[Sermon Notes]

Title: "Faith, Hope, and Love (2)" (Discipleship 2)

Text: 1 Corinthians 13:8-13

10. Faith: Understand "Faith as a trustworthy relationship."
20.Hope: Remember "hope as a trustworthy relationship."
30. Love: Choose "love as a trustworthy relationship."

(1 Corinthians 13:8-13, New Living Translation) [8] Love does not pass away; but prophecy passes away, tongues cease, and knowledge passes away.
[9] For we know in part, and prophesy in part.
[10] But when that which is complete comes, that which is partial will pass away.
[11] When I was a child, I was like a child in speech, like a child in understanding, and like a child in thinking; but when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.
[12] For now I do not see dimly, as in a mirror, as we see an image, but then I shall see face to face; now I know only in part, but then I shall know fully, as God knows me.
[13] Now faith, hope, love, these three abide always, but the greatest of these is love.

[Sermon manuscript]

Title: "Faith, Hope, and Love (2)" (Discipleship 2)

1. How did your week go?

Who or what are you grateful for during the week? What was rewarding, enjoyable, or pleasurable?

2. Review the past hour

"Faith Hope Love" These three are important characteristics that must be present in a disciple of Christ. We learned that faith is related to the intellect (understanding), hope is related to memory, and love is related to the willingness to want.

3. Faith

Faith has to do with the believer's understanding, mind and intellect, which grows deeper and broader in a trusting relationship with God, "receiving the richer truths that God gives." May we build trust in the One who never forsakes the believer and never leaves him alone, and may we demonstrate a faith that works for the weak, the marginalized, the suffering, and those on the margins.

So we see that faith is related to worship. A disciple is someone who loves to worship. Through personal and corporate worship, we must open our hearts, open our minds, and open our imaginations to the richness of God's truth and to a deeper relationship of trust each day.

4. Hope

The dark night of the soul confuses not only our personal identity but also the identity of society. People are confused between the identity they hear within themselves and the identity they are told by others. True identity comes from God, a trustworthy witness to our past, present, and future in a loving relationship.

Seen through the eyes of the One who never leaves, everything about the believer, past or present, is still true. Imagine seemingly disconnected and disparate fragments suddenly coming together in the hands of a divine observer, a holy witness.

As God's workmanship, the believer is to live in the hope that he or she will be nurtured and built up to live a life that honors God's glorious grace. To this end, we ask that you persevere day by day.

So we see that hope is related to keeping God's Word close at hand. A disciple is one who takes God's word to heart and mind day by day, so that he may hold on to the words of hope that God gives and persevere in the path of faith.

Love: Select "Love as a trusting relationship." 31.

31. a dark night envelops our will.

- We use our will incessantly in the face of countless choices. [The Age of Over-Choice].

- But something is wrong, isn't it?

- We make so many choices, but when it comes to the essential things we need to choose, we stop using our "will".

We have come to "treat our will and choice as a series of disconnected and fragmented acts of choice. We are left with a series of superficial expressions of what we want. And we keep muttering to ourselves, feeling very proud of ourselves, 'I'm exercising free choice now~'"

32. What we lose as a result

- We have truly lost "the awareness (realization, awakening) of the deep aspirations that make us who we are."

- There's a phrase, "greed versus envy. It means to covet small things and miss out on big things.

- There is a "constant flow" in our lives that leads us toward our goals, but we have become disconnected from our awareness of this flow.

32-1 Eros as a Deep Desire

- Common Eros: Love between men and women in the form of sexual images

= Eros as a deep aspiration: "A deep aspiration that allows me to be myself, a deep-fruited eros that directs my whole life toward some object (the person I love, the God I love) that provides meaning outside of myself."

33. We live in the grip of consumer psychology.

- We have given supreme authority to consumer psychology ("I will buy that thing") and as a result have failed to ask serious questions about the direction of the aspirations that underlie our existence.

- The consumer society gradually leads us to lose the notion that the most precious freedom is the freedom to be ourselves and the freedom to grow.

34. Freedom to find the waves of change

It is not the freedom to "be ourselves" in the sense of "asserting what we want" in every moment, but rather the freedom to slowly but persistently seek out the ripples of change that run deep in our lives and find a place in our lives to grow into what God wants us to be. This is the heart of discipleship.

"If we can confront the "dark night" that surrounds will, freedom, and choice, and see through how little we and our culture value these entities, then we are equipped to grow in love."

35. 1 Corinthians 13

- In Paul's discussion of love, he says that it's not enough to "do good".

Love is about building love and trust through our relationship with God and our relationship with our neighbors.

Love rejoices in others, doesn't take pleasure in their failures, and is willing to embrace the truth that produces life and joy. Love is born by loving and being loved. (1 John 4:10)

36. Love unites all subjects.

- The trustworthy One who never leaves us, the One who remembers us as we were and as we are, the One who gazes upon us with a steady gaze, the One who bears an unwavering witness to who we are for all eternity, that God is love.

(1 John 4:8, NIV) Whoever does not love does not know God. (1Jn 4:8, NIV11) Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.(1Jn 4:8, MSG) The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love--so you can't know him if you don't love.

We see, then, that love has to do with our devotion, with presenting our bodies as holy living sacrifices, pleasing to God. The disciple is to offer his body as a living sacrifice--that is, to willingly choose and eagerly present his body to God when and where God wants it.

37. Summary / Exhortation

- He counts us, understands us, holds us, and most of all, welcomes us. We are the object of his eternal joy.

- But when that love is deeply rooted in our hearts and minds, the fundamental reality of what the Church is and what it should be becomes clear.

Faith, hope, and love, the Apostle Paul tells us, are the three pillars of discipleship, the core of our life of learning and growing in Christ.

Grow in the Lord's love. May your faith be steadfast in His love, your hope soar, and your training and practice in obedience and service increase, so that you may enjoy and savor more of the glory of life.