A Lovehope Faith

A nuclear explosion is the result of a high-speed collision between atomic particles. The resulting blast can erase the landscape. But these technologically orchestrated smash-ups are a pale imitation of what happens when God brings together the most powerful entities that exist and allows them to explode within our lives. This sermon arranges and argues for a collision between your people and the greatest forces in the universe: faith, hope and love. 

At his retirement, a college professor was asked what he considered the most important contribution of his career. The professor said, "I have spent my career being a traffic officer. Most people who direct traffic are trying to avoid collisions. But I have been trying to arrange them. I have considered it my calling to arrange collisions between the minds of young people and the great truths of our human existence."

Paul was trying to impose that kind of traffic pattern on the anxious, fractious members of the Corinthian church. Their concern over proper beliefs and the distribution of spiritual gifts had left them weary. In chapter 12 Paul used the analogy of a human body to try and get the Corinthians to view charismatic gifts within the proper perspective. But now Paul hastens to add the single most important component necessary for that spiritually-gifted body: the lifeblood of love. Just as the individual organs of the body cannot function without the blood coursing through...