"Love Your Neighbor" by Kathryn Kuhlman part 5 of her "1 Corinthians 13 Series"

I'm going to ask you to just relax for the next few minutes and let's just talk it over. Talk about something that's vitally important to you, to me, to the community in which you live, something that's important to the whole world. I think that you will agree with me that the thing that is literally strangling the very life of this generation is man's intolerance of his fellows. And down to the ages, this fault has darkened history's pages. This thing of hatred, of war, of misunderstanding, and today it threatens to wipe mankind off the face of the earth, our ignorance of others' aims, our virtues, failure to discover them, our refusal to tolerate them, our lack of love. And you'll always find where there's no love, you'll find seeds of hatred. And misunderstood long enough, people and nations become demons in our eyes, and we in theirs. The ugly thing looms larger and larger, and it grows and it grows as a vicious cancer grows in the human body. When you get to know a fellow, know his joys and know his cares, when you come to understand him and the burden that he bears, when you've learned the fight he's making and the troubles that are in his way, then you find that he's different than you thought him yesterday. You find that his faults are trivial, and there's not so much to blame in the fellow that you jeered at when you only knew his name. You're quick to see the blemish in the distant neighbor's style, and you can point to all of his errors and may sneer at him the while. And your prejudices and your hates more violent grow as you talk about the failures of the man you really do not know. But when drawn a little closer and your hands and shoulders touch, you find the traits you hated really don't amount to much. When you get to know a fellow, know his every mood and whim, you begin to find the texture of the splendid side of him. You begin to understand him, and you cease to stop and sneer, for with understanding always prejudices disappear. You begin to find his virtues and his faults, you cease to tell, for you seldom hate a fellow when you get to know him very well. When next you start in sneering and phrases turn to blame, know more about him, the one you censor, more than just his business and his name. For it's likely that acquaintance would your prejudice dispel, and you'd really come to like him if you knew him very well. But when you get to know a fellow and you understand his ways, then his faults won't really matter, for you'll find an awful lot to praise. And would that God, that the people of our nation, could get a real baptism of the love of God, a time of knowing each other, wouldn't it be wonderful if something could happen that we could know our neighbors a little better? You've been living in the same block with that neighbor for five years, you only know his name, you speak, you'll say, good morning. But say, what about that fence you put between the two properties? You really haven't wanted to know him any better than you know him now. You live next door to somebody in an apartment house, maybe you've lived there five years, six years, seven years, and then you boast about the fact that you do not know your next door neighbor. It really isn't something to boast about. Do you know that? That's one reason there's so much hate in the world today. Again, I remind you, there never was a generation that talked more about love and knew so little about what they're talking about. The very atmosphere is permeated with hate. There's tension, there's greed, there's envy, there's strife. You and your wife, your son John, his wife, we four no more. That's the way the world is living. We need to get back to the word of God. We need to get back to the principles of God's word. Love thy neighbor as thyself. That's another thing that we've taken out of today's living. You laugh and say that's old fashioned. We need it today as we've never needed it before. Unless we get to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, you're going to find that man is going to destroy himself with his own hatreds. That's the reason I thought it's so vitally important that we get back to this thing of love. You cannot understand real love unless you see it from the standpoint of the word of God. It is vitally important. It's vitally important because Paul says follow after love. That makes it important. So again today, we're going back to the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, the masterpiece, the basis of all living. I hope you've been following me in the past several heart to heart talks and then you really understand what love is. Love suffereth long and is kind. Love envieth much. Love vaunteth not itself. The whole emphasis here is on the word itself. Love that talks of loving is not love. It does not boast about itself. Love is not puffed up. Oh, I like that. That's the sweet reasonableness of love. It's never greedy. It never vaunted itself. It is not puffed up. It's not conceited. Wherever you find real love, you'll find humility. Remember something, humility is not a weak and timid quality. Humility is a show of strength and security. See, we're living in a very strange generation. We're living absolutely contrary to what the Bible teaches. We're living absolutely contrary to the laws of God. And that's the reason we find ourselves in the mess that we're in today. Humility. That word too has been taken out of the human vocabulary. And we've gotten to the place where we feel that humility is a sign of weakness. It isn't. Humility is never a sign of weakness. Humility is the sign of strength and security. I shall never forget that Saturday night. And I was only a little kid holding on to Papa's hand. And we were going through that screen door on the main street of