Faith + Love

1 Corinthians 13:13 says “There are three things that will endure – faith, hope, and love – and the greatest of these is love.”

There is a story of my brother Gabriel, a story that will last for the length of time in this nation and in the nation of Grenada.  Why?  Because it has been and will continue to be passed on from generation to generation.

My brother was a missionary in Grenada for two years and was swimming with a group of people from the States one day in the ocean near their home base.  To make a long story short, a young man had gone swimming out beyond where you should go and was swept out into the hazardous depths of the ocean by the raging waves.  The people in his group noticed he was being swept out when my brother decided to swim out after this young man.  The story goes that when my brother reached the young man they were around 100 meters out from shore and were being pulled even further.  They tried to swim back to shore but were pushed even faster and further out to sea from the relentless waves.  They’d gotten so far out that there was no hope of rescue; the locals told the members of the group standing on the shore that they were as good as dead.  My brother and the young man became so exhausted from swimming that they began to sink beneath the surface of the ocean, as they sank and began to drown my brother began to talk to God and remind Him that nothing good could come from him drowning in the ocean, that God needed to do something to save their lives.  At that moment my brother and the young man were suddenly and miraculously taken and moved from sinking beneath the ocean to standing in a safe zone and were able to walk to shore.

Matthew 21:21-22 says “Then Jesus told them, I assure you, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you can do things like this and much more.  You can even say to this mountain, “May God lift you up and throw you into the sea, and it will happen.  If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”

We know that faith can move mountains; Matthew 21:21 just told us so.  But what happens when we combine our faith and our love?  How much more could happen in our lives when we combine the two?  1 Corinthians said that out of faith, hope, and love the greatest is love.  But faith has the ability to move a mountain!  I wonder how much more love can do and how much more faith + love can accomplish in our lives and in the lives of those we encounter.

What I love so much about the story of my brother is not just the miracle of being translated to safety and saved from death.  What I love is my brother’s courage and my brother’s love for the life of someone else.  See, faith would have looked like my brother gathering the others in the group standing on the shore and praying for the young man to be rescued or for God to perform a miracle of some sort.  Faith, although needed, would have kept my brother safe on the shore praying.  Faith + Love took my brother from his safety on the shore and brought him into the raging sea, into the thrashing waves, into the place of death, and his Faith + Love brought about a miracle of biblical proportions.

How much more can we accomplish for the Kingdom of God when we, like my brother, use the equation of Faith + Love in our lives and in the lives of all those we encounter. 

I believe I will see those astounding miracles I crave to see and experience in my life when I not only pray the prayers of faith but when I allow my love for God and for humanity to bring me into those raging sea’s and position myself for God to deliver me and work a miracle in my life.

This weekend I am departing for Los Angeles where I am going as part of a team of teenagers from my home church to bring a message of hope to the people of that city.  We are not just praying the prayers of faith for Los Angeles but we will be using that equation of Faith + Love and getting into it, positioning ourselves for God to work those astonishing miracles in our lives and all those we encounter.

Pray for us, pray for the team, pray that we are lead by the Holy Spirit and pray that we have more than enough opportunities to combine our Faith and Love and expand the Kingdom of God in the city of Los Angeles.