Love

The Love of God:  Oswald Chambers

To sing is a precious sign of an unburdened heart.  How do we keep an unburdened heart in this world?  We live a life-style of sharing and confessing our hearts to the Lord.  We abide in Him moment by moment.  We cast off our cares, as they come, to our Lord whose peace surpasses all of our mind’s understanding.

Our words and emotions come and go.  Their influence can be wonderful for a time.  When the memory of these times begins to fade then to what or whom are we to cling?  We must remember:

  • Love is not just an attribute of God, it is God.
  • Love is made up of God’s justice, judgment, purity and holiness.
  • Our attempts to define love or even God as love, outside of what His word says, and in our own limited ideas, is simply foolishness.

How is God’s love seen in creation?

  • His ways are like the wind. John 3:8 - The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit."
  • We see Him in the rising and setting of the sun.
  • We see Him in the singing of the birds and in the love of human hearts.

God created us out of His overflowing love and goodness and thought us up in the tenderness, expression and manifestation of His heart.

Holiness:  God walked with man, talked with him even showed the path to walk so that he may enjoy the happiness that God meant for him to have.  Man is the offspring of God’s love and God rejoices in the fullness of His nature in us as His children.

Justice:  God showed us that in order to enter into His rest and to be filled with His joy we would need to live in compliance with His ways in Christ.  When we stop doing this, it is loss of life with God and even death.

Grace:  Sin did not stop God from graciously walking with us and revealing Himself to us.  His grace has continued in this way even though we’ve been so blinded by sin and have not known Him due to our love of self and the world.

Holy Spirit:  The purposes of God’s moral government are coming and being revealed.  He reigns supreme over sin, war, death and hell.  The Holy Spirit, by faith, keeps us in God’s love.  In relationship with one another, we’ll not be fixed upon each other’s faults but shall see the highest possibilities and shall love one another and rejoice for what God will yet make of us.  As a redeemed people, our failures can be made into successes.

God is Love – Like the pieces of a puzzle, it is to be solved and worked out slowly, with tears, prayer, joy, vision and faith.

Staying in the Love of God

Christianity is not about times and seasons (feelings and emotions).  It is about God and faith in His ways, character and promises.  We are to drink deeply and fully of His love.  When we do this, we are satisfied.  When we try to drink deeply from the loves of the earth (spouse, child, friends, etc…) to be fully satisfied without drinking fully of Him we will be empty and disappointed.

How is the love of God revealed to us?  Not by intellectual discernment but by spiritual revelation.  Love by the intellect is up and down based upon what we feel.  Love by the Spirit is based upon the finished work of Christ Jesus, not upon our own work and experience.

Building up our most holy faith – “Let us get down to the cross, to the broken heart of our God, to the atonement for our sins.”

  • Cut off the interests and companionships that weigh us down.
  • Look to Jesus and build ourselves up in faith.

Jude 1, 17-21 - But you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ:  how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts.  These are sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit.  But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

It is work to keep ourselves in health and in knowledge of various things in life.  To keep ourselves in God’s love is also work.  It’s a work that is distinct and special and why we need the help of the Holy Spirit.

By faith, we will abide and keep ourselves in the love of God.  Here is where we live in wisdom, have security and happiness.

God – Loves – Me.  Say it over and over and over again.  Build your faith upon the truth and not upon how we feel.

A working definition of love:  Love is the sovereign preference of my person for another person, embracing everyone and everything in that preference.  If God’s nature is holy, His love must be a holy love, seeking to embrace everyone and everything until we all become holy.

The Foundation of Things

The Bible deals with foundational truths that are beyond our common and natural senses.  The Bible deals with the world of revelation – facts which we only get through our faith in God.

2 Corinthians 5:19 - that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

This is not our ordinary way of looking at things but is beyond our common sense.  We have to be knocked out of our natural way of thinking.

We are scared when our social order is broken.  Wars and devastating things startle us, but our hearts toward God is what upsets Him.

God is allowing us time so that we can see that life cannot be done any other way than in relationship to Him through Jesus Christ.  This is how His love is shown and why it takes so long.  Even Jesus cautioned followers to make sure they knew what it meant to follow Him, to truly think it through.

 Declarations of Love

  • Love is the branch by which the leaves of mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering and forgiveness are held together and given life and expression. – Col 3:14
  • Love is above prophecy, knowledge, mysteries and faith. Without love, I am nothing. 1 Cor 13:2
  • Patience, kindness, humility and a spirit of understanding & gentleness flow through me as a vessel of Your love. – 1 Cor 13:4,5
  • Loving You Oh’ Lord energizes and motivates me to live in faith and fills me with hope. – 1 Cor 13:13
  • Be on watch, stand with boldness, do all with love. – 1 Cor 16:14
  • My life has deep roots nourished in the soil of Your love flowing into and through my life –- it is the solid foundation of my faith – Loving others is Your outward expression through my life. – Eph 3:17
  • I believe that if I keep Your commandments, I will abide in Your love. Your love moves me to love others.  I want to be Your friend and so I shall do what You command. – John 15
  • I love You Oh Lord with ALL my heart, soul, mind and strength – therefore, I can’t help but to love my neighbor as myself. – Mark 12:30
  • By Your love I shall love my enemies. – Matt 5:44
  • Pray with soberness and a watchful eye. Love nourishes, protects and restores while envy and hatred destroys. – 1 Peter 4:8

*Beware the seeds of frustration will grow and resentment will take root.

  • You love righteousness and justice, the earth is full of Your goodness. – Psalms 33:5
  • I have hope that will never disappoint because of Your love that abundantly floods into my heart by the Holy Spirit. – Rom 5:5
  • At my worst, a vessel of unrighteousness – a sinner, Your love poured out through the death of Christ so that I may be saved and brought into the dominion of light, into the kingdom of God. – Rom 5:8
  • Nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. – Rom 8:35
  • Lord, increase my capacity that I may abound in love toward others and that my heart will be blameless and holy before You! – 1 Thess 3:12
  • Israel – You were in their midst, You saved them, You rejoiced over them with gladness and singing, You brought them rest with Your love. You have done this for me and so much more through Christ Jesus my Lord. – Zeph 3:17