Love is patient. It is not impatient. It is shown in the attitude of waiting. A patient person harbors no resentment or bitterness towards anybody, but joyfully waits on God’s timing. This means valuing people above situations. This means I care for why someone is late instead of getting angry because MY schedule is thrown off. This means bearing up with others’ weaknesses with a desire to see God change them, not me. This means looking for the best in people, rather than caring about how others respect me.

Love is kind. It is not unkind. It seeks to bring out the best in people. It speaks gently to people; it never uses harsh words or tones or actions. It treats others as he would want to be treated. This means building others up with encouraging words rather than critically pointing out their faults. This means responding to a harsh word with grace and humility, rather than retaliating in anger. This means helping others when they are in need. This means being observant of others’ needs and taking initiative to meet those needs as best as I can. This means caring for others, giving my life away and trusting God to care for my needs.

Love does not envy. It is content. It rejoices with others’ successes without bitterness or resentment. It mourns with others’ losses without gloating about their misfortune. This means finding my needs met in the person of Jesus Christ. This means that I am satisfied with where I am and with what God has given me. This means I don’t compare myself with others in any aspect – not grades, not abilities, not prayer lives, not Scripture memory, not wisdom, not character, NOTHING.

Love does not boast. It promotes others above self. It does not exalt himself. It speaks in humility. This means accepting the grace of God in every aspect of my life. This means speaking in ways that make others look good, without putting myself down or shortchanging myself. This means having a tender attitude towards others, seeking to benefit all who listen.

Love is not proud. It is humble. A loving man is aware of who he is, how God has blessed him, but does not desire to lord those blessings over anyone. He recognizes that he is not God. He is teachable, able to learn from any situation and anyone. He does not hesitate to do the right thing, even if it hurts himself. He does not consider himself better than others, but offers his strengths to help others’ weaknesses. This means I look past myself and my hurts to the struggles and hurts that others may have. This means giving everything I have to others, even my life. This means asking questions to understand, rather than asking questions to challenge disrespectfully or to instruct. This means listening more and lecturing less. This means graciously accepting correction and rebuke, while being slow to presume authority over others. This means being open and honest with people, sincerely sharing my heart instead of hiding from others. This means having compassion for others, seeing them as God sees them.

“His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness; knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

—2 Peter 1:3-11 (NIV)

‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus
Just to take Him at His word
Just to rest upon His promise
Just to know thus saith the Lord

Jesus Jesus how I trust Him
How I’ve proved Him o’er and o’er
Jesus Jesus precious Jesus
O for grace to trust Him more

O how sweet to trust in Jesus
Just to trust His cleansing blood
Just in simple faith to plunge me
‘Neath the healing cleansing flood

Yes ‘tis sweet to trust in Jesus
Just from sin and self to cease
Just from Jesus simply taking
Life and rest and joy and peace

I’m so glad I learned to trust Thee
Precious Jesus Savior Friend
And I know that Thou art with me
Wilt be with me to the end

‘Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus
Louisa M. R. Stead and William James Kirkpatrick
© Public Domain

I really like this hymn.

I get the impression that we as humans like to establish rules based on exceptions. Several examples come to mind, the two I want to address right now are medical ethics and contemporary Christian philosophy. Yeah, I know, two pretty diverse topics. While my purpose is not to be inflammatory, what I say may be controversial and arouse anger in some individuals. However, I’m not going to debate the moral absolutist right or wrong on these issues – I merely want to consider the trends I observe. With that said, I’ll dive right into this.

First, medical ethics – an issue that is no longer an issue limited to healthcare professionals. A lot of the medical practice’s dos and don’ts are now established by lawful conduct instead of by moral code. While I don’t want to focus much on that issue, I bring it up because this concept, that medical professionals only have to be compliant with legal standards, demonstrates to me that ethical rules in medicine don’t necessarily improve the quality of healthcare when those rules are determined by exception.

That’s a long thought and a lot of big words. Let me see if I can explain this more. Many of the legal codes of healthcare (Patients’ Bill of Rights, Confidentiality stuff like HIPAA) are great. They explain many of the responsibilities of the healthcare provider, as well as protect patients from bad care. However, laws can only explain so much. And personally I get kinda skeptical when judges are the ones telling healthcare providers what they can and cannot do (not to mention prescribing medical law, no pun intended). Anyways, it seems like whenever there’s some law that says that everyone has to do this (ex. all parents of minors must be notified if the minor is getting an abortion), or that this treatment is okay for everyone (ex. Plan B oral contraceptive being made an over-the-counter drug) it ends up that the arguments made by detractors and/or proponents relies on some form of “exception” that justifies it being made a rule for everyone.

For minors getting abortions, questions of “what if” scenarios pop up: what if the parents would force the minor to raise the child against her will, what if the parents don’t know about the pregnancy, etc. They’re certainly questions that require thought, for sure. At the same time, the other side argues, “what if the minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will by her boyfriend?” or “what if the minor died because of post-abortion complications without the parents’ knowledge?”, which are equally thought-provoking and troublesome. Like I said, I don’t want to get into the moral judgment of who’s right and who’s wrong, and I also don’t like appealing to majority-rules arguments, so I’ll just raise the question, which one is the exception, and which one does the rule enforce?

