This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

We're in first Corinthians chapter 13 this week. This is day three. We're going
to focus on verses five and six today.

We're talking about how love acts. To me, this is the center of first
Corinthians chapter 13. What do I do?

And yesterday we began this list. This is what it means to love, to make love a
priority in my life. This is how I get beyond all the words and all the
suppositions and all the philosophy.

This is how I really love. I'm patient like God is patient with me. God is so
patient to forgive.

He's so patient in my daily life as He is in yours. I choose to be patient. I
choose to be kind as God is kind to me.

The kindness of God is what leads us to repentance. The kindness of God is
showered upon our lives. And then I decide to be humble as God has been humble.

Philippians chapter 2 says, "Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in
Christ Jesus, who humbled himself and became a man and gave him life on a cross.
" So these attitudes of love that we're talking about, we see them in God's love
for us. And I hope yesterday you had an opportunity somewhere to be patient, to
be kind, to be humble.

I know God gave them. There may have been a stumble or two in your life. So you
just ask God, "Pick me up again and help me today to be patient, to be kind, to
be humble.

I'm going to be about that the rest of my life. That's what it means to make
love a priority. We're talking about these five exercises of love.

Those are the first three of them. There's a fourth one in verses five and six.
Let me read those verses.

"Love is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered.

It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with
the truth. Be patient, be kind, be humble, and here, be unselfish.

" That's what it means to love, to be unselfish. Now, let's just think about
this for a moment. Is it hard for you to tell when you're being selfish?

It is for me. It is for me because when I'm being selfish, I'm focused on
myself, not on whether I'm being selfish or not. I'm focused on me getting my
needs met.

I'm blinded a little bit by my selfishness. If I could get outside of it enough
to see that I was being selfish, I would stop being selfish, but because I'm so
into it, so into me and what I need, I'm blinded. Well, here's a list.

I don't know of a better list of the signs of selfishness in our lives. When I
see these things happening, I realize, "I don't know what's going on, but there
is some selfishness in my life. Some of them are obvious here.

Some of them may be not so obvious. " Here's the list. Are you being rude?

If you find yourself being rude to others, "I don't have time for you. I don't
have a minute for you. I've got to rush on to the next thing," you're struggling
with selfishness.

Are you self-seeking? That's an obvious one. Self-seeking.

Am I a person who in this moment is wanting only what I want and I'm not
thinking about what anybody else needs in this moment? Are you easily angered?
One of the great signs of selfishness I've seen in my own life, my own heart, is
this irritation, this being easily angered.

I realize it could be tiredness, by the way, that causes you to be irritated,
but sometimes our tiredness brings out our selfishness. We don't hold it quite
as much in check. Because I feel tired, I feel somehow entitled, entitled for
you to meet my need now rather than me having to look at other people's needs.

When I find myself easily irritated, easily angered, the anger might come out,
it might explode out, or you might be a person who always hides your anger.
Nobody else knows about it, but you feel the irritation level rising in your
life. When you're easily angered, it's a huge sign of selfishness in your life.

Another sign of selfishness in these verses is keeping a record of wrongs. You
see that you're being selfish when you keep adding to the list. "Oh, here's
another one.

Here's another one. Here's another one that you did. " And when that list gets
longer and longer and you remember back to what they did before and what they
did before, that's a sign of selfishness.

These are warning signs that I am focusing on myself. These are warning signs
that tell me I've got to get back to centering on Christ. Many people have
questions about these verses as they read through them.

Keeps no record of wrongs. That means I can never remember something wrong
somebody did to me. Maybe they hurt me physically and I'd have to protect myself
from that.

That's not what this is talking about. This is not talking about protecting
yourself from the harm that somebody else has done. That's as obvious as
anything from other scriptures.

And we'll talk about that a little bit more even later this week because I think
this is so important to understand. But for today, we're talking about counting
up sins, counting up unforgiveness, holding unforgiveness in your heart. The
idea of keeping a record of wrongs, that's an accounting term, and I'm counting
up those sins.

