How Do I Love Thee eBook

DAY 1

DAY 2

DAY 3

DAY 4

DAY 5

DAY 6

Love Love Love Love Love Love Love

is Patient

is Kind

Does Not Envy

Does Not Boast

Is Not Arrogant

Is Not Rude

DAY 7 Does Not Insist on it’s Own Way

Love Love

DAY 8 Is Not Irritable or Resentful

DAY 9 Rejoices with the Truth, Not with Wrongdoing

Love Love Love Love Love

DAY 10

Bears all Things

DAY 11

Believes all Things

DAY 12

Hopes all Things

DAY 13

Endures all Things

DAY 14

Never Ends

T

he 14 stories in this ebook teach the qualities of love found in 1 Corinthians 13, the famous love chapter of the Bible. The descriptors are short and easy to remember, describing the way Jesus loved while He was on earth.

This ebook can be used for personal or family devotions. Each story was chosen both to illustrate a particular quality of love and to keep the attention of school age children, teens and their parents.

One of our most successful times, among many failures, of leading our kids in devotions was as they were busy making their lunches or eating their breakfast before school. While they were occupied I would read out loud a short story from a book of devotions and then we would pray.

That is the format I used for this ebook of devotions.

Designed to begin on February first, your family can experience two weeks of daily devotions focused on God’s love leading up to Valentine’s Day. And who doesn’t need to get better at loving one another?

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After reading each story out loud, you can hang a beautifully designed paper heart printed with each of these 14 love characteristics on a ribbon or a length of twine for a Valentine decoration and to remind yourself and your family what true love is like.

Heart cards are available in our Etsy store HERE. None of us loves well because, frankly, it’s just easier to be selfish.

The only way to love well is to let Jesus love through us. If we come to Him, knowing we are broken and sinful, and ask Him to give us His love for the person who is hard for us to love, we will discover He puts His love in our hearts!

God knows we all need to learn and grow in love!

Our “How Do I Love Thee” ebook is therefore intended to help everyone learn to understand love and therefore learn to grow in love.

Parents, kids, families … all of us can and must mature in loving well.

Valentine’s Day has become synonymous with romantic love. While that kind of love is designed by God for married couples and it is good, God’s love as found in 1 Corinthians 13 speaks to every person everywhere at any age.

Moms and dads, engage your family with this adventure over the next fourteen days. Read these remarkable stories out loud together at dinner or in the mornings before school. Remember the wonder of God’s Word: there are always new riches to discover.

May you grow together in the experience of being loved unconditionally by God and learn to give the same kind of love generously to others.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Notes

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001

by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

1. 1 John 4:19 2. Lawrence Kimbrough, Words to Die For: Verses that Shaped the Lives of 30 People Who Changed the World, Holman Reference; Unabridged edition (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2002), 172–176.

3. John 8:28-29 4. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862).

5. Luke 6:35 6. James 4:1-2 7. Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery: Autobiography of Booker T. Washington, Unabridged Reprint (Lexington, KY: BLN Publishing, 2011), 62.

8. C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (New York: Harper Collins, 1980), 4.

9. Ibid., 74.

10. Matthew 6:4 11. John 5:41 12. C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair (New York: Harper Collins, 1981), 15.

13. Ibid., 19.

14. “My Stubborn, Rude, Mean, Loving Friend Named Cucu,” Chao Wanje, accessed August 14, 2013, http://www.familylife.com/articles/topics/faith/essentials/reachin-out/my-stubborn-rude-mean-loving-friend-named-cucu.

15. Matthew 22:37, 39 16. Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007), 230.

17. John 13:35 18. I Peter 4:8 19. Mary Mapes Dodge, Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates Complete and Unabridged (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1993), 118–119.

20. Matthew 23:37 21. Joseph M. Scriven, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” 1885.

22. DC Talk and the Voice of the Martyrs, Jesus Freaks (Tulsa: Albury Publishing, 1999), 52–54.

23. Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh, Captive in Iran: A Remarkable True Story of Hope and Triumph amid the Horror of Tehran's Brutal Evin Prison (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2013). http://www.barlowgenealogy.com/EdmundofMalden/DrCHBarlow1.html.

25. Corrie ten Boom. The Hiding Place (New York: Bantam, 1984).

26. P. Ellingworth, H. Hatton, and P. Ellingworth, A Handbook on Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1995), 297.

27. Hildebert of Lardin, Archbishop of Tours, Epistles, c. 1125.

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