1 Corinthian 13
If we don't have love we are nothing. Love is the character of God; He can't separate His actions from who He is. And so the Church which is His fullness must also bear this character. Our faith is literally smoke and mirrors without the radical character of God's love. It is the foundation of all the "disciplines" and "missions" of the Church. If this key element is missing then they eventually will founder in mediocrity and irrelevence. I believe the Church has come to this point because we have chosen moralism over the heart of Christ's love.
Today is a call to keep ourselves in the love of Christ. My burden is for us to seek first Christ's love and let it pulse through our minds, hearts, souls, and personalities. We need to stop dictating to love our own philosophies and paradigms and begin to receive from it truth. There is simply no limits to the love of God and that is what Paul in Ephesians was wanting to discover. The height, the depth, the width, and the length of the surpassing knowledge of love.
What we need to do is not try to love others. That is relying on our own selves to produce something only God can give. Our call to action is to realize that He is love in and through us. The love of God exists in me because the God of love is in me. Therefore His presence is the answer I need to love all people with His love. It is not me trying to conjure up feelings of love for humanity, but rather me accepting the reality that the resource of the fullness of God's love is only a choice away. One choice to let the Holy Spirit move every day is all it takes to release the flood of God's love out.
Do you believe? The love of God's explusion depends upon my faith that He is love, that He loves me and all others, and that He can love through me. I am the conduit not the broker. If we don't believe that it is possible it will not be possible. And all that amazing love that warms us will be hidden from the world and the good name of Christ will be blasphemed because the Love that He that claims is His character is absent in this cruel time. Oh, let us believe and let God release through us the amazing tide of His incredible love. Today is the day.
1 John 4:10-19
ReplyDelete10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us.
Today is the Day...
The truth is we can't know Love without first knowing Jesus. That is what John is telling us here. But how did God show this Love to the world?, By His Son of course {John 3:16}. So why would He expect us to show Love in any other way.
As joel was saying we concern ourslves with what we believe is an outward expression of love, what we need to do. always our focus on ourselves and our works. God wants us to know His Son, To Know Jesus and TRUST that that relationship is our expression of Love. That His Love comes out of Christ finished work. A pouring out of His Love.
"We love because he first loved us."