You see similar things asked when there were debates about whether the Plan B oral contraceptive should be made over-the-counter. There were questions about drug missuse and abuse by opponents, and questions about unexpected situations (like rape and sexual abuse) by proponents. Again, which situations are the exception, and which situations do the rule enforce?

Honestly I don’t know the answer to those questions – I think both sides have a little bit of both and also have compelling reasoning. I know that sounds kinda weak, but again, I reiterate my opening statement: I’m just considering the trends that I’m observing. I have my personal opinions on what I think is right or wrong, but that’s not what I’m trying to address. I’m merely “thinking out loud,” to borrow the expression – except that instead of speaking I’m typing. Moving on to modern Christianity.

There have been many “new” philosophies that are being introduced by people who claim to be Christian. While most of these people don’t claim to have developed a truly original perspective of the faith, they do propose some seemingly unorthodox thoughts that are suppose to “enrich” our life as a Christian (assuming that one is a Christian). What I ask myself as I’m looking at these ideas now is this: what perspectives are based on exceptions found in the Bible, and which ones are based on the prescriptive texts on those corresponding subjects? I’m running out of time to write on this (I gotta get back to studying), but I’ll just make a brief mention of some popular Christian writings, some of them probably really good, some of them probably really bad, and let you all consider them as well.

I’ll limit this to these five (some are book titles, some just a short description of their thoughts):

• John Piper’s Christian Hedonism (reference Desiring God and seen throughout his other books and messages)
• John Eldredge’s Wild At Heart (pretty much all of his books have some aspect to this idea)
• Bruce Wilkinson’s The Prayer Of Jabez
• Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz
• Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life

Okay, back to studying. I hope I got through this post without offending everybody. But at the same time, I hope all 2 of my readers out there will find this post challenging and stimulating.

Stay tuned for the next post, which could be about Romans, making decisions, something else completely different, or not until I’m done with tests. Which one will it be? You’ll have to wait and see!

Okay, I’ll go back to the making decisions post eventually…but I wanted to continue in my thoughts about Romans. I’m finding that just thinking through the basics of Christian theology has been a good reminder to me of what my life’s purpose is and understanding grace better.

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of His Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.



I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong – that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.

I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.



—Romans 1:8-15 (NIV)

Upon first glance, this section certainly doesn’t seem like it’s as theologically rich as the first seven verses of the chapter. But as I look at the different things Paul addresses in his opening remarks to the Romans, I see a lot of small things that I can take away.

• Paul thanks God through Jesus Christ for the Romans. Paul has always struck me as a very thankful guy. I’ll go into the reason for the thankfulness in my next point, but I wanted to examine this little bit. I’ve heard people say such things as “Praise God” for this, or “Thank God” for that, without really considering what it really means. I probably do that a few times every day. In fact, I could give countless examples of times when I’ve been less than sincere with my words. And what gives me pause in this short phrase is that while I can’t say for certain Paul’s motives for writing what he did, I’m pretty sure that those words were sincere. And that makes me wonder, how many times do I go through my day and thank God for the people He’s placed in my life? How many times do I tell them how much I appreciate them? How do I show that appreciation? I don’t really want to think about the answers to those questions, they make me realize just how far I am from showing others that I care for them.


• The Romans’ faith was being reported all over the world. What I see in Paul’s account (and reason for his thanksgiving) is the growing reputation of the Romans’ faith. It seems to me that this indicates that, perhaps, our faith should be known around the world – there should be a known reputation for the faith of Christians that marks it as different than anything else. Hopefully, it’s a good reputation. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, and thank God for grace that pays the price of failing for us. I guess my point is that this talk about how “faith is a private matter” is a bunch of baloney – everyone has a belief system and worldview, and to say that it should be kept private for fear of proselytization is imposing a worldview on everyone that believes that. There is no neutral ground.


• Paul serves God with his whole heart. I guess I should clarify that a bit by saying that not only does Paul serve God with his whole heart, but he wholeheartedly preaches the gospel. I see Paul’s passion in this verse. It’s something that I long to be able to say – realizing that it’s not an emotional concept but a fully conscious choice to commit all the way in what I do.


• ”...that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.” I’m realizing more and more how weak I am without the encouragement and support of close, intimate friends. I think this illustrates the concept of fellowship pretty well…our faith grows stronger through the encouragement of like-hearted people.


• Paul is obligated preach the gospel to everyone. As the letter continues Paul establishes why the gospel he preaches is obligated to everyone, regardless of who they are and what their background is. But that’s probably giving the part of the story away. I think it’s a good reminder to me that I, too, have an obligation to preach the gospel to all people. And while my giftings may be different than Paul’s, I’m definitely not exempt from that call.

Wow, another late night. But I’m glad that I got some time to meditate on the Word.