Love is Indespensable

One of the reasons we are going to India for the mission trip is to show love to the orphans. These children have seen very little affection as in their culture they are considered the untouchables. They are the lowest of the social caste in India. We are also going to an HIV orphanage, the children there know even less about love. The people that run these orphanages show the children love however to receive it from outsiders is something special to children who know so little about it. God speaks to us about love in 1 Corinthians 13 (NIV):

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kinds, It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 

Without love all the things we do for the Lord are nothing. People do not like to listen to a person that is filled with hate or who just barely tolerates others. But if a person shows love, then people actually stop and listen and considered what they are saying, more so then someone who does not. As we go to India we will go not filled with hurt, anger, disappointment, doubt or any other thing that is not of the Lord. But we will go filled with, love, faith, hope and compassion. We will go with the word of God, the love of God and the fruits of the Spirit.