Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Love Like a Marathoner | Redefining Love (1 Cor. 13)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're working through 1st Corinthians 13, Paul's definition of love. According to some Duke researchers, the average person can expend about 4,000 calories per day on a consistent, ongoing basis without killing themselves. Now, obviously, we can do more than that in the short term. Cyclists in the Tour de France, they double that expenditure every day they're on their bikes. Marathoners, when they're running their races, they actually quadruple it.

Starting point is 00:00:45 But this is only possible short term. Perhaps the most impressive endurance champs out there, and this might surprise you, it's pregnant woman. These Duke researchers, they've figured out that pregnant women, they actually live at the limits of what the human body can cope with during the later parts of pregnancy. I asked my wife about this. She agrees. Endurance is hard. Extreme endurance long term, it can actually kill you.

Starting point is 00:01:15 Sometimes we break our endurance limits short term. Sometimes we're forced to live at the limit long term. If this is true physically, I think it's equally true emotionally. it's true in relationships. And so that makes 1 Corinthians 13-7 one of the most shocking, challenging, and impossible verses in all of the Bible. Paul writes this, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes, all things, endures all things. Does that sound crazy to you? because I know it sounds a little bit crazy to me. I don't know about you, but I mean, do you have limitless wells of patience for a coworker who repeats the same mistakes?

Starting point is 00:02:10 Do you have limitless emotional endurance helping a family member through their mental health problems? Do you have an unlimited capacity to assume the best about your spouse to give second chances, to hope for a better tomorrow? you probably don't me either in fact i don't think anyone does except jesus so that makes me ask what is paul trying to do i think he's trying to point us to jesus i think that he's trying to show us that jesus and jesus alone is the sole exemplar of perfect love because Jesus, and again, Jesus alone, actually bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things, and endures all things. We need look no further than the cross. That's where he willingly bore the sins of sinners. Why? Because he believed and hoped that they could be transformed. Can you think of a better example of bearing all things, enduring all things, believing

Starting point is 00:03:24 all things, hoping all things? Paul is pointing us to Jesus as the premier example of love. But that's not the only reason he makes this impossibly bold claim. Paul is intentionally exaggerating to make a second point. Relationships are an endurance sport. Relationships are an endurance sport. I don't know if you've ever realized that. But real, long-term relationships, they require incredible endurance. I think one reason that our culture has normalized short-term relationships is precisely because long-term relationships are so challenging. It doesn't matter if it's the hookup culture or the way that we glorify people moving away from friends and family again and again. I think we do this because it actually takes a lot of endurance

Starting point is 00:04:23 to stay committed to the same people, to the same place. I think you probably know what I mean. Just think about it. When an acquaintance makes an unfair comment about your work, it's always painful. But it's not too hard to bear. In fact, if they apologize, it's not really that difficult to endure. But let's say your spouse nags at you about the same trivial thing again and again and again. Well, eventually the nagging feels unendurable. Or how about this? When a friend talks bad about you behind your back and then they apologize, it's pretty easy to believe that they're actually sorry that they didn't mean to hurt you.

Starting point is 00:05:09 It's easy to assume the best about their motives, to hope even for a better future. but when your spouse doesn't follow through on another house project for the 60th time and apologizes, man, it can be almost impossible to assume the best about their motives or hope for a better future. Relationships are an endurance sport. If they weren't, Paul would have just said love protects its rights. Love moves on when things get tough. but perhaps we're protesting right now. Maybe we're thinking, okay, but I thought that God promised not to give me more than I could handle.

Starting point is 00:05:52 Well, that's not true. And God doesn't promise that anywhere in the Bible. In fact, if we try to live out this verse, it's a virtual guarantee that we will have more than we can handle in our lives. If you're in a long-term relationship of any kind, a child with a parent, a parent with a child, with your friends, with coworkers. If you're in a long-term relationship of any kind, you've probably already gotten past the point you can handle. So again, why did Paul write this?

Starting point is 00:06:29 I think that he wrote it to awaken us to the truth. I can't do this on my own. I don't have the inner resources. I don't have the emotional capital. calories to expend, at least not without dying. So where do we get the strength to live like this? Well, I think we get it from the only person that this verse accurately describes. We get it from Jesus.

Starting point is 00:06:59 Jesus is the ultramarathoner of relationships. He's got unlimited emotional calories. His love never gives up and never fails. What does that mean? Well, ironically, it means that we can't bear all things because we are not Jesus. We can't hope all things. We can't believe all things. We can't endure all things.

Starting point is 00:07:24 Only Jesus can do that. And if we start trying to become someone's personal Jesus, someone's personal Savior, it will crush us and it will hurt them. That means that there are going to be times when we have to set back. boundaries on the love that we give. Not because we're giving up, but because we're entrusting people to Jesus. In fact, this is what we must do when we are in destructive and abusive relationships. It's also what we need to do in relationships where we tend to overfunction or people take advantage of us. Jesus is the Savior, not you. Jesus can endure all of those things.

Starting point is 00:08:12 Not you. Trust him to do it for others when you can't. But all of this that I'm saying, I don't think it absolves us of responsibility. Because Jesus, even though he says, I'm the Savior, I'm the only one who can do all of this all the time, he still expects us to become endurance athletes in our relationships. So how do we do that? Well, I remember the first time I ran a half marathon. I don't I think before that I had ever run more than maybe three or four miles consecutively. So I wasn't going to be able to just get up and run 13 miles without a problem. I had to train. I had to train slowly. And the way you train is each week you add another mile onto a longer and longer and longer run. And in between those long runs, you do short runs

Starting point is 00:09:07 just to develop your own endurance. The same principle I think applies in relation. We start small. We slowly build our way to even greater acts of love. Just like running for the first time in a long while, it's going to be hard. Okay. The first time you get up and you haven't ran for a good time, it's going to be hard. And it's going to be something that makes you want to quit. But look to Jesus for grace. Reflect on how he's endured to love you and allow his enduring love to propel you off of the emotional couch and into the race of loving others. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually.

Starting point is 00:10:07 If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations. Thank you.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Love Like a Marathoner | Redefining Love (1 Cor. 13)

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