Love That Drives Out Lawlessness

Matthew 24:1-13 NKJV

¹² And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. ¹³ But he who endures to the end shall be saved.

There is a correlation between lawlessness and lack of awareness of who we are in Christ. For lawlessness, I am not referring to the lost in the world. I am bringing this message to the house of God: the Body of Christ. We would want to hear a message saying that we are good and Jesus finds us all in right standing with Him, but all the while the love He demonstrated to us by dying and being hung on the Cross for our sins is not evident among many of His people. Many agendas seem to be one sided or at the very least leaning towards those that we group with and can be called “like us.” Other times there is one individual in mind (self), instead of looking out for those around us that are not like us or that we choose to not relate to in a deeper way because they may be too “out there” for us.

The Lord showed me that one reason that we are not known to the world for the love that we should demonstrate to one another, let alone the lost outside of the four walls of the Church, is because we have a mistaken identity. We also do not know how to access and walk in the grace He already provided for us. We think that we can love God, love ourselves,  and love others in our own effort and the grace He provided for us that is supposed to empower us to do His will is many times used as an excuse to do the opposite and think that we can get away with misusing it and misrepresenting Him.

You see, God did for us what we could not do for ourselves. He saw that we could not fulfill our vows made by many in the Old Testament and even a lot of people today, to love and obey Him by our own merit and effort. So, He came to give us that empowerment by choosing to love us first and lavishing His love and unmerited favor on us, so that we, having this understanding, and receiving what He did for us, could do His will knowing that it is by His grace and mercy that we can receive His love for us to love Him and love our neighbors as we love ourselves with a deep love that is unconditional and turns the other cheek when what is more important is to help one another heal, reach their maturity and everything God has purposed and plan for their lives.

3 John 2 says, ^2 “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.” NKJV.

The other part of the correlation between lawlessness and lack of awareness of our identity in Christ has to do with the wounds and oppression of the enemy that have kept us from prospering in all the sense of the word. This includes walking in health and healing emotionally, relationally, financially, and in all other areas the enemy has hindered us. This means that not knowing or understanding we are loved and favored by God has driven many to seek love and grace in a counterfeit way.

In other words, the world cannot offer what God designed us to only receive from Him. That is why there are dissatisfaction and fruitless endeavors that only leave God`s people wanting more and looking for fulfillment in the wrong places, in the wrong ways, at the wrong time, and with the wrong people. The prospering of our souls starts with us receiving and understanding that God loves us and has lavished His unmerited favor on us and that receiving this helps us do His will effortlessly because we recognize this empowerment comes from Him and not ourselves.

My prayer is that we are able to seek God as the One who will continue to demonstrate His love for

us, and will help us rise up from every rock we were hewn down from. This also takes being able to show our nakedness to Him without fear of condemnation or punishment. If He sees we have missed the mark somewhere, He is willing and able to shine the light on it and show us the way out so we can get back to the right path that will lead us to our destiny in Him.

That is also the reason why we see the reaction of the father to the return of his prodigal son in Luke 15:11-35. The Scripture says the father ran when he saw his son coming back to the house and to the family and good life he left behind because he tried to have those things outside of the environment of love and grace (unmerited favor). Seeing that he was not successful at obtaining the same kind of love and grace in the world, he returned to the place and the love that was his all along and without effort. All he had to do was receive it. To Him alone be all the glory ▪.