Gary Smalley wrote a book entitled, "Love Is a Decision." Listen to this great story.

"One afternoon I was very late coming home from boating with my son Greg. I had taken the car, which left Norma with only our mini-motor home for transportation. She waited and waited, but when I was several hours later than I had predicted, she decided to take our mini-motor home to the grocery store.

Granted, our motor home is not the easiest thing to handle in the world. I'd already had my share of close calls when it came time to park or back the vehicle out. But Norma re-defined the word "close-call" as she tried to back the camper out of the driveway.

She had almost made it out from under the carport when she turned the wheel the wrong way and sheared off an entire section of the roof. And if that wasn't bad enough, the falling roof bounced off the hood of the camper, scraping away paint and leaving a deep dent in its wake.

When I pulled into the driveway an hour later, I couldn't believe my eyes. Looking at the gaping hole in the roof, my first response was to look at the sky to see if the tornado was still around, but one look at our mobile home told me that it was Mother Norma, not Mother Nature, who had caused the catastrophe. I instantly felt like ordering her out of the house and asking her questions like, "Where did you get your driver's license? From a gumball machine at Shop-Mart?!"

Instead, I sat in my car, frozen, with my hands on the steering wheel, praying, "Lord, You have to give me strength. Every fiber in my body wants to lecture my wife now and not be gentle with her. This is one of those pressure situations, and I know I have a choice. Lord, help me figure out what I'm going to do." Turning to my son Greg I asked him, "What do you think I ought to do?"

Greg said, "Dad, why don't you do what you teach?"

"That's a good idea," I said.

But all the while I was praying for the strength to be tender. Being tender at such a moment is definitely not natural. You have to take off the comfortable old nature of lectures and anger, and put on the new nature of tenderness. This can be excruciatingly difficult.

Finally, I got out of the car and walked toward the piece of roof lying on the driveway, but just as I got up to the camper, Norma came flying around the side of the house.

I fought off the voice ringing in my mind, "Lecture her! Lecture her! and I did what didn't feel "natural" at the time. I simply held her in my arms and gently patted her on the back. I hadn't spoken one word when finally, Norma pulled away and said, "Oh, look what I did! I wrecked the motor home and knocked off the roof," she said. Then she added, "And I told the neighbors across the street what I did, and they're watching to see how you respond."

Thankfully, I hadn't given my neighbors anything to gossip about by exploding at Norma. I just put my arms around her again and called her by my affectionate name for her:

"Norm, listen. You know I love you. You're more important to me than campers and roofs. I know you didn't do this on purpose, and you're feeling really bad about it."

At that moment, I could feel Norma relaxing. What's more, I immediately felt better myself as my own anger drained out of me to be replaced by feelings of tenderness. While it's hard to explain, I could tell that instead of being pulled apart, we were actually growing stronger as a result of the trial.

After a few more moments of talking and holding her, Norma went on with whatever she was doing, and I went out to the garage to lay my hands on the few tools I had. After taking a deep breath, I said to Greg, "Well, I'd better get at it."

Just then, from out of nowhere, a friend from my church pulled up into our driveway in his pickup filled with hammers, saws, lumber, nails, paint, and a long ladder. He jumped out and said, "OK, Gary, Let's get at it."

"Where did you come from?" I asked in disbelief."


That's quite a story illustrating charity as an act of the will. Many years ago I made a decision to love God - a decision I need to renew everyday. Years later, by an act of my will, I chose to love my wife. As a Christian, I choose to love people. If charity were merely an emotion, I would be in trouble, because, like Gary Smalley, I do not always feel like loving my wife, my God, my daughter, my son, my congregation, my friends, my neighbors. Yet, the Godly discipline of charity calls me to make those choices.

Are you willing to put God's concerns and other's concerns above your own? Do you recall the story of two mountain goats I told last week?

Someone has changed the words of the hymn, "Are Ye Able," to read like this:

Able to suffer without complaining;
To be misunderstood without explaining;
Able to give without receiving,
To be ignored without grieving;
Able to ask without commanding,
To love despite misunderstanding;
Able to turn to the Lord for guarding;
Able to wait for His own rewarding.


If you were present last Sunday you may recall that I began a message on the "Discipline of Charity." My first point was Charity IS: Acting with Unselfishness. The second that we began last week and I illustrated more this morning was that Charity is Acting with the Will. The final point I want to make in this two Sunday message is that Charity is Acting with Forgiveness.

III. Charity is Acting with Forgiveness.

This grows out of this discipline: acting with unselfishness and acting with the will. If we are putting ourselves first, rather than God and others,, retaliation, anger, and revenge are the typical response. The Christian discipline of charity calls us to forgive. Albert Day suggests that we forgive quickly when others seek pardon and forgive others before they ask. He said, "Never make the faults of others the subject of your conversation. That will destroy more charity in ten minutes than you can acquire in a week of faithful discipline."

Paul described charity with patience, long suffering, kind, and not taking into account a wrong suffered. Wow! This is not easy - but it is charity, real God like LOVE. This love does not harbor resentments, retaliation, or revenge.

Is your heart like Abe Lincoln's, "No room for the memory of a wrong"? Like Jesus, who, who, even as he was hanging on a cross, forgave His enemies and prayed for His Father to do so also.

George Sweeting said, "I once knew a husband who had entered into a new relationship with Christ and wanted to share it with his wife. Years before, he had decided that one chore he would not do around the house was carry out the garbage-he would do anything else gladly, but not that."

"Now as he began asking the Lord how he could get through to his wife, there seemed to be no approach that was not prefaced by that garbage sack sitting by the back door. So finally he stooped down, picked up the bag, and carried it to the alley. His love for God and his wife had grown past the point where he had to prove his superiority. He was free to become a garbage carrier in love.

Wouldn't the world, our nation, our city, our churches, our families be better places if we practiced this discipline of charity?

If we really don't care we can continue to use this recipe for a miserable life.
Think about yourself.
Talk about yourself.
Use I as often as possible.
Mirror yourself continually in the opinion of others.
Listen greedily to what people say about you.
Expect to be appreciated.
Be suspicious.
Be jealous and envious.
Be sensitive to slights.
Never forgive a criticism.
Trust nobody but yourself.
Insist on consideration and respect.
Demand agreement with your own views on everything.
Sulk if people are not grateful to you for favors shown them.
Never forget a service you may have rendered.
Be on the lookout for a good time for yourself.
Shirk your duties if you can.
Do as little as possible for others.
Love yourself supremely.
Be selfish.

BUT, if you want a better life marked with the discipline of charity, try Acting with unselfishness, Acting with the will, and Acting with forgiveness. And note, I use the word acting to suggest a course of action, not a game, not an actor in a play, Not play - Not pretend - BUT LIVING A LIFE THAT IS REAL!

1 Corinthians 13 The Way of Love 1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
2 If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.
3-7 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.
8-10 Love 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.
11 When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
12 We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

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