The only way to deal with selfishness is by choosing to be unselfish. You can't
deal with selfishness by choosing to be nothing. You've got to counter it with a
positive alternative.

Choosing against selfishness by being unselfish, one day at a time, one action
at a time. So how do I choose against these actions? How do I choose against
rudeness?

Well, instead I act with grace towards the person. That's what you do. Instead
of acting rude, when you're tempted to act rude, you decide to act with grace
towards that other person.

How do I choose against self-seeking? Well, instead of insisting on my rights, I
stand up for somebody else's rights. Instead of thinking only about my need
being met in the moment, I think about who else in this room needs their need
met.

I've found in my own life, when I'm tired, when I'm feeling selfish, one of the
most encouraging and empowering things I can do is to stop thinking about my
need and think about someone else's. If I'm feeling discouraged, it's easy to
get caught up in that discouragement and selfishly go down the road of
self-pity. But if instead of that, I begin to think, "I'm feeling discouraged.

Maybe there's someone else in my life that's feeling discouraged. How could I
encourage them? " All of a sudden, not only have I encouraged them, but I've
done something that usually brings me out of my discouragement.

It's not self-seeking. Self-seeking is a road to greater and greater despair.
It's not easily angered.

So when I feel like I'm easily irritated in those moments, anger often comes
after not getting what I want, I realize, "Hey, I'm focused on what I want right
now. " And I begin to wonder what is it that other people need? Not just what I
want, what other people need How can I meet one of those needs?

It keeps no record of wrongs. As I said earlier, that's a bookkeeping term.
Entering wrongs in a mental ledger.

How do I combat that? Well, I keep a record of praises. I keep a record of good
things that God is doing, maybe through that person that I was thinking about,
or maybe even you needed to turn to somebody else.

You may not have much of a relationship with that person. The only thing they've
done is wrong in your life, at least the way you're thinking about it, or
certainly because anybody else would see it that way. So what do you do?

You think about some praise that you have in your life. And then verse six says,
"Love does not delight in evil, but it rejoices with the truth. " It does not
rejoice in evil.

It never enjoys or takes pleasure in the wrong. It's never glad when others go
wrong, but instead it rejoices in the truth. It's always glad when the truth
prevails.

There's something about us sometimes, the way we're wired as human beings, we
love it when something goes wrong for somebody else. It makes us feel better
about ourselves. And you start to take that diet, you start to eat that diet,
you start to eat that plate every day of your life, and you're eating poison
into your own soul.

If you take pleasure in wrong, it does something wrong to you. If you delight
when something bad happens to others to make yourself feel better about
yourself, the end of that road is you feel worse and worse about this world. So
instead of that, you make the opposite choice.

And Paul says here, here's the opposite choice with that one. You rejoice in the
truth. You look for some truth to rejoice in.

You look for some true thing that God is doing in your life and in other
people's lives. So how do I combat this idea, not this idea, this temptation to
be selfish in my everyday life? I've got to do the positive alternative.

I've got to do the positive faith step. Instead of being rude, grace. Instead of
self-seeking, I look at other people's needs.

Instead of anger, I love. Instead of record of wrongs, record of praise. Instead
of delighting in evil, I rejoice with the truth.

Jesus as we pray today, help us to choose what you would do. Instead of choosing
what we would do, help us to choose what you would do in a situation. Help us to
choose to love like you would love.

Help us to choose to have faith. Help us to choose to have hope. Help us to
choose to have love.

Lord, if we're going to love like you do, if we're going to make the kind of
choices that you make, we need you in our lives. So we ask for that right now.
Jesus, be with us each step of the way today.

Show us what to do. Give us direction. Give us guidance.

We need you today. We desperately need you more than we even realize. So
strengthen us today.

We pray to love. We ask this in your name. Amen.

In a verse on the character qualities of love.