What Will Last & What Won't

I Corinthians 13: 8-13

Love never fails; 

Love is God, He has given us His Love, now we are to love others with His Love. 

but if there are gifts of prophesy, they will be done away; 

All prophesies will be fulfilled, everything that has been foretold will come to pass, and it will all eventually be history. 

if there are tongues, they will cease; 

The languages we speak to communicate with one another are for this Earth time. I don't know what language they speak in Heaven, or even if they speak at all. We may just think to one another! I don't know! But our languages will not be needed after we leave this World. 

if there is knowledge, it will be done away. 

All knowledge, all science, all empirical experiences in this World will be useless when this Earth is no more. Everything we know here depends on our environment where we live. When our Earth explodes and our Universe implodes, to be re-done as a New Heaven and a New Earth, it will be completely different from the World we know now. All true science is a search for how God designed this creation to work. When everything becomes New, then all this Earthly knowledge will be obsolete.  

For we know in part 

Our body of science continually grows, because we still don't know it all, and we never will. Our eternal Creator has,

Set eternity in their heart, so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end (Ecclesiastes 3:11). 

So no matter how much we learn, we still will only know part of all God has done already. Just in this World.

and we prophesy in part; 

Everything God has had His prophets write about are all the things we need to look for to happen, but He has not given every detail of every event that will come to pass. We cannot even take in everything He has told us, and yet there is so much more that we will just have to experience when it happens.  

but when the perfect comes the partial will be done away. 

When all God has planned is complete, and finished, and done; and we have entered into the Eternity of the never-ending expansion of the Kingdom of God; then we won't need all this temporal knowledge any more, we'll be learning whole New Universes, that we will take part in helping King Jesus to rule.  

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 

Our childhoods are spent growing up. We progress from childish language, childish ways of thinking, and childish processes of reasoning, when we mature into more adult ways. Or we should do so. When we grow into more sophisticated ways of seeing our world and responding to it, then we don't need the simplistic, childish ways any more.  

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; 

It's like we're seeing things as a distorted reflection now; but when we "graduate" this "school" of life, and see Jesus face-to-face, then we will be able to see clearly.  

now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 

Just as God knows each one of us intimately, down to the molecule, and Loves us anyway; so He will show us His full reality of all that we are and have done. 

But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.  

So now our faith sustains us, until we will be able to see. 

Our hope is our longing to have what God has promised, until we are ready to receive it all. 

But our love for God and for one another will never fade, but only grow wider and deeper and stronger and more passionate throughout all Eternity! 

O my Father, You are so great! You are so good! You are so much more than I can ever imagine! And I can imagine a lot! 

You have told us everything we need to know, in order to live together in this World, to relate to one another in positive and productive ways. You have told us who we are to You, and given us Your Love, so now we can love one another with Your Love! 

Father, You have told us what to look for and expect to happen in coming days, so that we will be prepared to face and conquer what we will encounter, and You have told us the "last chapter" in our story, to give us the encouragement to know that we win! 

And every eye will see, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus is our Lord God Almighty and Sovereign King, to the glory of Almighty God the Father!

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!