of what God is teaching me is that it’s important to enter into his word. So, First Corinthians 13 says, Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, understand all mysteries and all knowledge. Though I have all faith so I can remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers. Love is kind, does not envy, does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil. Does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
So I was praying, God, I want to have this kind of love. And you know, I was kind of coming to a point in my life where I was doing all these good works and, you know, writing daily devotionals, making these videos, writing music, recording music, leading people to Christ in my law practice. And I knew I was still deficient in love. I knew that I was not exercising the kind of love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And I knew I didn’t want to be the clanging cymbal. I didn’t want to have done all these good works and it be for nothing, you know, because Jesus said, many will come to me in that day and say, Lord, Lord, haven’t we done all these good works in your name? We’ve cast out devils. We’ve done these miracles and we’ve prophesied, and he’s going to say, I never knew you. So for the lost person who’s never been born again that’s going to be a totally different story. It’s a different trajectory, obviously. But for the saved person who’s been born again, we can do all these good works. But unless we do them with love, the kind of love that only God has, they’re still not worth much.
And some of y’all have read my testimony about living years and years being a plastic Christian. Well, the fact is, what God was showing me was that we can slip back into that plastic Christian mode so easily. And so I was beginning to recognize that in my own life. And little hints were being dropped here and there of, Hey, Kim, you’re starting to become more didactic in your law practice. You’re becoming more callous towards the people that you love or that you’re supposed to love. And even, you know, my law firm team, and I wasn’t listening, but God, because the Holy Spirit lives in me, God was also speaking to me. And so he began to lead my prayers in this direction, that I need to grow in this love that believes all things, endures all things, bears all things, and hopes all things. And so I started praying for it. And, God knows our heart, and I was very genuine about my prayer. But what I didn’t expect was that this lesson would be so difficult. And, but it’s so good. And I want to share this with you because if you are like me and you do want your life to make an eternal difference,and you do want, at the end of your life, to stand before Jesus and say, you know, I did everything I could. And he says, well done thy good and faithful servant.
Then this is critical.This lesson is so critical.
So let me just tell you in a nutshell, what God did. He allowed, first of all, he allowed an event in my life where my entire organization that I relied upon was just kind of like a rug being ripped out from under me. And I was like, what just happened? You know, God, here I am trying to serve you. And, this just happened, right? I mean, all at once, within the course of two weeks, basically. And so I had never felt so vulnerable and oh my gosh, what is going on? And Lord, why are you allowing this to happen? But I didn’t recognize it was actually an answer to my prayer about loving with a First Corinthians kind of love. So as it kind of went on, and some of you all have been reading my daily devotionals have kind of tracked with me on this. You’ve kind of been tracking, there’s some big event that’s happened in my life. But as it began to go on and on, and I felt more vulnerable, more totally just lost, and like, God, what do I even do? Am I supposed to stop doing, you know, what I’m doing now and turn around and go a totally different direction? Where am I going?
The Lord was showing me that I had a big, a big problem with relying upon myself. I was comfortable. I was in my easy chair and I was serving him, sure. But it really wasn’t the kind of service that I needed for the level I needed to get to. So he ripped that hole, you know, that whole foundation out from underneath me, and it was like, okay, now I’ve got to start over. And he was saying, let’s build this foundation the right way. And the first things first, Kim, you want to learn to love like I do, then you have to learn to forgive like I do. Wow, I never even considered that. And as things were unraveling I was discovering things that, you know, maybe I needed to exercise his forgiveness about. I was like, oh God, you know, I need you. I need you, I need you. And he gave me this visual that I want to share with you. And this has become kind of the cornerstone of my learning to love in a way that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And believe me, I haven’t arrived, but I feel like God has got me on the path and it’s wonderful.
He gave me this visual of when I received Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. In other words, when I realized that I had sinned against a holy and righteous God, who was going to have to judge me, and yet he died so I could be reconciled to him, he died so I could have complete forgiveness of all my sins. God gave me a visual of forgiveness. He said, and of course, you know, I always, I kind of talk about me and God having these conversations. Because we kinda, we do. I’m like, God, you know, give me this visual. He said, Kim, it’s like you have a bank account and this bank account says Kim’s forgiveness account, and it has $4 trillion in it, $4 trillion. You know? And guess what? If you even have to dole out $5 every five minutes in forgiving the people, you have plenty. You could do that for the rest of your life and never run out of the forgiveness in your forgiveness account. That has been so revolutionary to me, because every time something arises, as I’m walking through this whole transition of my life, everything just seems so raw, right? And I think I have a reason to harbor unforgiveness. God says, no $5, Kim, $5. Give it away. Give it away. And I’m like, fine, God. You know, here’s $5, $5. Here’s $5, $5, $5. And you know, y’all may think that’s crazy, but it’s working. And as I’m able to let go and then take it a step further, and as I’m forgiving, then offer a prayer for whatever person that I may need to pray for, and I am, it’s like God saying, not only are you going to pay that forgiveness, but you’re going to give love. It’s going to be born on the wings of love. That bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things for your offender. Wow. That is it. If you had told me that’s what my prayer was going to result in, in other words, this lesson, I may not have prayed for it, but no, I’m kidding. I’m really glad that God has been taking me through this.