Concordia, Missouri. And Mr. Desique had a meat market. Papa was mayor of Concordia. It was a hot Saturday night. And the two of us were just going through the screen door when Concordia's old drunk. Push! Papa back. Shave him a shelf. And Papa stepped aside, stood holding the screen door open, and the old drunks staggered through the door into the meat market. Another man standing watching the whole procedure said, Joe Kuhlman, are you going to let him get by with that? I was still holding on to Papa's hand. And he just smiled and said, I can afford to let him go first. I can afford to let him go first. Humility is never a sign of weakness. It's never a timid quality. It's a show of security. It's a show of strength. I believe that the very first test of a truly great man is his humility. Humility is the solid foundation of all the virtues. Humility is to make a right estimate of one's self. When you can get to the place where you can afford certain things, then my friend, you're a secure person. Think about it. And there's no harder lesson to learn than that of humility. It's the rarest of all gifts and the hardest lesson that the Lord had to teach his disciples. And it was one of the very last lessons that he gave them before he went away. In Augustine, when asked the first of the Christian graces replied, humility, first, second, and third. And remember something, it can never be counterfeited. Never. Love is never popped out. Never. It is not conceited. Then continue. Then comes this does not behave itself unseemly. As I told you in our last heart to heart talk, the simple meaning of this is just this. Love is always polite. Love is never violent. Love is courteous. It's that brutal. It does not go around saying ugly things. Love does not do this kind of a thing. Love does not behave itself unseemly. Seeketh not its own. Perhaps this is one of the profoundest word about the self-emptying capacity of love. Seeketh not its own. Is not provoked. I like that. It's not exasperated. That's something I'm going to have to dwell on. I think I need a greater capacity for patience. You know, I'm in this thing with you because we are a part of humanity. We have our influence. We're just human beings. I have my weaknesses. You have your weaknesses. No man is perfect. Only one who ever walked this earth was perfect. And that's the reason I have no right to judge another. Neither have you the right to condemn someone else. And yet we do. We all have our weaknesses. All of us. Love is not provoked, not exasperated. Those are all the descriptions of what love does to the individual. And there it is. And each one of us has our relationship to people, to the individual. I do not live unto myself. You do not live unto yourself. And the word of God shows us what love is in relationship to our fellow men, our neighbors, members of our family. And through this relationship and through our love, we manifest the love of the Christ that we serve. Paul then turns and shows the relative effect of love. Taketh not an account of evil. Now to render that in a slightly different way, love does not keep a ledger in which to enter up wrongs to be dealt with someday later on. Some people never forget. I know somebody, and I've watched this very closely in this individual. It always amazes me. If you were to mention a person's name, that one can always remember the bad things about that one. And for the life of them, they never remember anything good about that one. Do you have somebody like that that you know? Do you? They're always remembering the bad things. There's something about their mind, their memory. Their memory always absorbs the evil, the bad, the wrong that the person has done. And yet that same person may have done a thousand wonderful things or have a score of wonderful characteristics, yet they never see that in that one. They only see the bad. Strange, isn't it? Now love never keeps an account of the bad in the life of another individual. That's a word of God. Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness. Now that's the other side of the first. If you do not keep a ledger in which you enter up things of wrong, then you rejoice not in unrighteousness. Have you seen some folk who will say, oh, have you heard? Have you heard? Isn't it? Oh, oh. And they're tickled to death that it happened because they've got something to talk about. When you see certain neighbors coming over to your house, you know good and well, it's not something good they have to say, but it's something bad that they've just heard and you get all set in prime for it. It's a good bit of gossip and it's not good gossip. Uh-huh. Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness. But rejoiceth with the truth. That's the reason of its inability to be glad in the presence of evil, but happy in the presence of God and truth. Then that wonderful little phrase, beareth all things. Now do not confuse it with another statement that comes later, beareth. The word here means that which excludes things. It's the idea of an umbrella that you put up and then you invite someone to a shelter from the beating rain. It's sort of the roof that you put over the head. Love acts as a roof over other people, shielding them from the storm as it sweeps. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we all began to carry an umbrella of love? Somebody should start a campaign of an umbrella of love. Putting up that umbrella of love, we invite another to come under that shelter of love and say, come, share my umbrella of love. Won't you please? Come on. When next you start insnaring and phrases turn to blame, know more of him that you censor than his business and his name. When you get to know a fellow and understand his ways, then his faults won't really matter and you'll find an awful lot of praise. Cover him with your umbrella of love.