|
: Living by love verses a life of obligated rules of obedience:
Part one
I ask the question: are the children of God able to know the difference between living with a feeling
of obligation in their relationship with God and with one another in their attempt to follow His leadings; or are they really
having a love affair with God through the Holy Ghost so that they can love themselves and pass that love on to one another?
God’s love for us is defined in 1 Cor. 13 which is the love chapter and states this.
“IF I [can] speak in the tongues of men and [even] of angels, but have not love (that reasoning, intentional,
spiritual devotion such as is inspired by God’s love for me and in us), I am only a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers (the gift of interpreting the divine will and purpose), and understand all the secret truths
and mysteries and possess all knowledge, and if I have [sufficient] faith so that I can remove mountains, but have not love
(God’s love in me) I am nothing (a useless nobody). Even if I dole out all that I have [to the poor in providing]
food, and if I surrender my body to be burned or in order that I may glory, but have not love (God’s love in me), I
gain nothing.
Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful
or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily. It is not conceited arrogant and inflated with pride; it is not rude (unmannerly)
and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not
self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it and it pays no attention
to a suffered wrong. It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail. Love
bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless
under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening]. Love
never fails never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end .
As for prophecy (the gift of interpreting the divine will and purpose), it will be fulfilled and pass away;
as for tongues, they will be destroyed and cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away [it will lose its value and be superseded
by truth]. For our knowledge is fragmentary (incomplete and imperfect), and our prophecy (our teaching) is fragmentary (incomplete
and imperfect).But when the complete and perfect (total) comes, the incomplete and imperfect will vanish away (become antiquated,
void, and superseded).
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; now that I have
become a man, I am done with childish ways and have put them aside. For now we are looking in a mirror that gives only a dim
(blurred) reflection [of reality as in a riddle or enigma], but then [when perfection comes] we shall see in reality and face
to face! Now I know in part (imperfectly), but then I shall know and understand fully and clearly, even in the same manner
as I have been fully and clearly known and understood [by God]. And so faith, hope, love abide [faith—conviction and
belief respecting man’s relation to God and divine things; hope—joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation;
love—true affection for God and man, growing out of God’s love for and in us], these three; but the greatest
of these is love. EAGERLY PURSUE and seek to acquire this love
by making it your aim, your great quest.”
We must first understand that; the love that is described here is the type of love God has for us.
If we have not settled into receiving this kind of love; all that remains for us is living in an obligated life style in our
attempt to be received and comforted by God who the bible says “Is a jealous lover.” Before love
was defined in these scriptures you notice all the good things that we can have and do and God calls all these things as useless
unless, we have love working in our lives.
Just last week in flicking channels I came across a well known Pastor on T.V. taking about how to be more
committed to Christ and he was giving his congregation an example of using his interpretation of Revelations
3:14-16 which states. “ And to the angel (messenger) of the assembly (church) in Laodicea write: These are the
words of the Amen, the trusty and faithful and true Witness, the Origin and Beginning and Author of God’s creation:
I know your [record of] works and what you are doing; you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! Therefore,
because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot; I will vomit you out of my mouth!”
He then proceeded and warned his congregation that God gets disgusted with us and we make Him sick to His
stomach over our disobedience to the point that it makes Him throw up. This is indeed extremely dangerous and sad to give
people this connotation of a loving God who surrendered His position in heaven and become a man to die on a cross while we
were yet sinners and forgive us when we didn’t deserve it. Let me say that I have heard this interpretations many, many
times coming from pulpits all over America.
Let’s now rightly interpret what God meant, by vomiting us out of His mouth. The word of God has to
be interpreted through an understanding of God’s great desire to continually restore and love us
to a place of wholeness at His side. This battle of wholeness cannot be communicated through God themes of Him losing His
patience or becoming fed up with His children. When we do this, we stop receiving God’s mercy and love because; we add
conditions on our part to earn His favor. This stops us from having a passion to love God and in turn love others as we love
ourselves.
These types of teachings make people become their worst enemy and they cannot love themselves.
Hebrews 1:3, tells us that, “Jesus is the sole expression of the glory of God and the light being,
the out raying of the Divine. The perfect imprint and the image of God’s nature upholding, maintaining and propelling
the universe by His mighty “WORDS” which is His power. When God speaks, things happen. Let
us go back and see when God first spoke. Genesis Chapter 1: Says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth, and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the water and God said “let there be light” and God saw that the light was good
and God divided the light from the darkness.” God spoke eight more times, and every time that He spoke, there
was a created miracle that took place. Out of God’s spirit, from His inner most being He spewed forth or vomited
forth an extension of Himself and created life on the planet. Everywhere God speaks forth and it is received, it brings life.
He is the life giver.