But you see, what I’m learning is we cannot have the kind of love in First Corinthians 13, unless we are able to forgive others the way God forgives us. We cannot endure all things, all the pain of a love relationship. We cannot bear all the things involved in loving people. We cannot believe in people who hurt us. We cannot hope for good things for people who hurt us or endure all things for those who will hurt us. Because you know what? The fact is, we are so flawed. Each of us are so flawed that we are going to hurt each other. That’s what we do. We don’t have the ability to not hurt each other. It’s like we have this inborn reaction. It’s called our flesh, right? We sleep with the enemy and it’s constantly looking out for self. But love, God’s love is selflessness.
Our love, our version of love, is selfish. And so when we learn to forgive like God forgives, then we can love in the way that it’s described in First Corinthians, because it’s no longer us. It’s Jesus. Just like we forgive others, like Jesus forgives us. Jesus Christ commanded us. He said, I command you that you love others the way I love you. That’s a remarkable statement of, I don’t know if you call it affirmation, but it’s Jesus saying, Hey, you can do this because of what I did for you. You can forgive because of the $4 trillion you have in the bank to spend on forgiveness. You can spend some of that sister.
So it’s been really a remarkable lesson because I feel like God is teaching me on a level of personal commitment and sacrifice. That people are important. People are the everlasting reward. People’s souls growing, sowing the seeds of forgiveness and love into people that are around you. You cannot look, I cannot look, at the offenses or the circumstances in my own life as a condition or a precondition to giving forgiveness and love. I must look at what’s in my bank.
What do I have to give away? I have an infinite amount of forgiveness and love from God. I will never run out. I will never run out because it’s so big. It’s so vast.
There’s so much of it. And I cannot, I can’t be stingy with it. I have too much to give away. It’d be like a multi, multi-billionaire. You know,being concerned about losing $5. No, no. We don’t have to be concerned. That’s how we’re enabled to love in a way that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Because when we see someone else who is just as flawed as we are, who is just as big a sinner in the eyes of God as we are. If we’re born again, then we can love them with his love because we have plenty to give away.
I am so excited about where God is taking me with this, this whole new information, this new knowledge, this lesson. And believe me, it’s not a one-off lesson, okay? It is day after day after day because the offenses and the offenders are all around us. In fact, they live in our own house. We live with our flesh, one of our enemies. And our, probably our, I don’t know if it’s our greatest enemy, but it’s definitely the enemy that’s closest to us, is our flesh. And we have to deal with our own flesh and the things that we do wrong, the offense we do against each other. But God says, you know, if you are going to forgive, then let me, let me, I have enough, I have enough to give. I heard somebody say that we have to learn to absorb. Forgiveness is learning to absorb the offense. I don’t believe that forgiveness is allowing God to absorb the offense. You see, we’ve got the bank with $4 trillion of forgiveness in it because God gave it, not gave it to us, not because we somehow earned it on our own. And then we can spend that. It’s the same way with love. When we forgive, it works as a catalyst and it just flips the switch in us so that we can then see people the way God sees people, and then we can forgive them the way God forgives them. And we can then go on to love them and to give to them, be generous with them. And then we can be long suffering. We can be kind. We can not envy. We don’t have to be puffed up. We don’t have to be rude. We don’t have to seek our own. We can actually give and not have these evil thoughts, you know, wish evil thoughts on them because they wronged us or whatever. So I wanted to share this with you because it has been, it is life changing. It’s not, like I said, it’s not a one-off. It is day after day after day of learning to give away that $4 trillion of forgiveness and then letting God flip the switch and say, now you can love, now you’re free to love. So I wanted to share this with you because it’s just been so huge in my life. Thanks for watching.
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3 Responses
Faith, after listening to your video last night, I thought of you while listening to this Catholic Hymn at church today.
The hym is Love Goes on by Bernadette Farrell. It’s not quite the same angle as you spoke about but it does remind us that the greatest gift is love. It is that love from the Lord that helps us to forgive others and ourselves. It’s such a beautiful gift.
https://youtu.be/rNdEoUsfiPE?feature=shared
God bless you.
Forgiveness is the gift that gives and gives!