About a decade ago the church that I attend experienced some significant conflict over two highly contentious issues. The conflict ran so deep that several long-time members chose to join a different congregation as they felt as though the tension would not be resolved any time soon.

As a 50+ year attendee of the church, it pained me to see fellow members and friends leave because they couldn’t see a way forward. That ought not to be!

In Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth, he addresses a group of Christ followers who were also dealing with deep levels of tension. Throughout the letter, the Apostle Paul provides gentle encouragement alongside very direct guidance in dealing with the individuals at the center of the issues. Then in chapter 13 he seems to insert a seemingly out of place brief description of what love in practice should look like in a church. Although the chapter is often read at weddings to suggest that Paul was referring to love within a marriage, the reality is that his exhortation is directed at people within churches.

Verse 7 of this chapter contains four brief statements of what love in action should look like. In my own church, coming out of the deep conflict, our pastor led us in a time of confession and restoration. We agreed as a congregation to adopt something called a “Prayer Action Plan” where we focused our behavior in specific ways. Out of the seven areas the document contained, the one that has impacted me the most is giving up the right to take offense. Specifically, we agreed to “...give up the right to take offense.”

In other words, our church intentionally chose to practice love with each other by choosing not to allow the words and actions of others to cause intentional or unintentional pain. Is it possible to make such a choice or even control our responses? We believe with the Holy Spirit’s power it is!

As a result, our church has gone through some amazing healing and restoring of relationships. God is blessing us beyond what we can even imagine and we believe it is at least partially due to the ways he led us to practice love in very real ways. It is beautiful to behold.

Heavenly Father, thank you for your mercy in our lives. You modeled love in a way that inspires us to somehow attain sacrificial love between each other in the church and beyond. Help us to live up to that standard.

Throughout This Day: Pay attention to how often you get offended in big and small ways. Practice thinking the best of people and see if that changes your attitude towards others.



Tags: 1 Corinthians 13