God doesn’t love us when He has a good day and not love us when He has a bad day. His whole nature
and force of life as He exists is His love, mercy and grace. God doesn‘t want to throw us away but to spew His wisdom
into our thought life and have His word deeply planted with in us. When we interpret God’s word and believe that, He
is fed up with us, it puts a wall up that stops God from vomiting or speaking His life force, which is His word of
mercy into our mind and heart which if received; will change us to His way of thinking and deliver us from all the works of
the enemy. Anything interpreted from scripture that is contrary to the real meaning of God’s word is called mingled
seed and when it enters our ears and plants a false interpretation of God’s word in our heart and mind; we fall
back from receiving God’s love and mercy.
This actually means that our flesh reasoning will pick up on this and begin to build a doctrinal belief contrary
to God’s thinking and rather then living by Jesus faith and righteousness we begin to lean towards own
understanding by working hard to measure up to some standard so we can feel accepted by Him. These type of teachings are running
ramped in the born again churches of today. Where in 1Cor. 13 which is the love chapter that we have just stated; makes a
person believe that God gets disgusted with His children and vomits them out of his mouth, It amazes me how some of the Pastors
who were called to nurture the body of Christ have been teaching this stuff for years and are so blinded to not be able to
rightly interpret the word of God and are teaching this nonsense to the people that they were called to mature in their Christian
walk with Lord.
God’s words that are spoken in love creates a hunger for life in our being and gives us light and direction
which gives us a great desire to adjust our thinking to God’s way of thinking and that kind of love draws us to God
and one another. The bible tells us that God is love not a person who works at loving. God’s love comes
from a central core of the spirit of forgiveness. We see that by Jesus sacrifice and He being nailed to a tree
and dying for our sin. Scripture tells us that “Greater love has no man then this that he lay down his
life for his friends”
He forgave us and continues to forgive us so that He can continue to love us. Where there is no forgiveness
between each other; God’s love can not heal us in those areas of our lives that we have been bruised and we stop Him
from making us whole. I can not believe the many people that I have met who, are mad at God and blaming Him for something
that happen in their lives and are holding ought against a family member or acquaintance and this has being going on
for years in their relationships. When unforgiveness takes root in our heart our kingdom walk with the Lord is impeded
and we open ourselves up to be tempted by the devil to start looking for love in all the wrong places. This search for love
in the wrong places is a common occurrence in the body of Christ today.
This misunderstanding of God’s love is why divorce is running ramped and why there are children walking
in disobedience and not submitting to parent’s authority. When we do not walk in the awareness and remembrance of Jesus
death and resurrection on the cross and stay mindful of His forgiving Spirit that should be alive and active in us, and when
do not practice going house to house breaking bread and having Christian fellowship on a regular basis; confessing our faults
one to another and praying for one another, we hinder God’s righteous Spirit of love from flowing in us and we grieve
the Holy Ghost and stop Him from renewing our mind with the refreshing of His presence.
Confessing our faults is not confessing sinful behavior in our lives although; we could have sinful behavior
in our lives but we must gather together having an attitude of sharing with each other those areas that God is working on
to heal and bring us into wholeness, so we can receive His love and fellowship which will cause us to live the abundant life
he intended. We must gather in Christ’s name because only then can we give the Holy Ghost the freedom to reveal to us
and give us answers to the devils devices that are trying to keep us stagnate or crippled in some area of our lives.
What happens; the Holy Ghost gives us through one another a word of wisdom that is prophetic in nature and
if received will set us free in those areas that the devil has us in bondage that is hindering us from walking
in God’s presence with freedom. Sinful behavior in a Christian’s life happens when they start looking for love
in all the wrong places because; they are not experiencing the love and holding power of God in their lives; which causes
them to become judgmental of their behavior. This is a person focusing on self not God’s holding power. Scripture tells
us that we are to have no other God’s before Him. When we focus on our behavior and faults what we end up with is idolatry
and we put ourselves in a position of being a god before CHRIST. A born again believer can spend their whole life between a rock and a hard
place with the concept that “God loves me when I do well and he dislikes me when I do badly.”
When a born again believer does not have their roots deep in being persuaded of God’s holding
power in their lives; it keeps them forever being double-minded in all of their ways and they can not receive anything
from the Lord. The only way God is going to be able to persuade us of His love intent is for us to understand that; we need
to do two things. One, we must allow the Holy Ghost who lives in us to erase these false interpretations and
demonic doctrines that the Body of Christ has had sown in their hearts and two, stop being ignorant of God’s word because
of the fact of not meditating on the word day and night which in turn, allows the Holy Ghost to write the true interpretation
of His word of love and grace on the fleshy tables of our heart.
