What’s Love Got To Do With It? Everything. The basis of everything that GOD says and does is love. The origin of our Christian faith, the Lord Christ Jesus Himself, comes from a place of love, the love of GOD for us—‘for GOD so greatly loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life’ [John 3:16]. Everything with GOD begins in love and ends in love; And this rings true not only for GOD, but for those born of GOD (born of the Holy Spirit) too. The anchor reading for today is in the letter penned by Apostle Paul in the book of Ephesians 3:17-19, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of GOD.”
If any one of us wants to understand GOD and is seeking GOD, we must first start by being a living embodiment of love towards GOD and towards each other, the exact same unending love that GOD showed to us. There should be nothing more desirable for a child of GOD than to walk in love; And being filled with the fullness of GOD is the ultimate goal for a child of GOD. Love is the basis and the key for being filled with the fullness of GOD. Being filled to capacity with the fullness of GOD is what we seek, what we aspire to, what we chase when we are born-again and are on fire with the love for GOD. This is why John the Baptist said, ‘that He may increase and I decrease’. Here John shows that he understands what the will of GOD is and that he is submitted to the will of GOD. And like John, we too must strive to obey and submit to the will of GOD by being emptied of our flesh self and be filled with the fullness of the Holy Spirit, with GOD’s fullness.
It is the express will of GOD for every born-again person to be filled until we overflow with the fullness of GOD the Father, GOD the Son and GOD the Holy Spirit. The love of GOD was personified in Jesus and poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit [Romans 5:5]. This is why we need to be emptied of ourselves so that we may be filled, and not to be with our own emotions, feeling, desires, thoughts or wants. Love is the key and the basis for knowing GOD, and everyone who loves, is born of GOD and knows GOD [1 John 4:7-8]. If we do not love one another, we deceive ourselves when we think we know GOD and when we claim to know GOD. We cannot know GOD outside of the context of love, it is simply not possible to know GOD if we do not love GOD. And trying to circumvent the way which the Lord has set out, which is the way of love, can surely only spell disaster. How can we seek GOD if we do not love HIM? Because it is the love of GOD, the love for GOD, that spurs us on to seek HIM, to want to know HIM.
To know love is to know GOD and to love others. Everyone who loves is, firstly, born of GOD and, secondly, knows GOD. Our knowledge of the love of GOD is demonstrated in how we love others. So since ‘everyone who loves is born of GOD and knows GOD’; And everyone who is born of GOD has the spirit of GOD, and ‘he who does not have the spirit of GOD, is not HIS’. A person who has the spirit of GOD is one who has received the love of GOD when they got born-again, that love was shared abroad in their hearts by the Holy Spirit. It is the spirit of GOD (the Holy Spirit) that: (i) fills me with the love of GOD; (ii) causes me to experience the love of GOD; and (iii) causes me to walk in love towards the brethren / causes me to love others. What this means is that it is absolutely impossible for a true believer not to love because a believer carries the Holy Spirit within them who causes the believer to love. So if you say you are born-again but you are not walking in love then you are walking in deception, you are back-slidden.
The love of GOD is not something organic to man, it is not something that man is naturally physically born with. The love of GOD is something poured into us in the new birth, in the new nature. And when we are in the new nature, as those born-again of the Holy Spirit, it is love that— (i) gives us access to GOD [John 14:21, 23]; and (ii) is the basis for our continual relationship, fellowship, communion with GOD the Father, GOD the Son, GOD the Holy Spirit. Satan has blinded Christians to this one thing – love – that turns the heart of GOD towards us. Love is at the center of it all. And this love that we speak of is not a feeling or an emotion, it is a pure spirit that is carried about and poured into us by the Holy Spirit Himself [Romans 5:5]. Without love, we have no relationship with GOD. Every divine thing rests on love. And if we persistently do not walk in the love of GOD and do not walk in love towards one another, we will eventually break fellowship with GOD and break fellowship with one another.
Take a look at 1 John 2:15-16 NKJV/MSG, do you realise that the thing in question here is the love, what or whom we choose to shower with our love? We are warned not to love the ways of the world of doing things, instead we must love and draw ourselves closer to the ways of GOD of doing things. The things that go on in the world have nothing to do with GOD, coveting them will only take us further and further away GOD; And the love for the things of the world isolates you and me from GOD. We often fail to follow the text of 1 John 2:15 because we love, covet and indeed follow the things that go on in the world when—(i) we want our own way; (ii) we want everything for ourselves, loving and prioritising ourselves instead of the brethren; and (iii) we want to appear important (we want fame, status, recognition, position, power and we are living in the days of social media popularity where everyone wants to portray a particular image to the world no matter how false it is).
Believers, the devil skillfully keeps us trapped in the ‘want-want-want’ cycle and gets us to forget the most important thing and what really matters in life. The most important thing in the world is GOD. The only thing that really matters in the world is GOD and what GOD wants of us. So in truth, prayer is two-fold, real prayer set from a heart filled with the love of GOD is two-fold: ‘LORD I want you and what you want me to do for you’. This is the beginning and the end. This is complete prayer. This is what everything should revolve around. Yet our prayers speak of everything else but the seeking of the love of GOD and the reverence for the love for GOD. The devil has succeeded in distracting us and keeping us totally focused on how unhappy, dissatisfied and discontent we are. The devil gets us and keeps us in this place of anguish because we are not rooted and grounded in the love for GOD (and the love of GOD). Our love priority is tilted towards the things of the world instead of being on a good footing with the things of GOD.
The devil will go all out to set our attention and our affections on the things of the world because when our affections are on the things of the world, our attention is taken away from GOD. By enticing us with the things of the world, the devil takes us away from our blessing, he takes us away from our breakthrough, and it then becomes an unending vicious cycle and the breakthrough never comes. Breakthroughs come when we are focused on GOD and not on the things that we are passing through. Because it is when we are focused on GOD that we become rooted and grounded in love, that we are able to hear HIM, that we are able to obey HIM, that we are able to go it by faith. Satan cannot deceive us if we are rooted and grounded in the love of GOD. Satan cannot destroy us when we walk in the fullness of the love of GOD. True protection for a believer is in the fullness of the love of GOD, in walking in the fullness of the love of GOD.
The foundation for everything that GOD says and does is love. Love is the bond that keeps everything together. Without love, everything falls apart. Love is the surest way to get submerged into the fullness of the Spirit. For those who seek and desire the gifts of the Spirit, love is a foolproof way for them to walk in the fullness of the Spirit. Worry not about spiritual powers and spiritual gifts, but mind yourself only with walking in love, just walk in love, and the Holy Spirit will do the rest; Unselfish love is the best grace any one of us can use to maintain our fellowship with GOD and with one another [I Corinthians 12:30-31 NKJV/AMP]. GOD does not anoint, gift or bless you for your sake. GOD anoints, gifts and blesses you for others. Whatever anointing, talent and gift that GOD has blessed you with is not given for you to selfishly enrich yourselves. GOD blesses us with these anointings and gifts for us to minister freely to others, for us to show Unselfish Love. Because Love Has Everything To Do With It.
The origin of our Christian faith, the Lord Christ Jesus Himself, comes from a place of love, the love of GOD for us—‘for GOD so greatly loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son
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