Lena's Journalin' to 1 Cor 13

In my women's Bible Study Home Group, we read the same scriptures many times in different translationsto bring the word to our human understanding. This usually does something like confuse our natural minds, which can be good. Everyone needs a good shaking off of the religious couch often. We get so familiar with scriptures and memorize them without knowing them personally.
Today I have published 1 Cor 13 in a few different versions, especially the love portions of the scripture. Let your natural minds be confounded and eternally affected by the opening up of God's Word today.
As I read this a few weeks ago I realized that I was reading it as beautiful poetry that had rythm and rhyme to it. I loved it's ideal but had excused myself from believeing it was God's word to me personally, a word for me to do no matter what, a word I would someday account for the excuses I'd made to opt out of it. Do you know that to every word of God we are held accountable, whether we want to give account or don't care to? We will give account to God, may as well study it and make changes now.
I saw I was making the word fit into my life, rather than forcing my life to change to be conformed to His word.
Be kind, to whom? Everyone. When? All the time! Even if they don't deserve it. Especially when they do not deserve it. Just as He loved and drew us with that unconditional love, when we did not deserve it, so give His love to others freely, and be sure and demonstrate it this way....



1 Cor 13:3-7 The Message Version

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
8-10Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

1 Cor 13:4-8 Amplified Version4 Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily.
5 It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God's love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong].
6 It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail.
7 Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening].
8 Love never fails [never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end]. As for prophecy ([a]the gift of interpreting the divine will and purpose), it will be fulfilled and pass away; as for tongues, they will be destroyed and cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away [it will lose its value and be superseded by truth].

Footnotes:
a.1 Corinthians 13:8 G. Abbott-Smith, Manual Greek Lexicon.


1 Cor 13:4-8 New Life Version
4 Love does not give up. Love is kind. Love is not jealous. Love does not put itself up as being important. Love has no pride.
5 Love does not do the wrong thing. Love never thinks of itself. Love does not get angry. Love does not remember the suffering that comes from being hurt by someone. 6 Love is not happy with sin. Love is happy with the truth. 7 Love takes everything that comes without giving up. Love believes all things. Love hopes for all things. Love keeps on in all things.
8 Love never comes to an end. The gift of speaking God's Word will come to an end. The gift of speaking in special sounds will be stopped. The gift of understanding will come to an end.