Paul the Apostle tells the Corinthian church in 11 Cor. 2-5. “[you yourselves are our letter
of recommendation (our credentials), written in your hearts, to be known (perceived, recognized) and read by everybody. You
show and make obvious that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, not written with ink but with the Spirit of
the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such is the reliance and confidence that we
have through Christ toward and with reference to God. Not that we are fit (qualified and sufficient in ability) of ourselves
to form personal judgments or to claim or count anything as coming from us, but our power and ability and sufficiency
are from God.”
Paul was with a prophetic word through the Holy Ghost attempting to tell these people that; what he was
sharing with them was a living word of committed love that God had for them. The Ten Commandments were rules
written in stone that God gave to Moses to make the children of Israel recognize that they were living in an obligated life
style of trying to obey and keep God’s commandments in their own strength. When we really get in touch with how God’s
love works in our lives and we become totally dependent on it, our desire and awareness of God’s presence and comfort
makes us know that we are forever tied to Him and, we spend our whole life seeking His counsel and the safety
of his protection. There is no peace and rest when we live in an obligated life style of trying hard to please God by trying
to live up to the Ten Commandments.
God is already pleased and is always pleased with us the day we became His child and were adopted into
the family.
In 1 John 15-9 John states this. “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives
in him and him in God. And so; we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love and whoever lives
in love lives in God and God lives in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence
on the Day of Judgment, because in this world we are like him. 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. We love Him because; he first
loved us.” What we have is a mouthful of anointed word here. If we who are born again children of God can grasp
what John was saying and live by these words and relationship; the mercy and healing power of God will touch us in all areas
of our lives.
First of all to have this relationship with God we have to learn and have an understanding that nothing we
do can ever separate us from His loving holding power. We are always connected to His Spirit because we have God’s D.N.A.
in us. We must understand that our walk with God is and must be a life application relationship every second of our waking
or sleeping hours. Our connection to God is permanent the day we became born again however, the born again church doesn’t
really believe it. The majority believe that they can fall out of favor with God because they have failed in some area of
breaking His commandments. When we through our ignorance of not allowing God’s love to flow through our heart and mind;
there is a fear entity of failure we feel and that there is an upcoming punishment coming from Him. Fear
is a demonic spirit of influence that paralyzes us which causes us to worry and try to protect our selves from the
consequence of our actions. When this spirit locks us up like this; our spirit can not open up in allowing the
Holy Ghost to worship through us and we run for cover in self denial and can not stay naked in His sight. Most people will
smoother these feelings of fear with anger, rebellion and addicted behavior.
If we are going to live in a constant exposure to the love of God we must listen and obey John’s statement
when he said we must acknowledge Him in our heart and mind continually. The first time we acknowledged Him was
the day we became born again. We must now learn how to live with an open spirit of acknowledging Him in all areas of our life.
There are six definitions of this word acknowledge in the Hebrew concordance lets define this word.
1.) “Familiar friend.”
Jesus must be a familiar friend and be well known to us because of our intimate relationship with Him. We
must think very highly of Him and apply ourselves to walking with Him.
2.) “Advice.”
We must seek His counsel on all of our decision-making, and seek His opinion on our line of conduct
in our relationships with each other.
3.) “Diligent.”
We must not become lazy in our daily walk with Him and take Him for granted. It must not become an obligated chore of obedience but a joyful
and delightful experience with passion, excitement and total acceptance.
4.) “Discovery.”
There will be created in us a revelation of a person showing us a way of reasoning that supersedes our own
human thoughts. We in turn become totally fixed on a hunger for Him and become persuaded that nothing in life can fulfill
the love we need other then a relationship with Him.
5.) “Endure with.” As this process takes place, we must allow ourselves to become pliable,
teachable and submitted to changing our thoughts to GOD’S thoughts. As we experience His
grace, (unmerited favor), this is what will empower us and allow this attitude to
take place.
6.) “Awareness”
There will become a conscious knowing and growing encounter with a person you cannot see with your physical
eye. With His influence we become assertive and active, and it begins to direct our lives and longings of acceptance. There
becomes a deep hunger and a seeking after this relationship with Him morning, noon and night. Being a God seeker you will
be getting a witness in you for a relationship with Him and God will be as real to you as you allow Him to be. **
When a born again believer has a false understanding of God’s love; the Holy Ghost will not be able to rightly plant
the word of God in our heart and mind because; our concept of how the kingdom of God works in our lives can not be built by
Him line upon line precept upon precept. We who are God’s kids must be grounded and persuaded in our mind and heart
that we are totally secure in Christ and there is no way we can lose our salvation once we have had the born again experience.
Unless this foundation has been laid; the Holy Ghost will be building on a sinking sand mentality and the born again believer
stays double minded as I have stated earlier, all of their lives.Continued in part two.
|
