How We Win: Love | Jordan Brawner

1 Corinthians 12:29-31 (NLT)

³¹ So you should earnestly desire the most helpful gifts. But now let me show you a way of life that is best of all.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (NLT)

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.² If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing.³ If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

[1] Without love… I’m

• Without love… I’m just [annoying]

• Without love… I’m

• Without love… I am

[2] Love is more than a

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NLT)

⁴ Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud ⁵ or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. ⁶ It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. ⁷ Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

1 John 4:8 (LB)

⁸ But if a person isn’t loving and kind, it shows that he doesn’t know God—for God is love.

• If my isn’t love my actions aren’t either

• If my isn’t loving then my actions aren’t either

• Real love doesn’t

[3] Acts of love last

1 Corinthians 13:8,10,13 (LB)

⁸ All the special gifts and powers from God will someday come to an end, but love goes on forever… ¹⁰ But when we have been made perfect and complete, then the need for these inadequate special gifts will come to an end, and they will disappear… ¹³ There are three things that remain—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 3:12-15 (LB)

¹² But there are various kinds of materials that can be used to build on that foundation. Some use gold and silver and jewels; and some build with sticks and hay or even straw!¹³ There is going to come a time of testing at Christ’s Judgment Day to see what kind of material each builder has used. Everyone’s work will be put through the fire so that all can see whether or not it keeps its value, and what was really accomplished. ¹⁴ Then every workman who has built on the foundation with the right materials, and whose work still stands, will get his pay. ¹⁵ But if the house he has built burns up, he will have a great loss. He himself will be saved, but like a man escaping through a wall of flames.

[4] We might love winning… but we win by

1 Corinthians 14:1 (NLT)

Let love be your highest goal!

1 Corinthians 14:1 (LB)

Let love be your greatest aim…

[5] If I want to win more… I have to love

1 Corinthians 16:14 (AB)

¹⁴ Let everything you do be done in love [motivated and inspired by God’s love for us].

1 Corinthians 16:14 (LB)

¹⁴ and whatever you do, do it with kindness and love.

How do I become more loving?

• where I have been unloving

• myself in my new spiritual nature:

Colossians 3:10 (NLT)

Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him.

Galatians 3:27 (NIRV)

This is because all of you who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. You have put him on as if he were your clothes.

John 3:16 (AB)

¹⁶ “For God so [greatly] loved and dearly prized the world, that He [even] gave His [One and] only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him [as Savior] shall not perish, but have eternal life.