We’ve been studying how to experience a love driven or directed life. We’ve considered Jesus as our model. Then we looked at our motive and our mandate for being love driven or directed. Now let’s look at what our modus operandi should be.
Being love driven or directed has more to do with a natural flow than a deliberate determination. We must make decisions for it to be experienced, but the decisions are more a matter of getting ourselves out of the way of the natural flow.
I came to understand this during a devotional study of 1 Corinthians many years ago. I had memorized 1 Corinthians 13 one summer. Then in the fall I started this devotional study. When I came to chapter 13 I was tempted to skip over it thinking I had plumbed its depths while memorizing it. But I decided to pray for God to open my eyes to what He was saying in this chapter.
As I read it I noticed something I never noticed before. In the first three verses the pronoun “I” is mentioned 8 times. Then in verses 4-8 it is not mentioned once.
It is in verses 4-9 that the modus operandi of being love driven or directed is described. When “I” or self is described as doing praiseworthy things the end result will be “I gain nothing.” When “I” or self is absent in love’s expression the outcome will be, “Love never fails.”
The pronoun “I” became an insight word. It’s absence in the description of love helped me to understand how to be love driven or directed. You can’t produce love by sheer effort. You release what the Holy Spirit provides by faith.
