Revelation 1:7-8
“Look! He is coming with the clouds, in glory. He will capture every eye, Even of those who pierced Him through. All the nations of the earth will be pierced with grief when He appears. Yes, may all this be done according to His plan . Amen...I am the Alpha and the Omega, [the very beginning and the very end,] the One who is, the One who was, and the One who is coming: the All Powerful.” VOICE
The grace of God has come to us in greater ways to help us accomplish what we could not do in our human weakness. This great grace is necessary for the awakening that many are experiencing to move them out of the grip of darkness and into God’s marvelous and glorious light that’s exposing their sinful ways to them. This call to repentance is driving many to go after the light of Jesus and seek ways to forsake their former ways.
However, God’s warning us to not look to them as if we are clean and want no part of their filth. These people have found themselves entangled with sin in many forms and need us who call ourselves God’s children to extend a helping hand that demonstrates His love, His compassion, and His forgiveness for their sins. The fact is, that, if we violated one word of the law, we are guilty of breaking all of them. So, rather than judging others for where they have been, God is calling us to obey the command to love Him and them as we love ourselves.
Deuteronomy 6:4-7
“Israel, listen! Our God is the Lord! Only the Lord ! Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength. These words that I am commanding you today must always be on your minds. Recite them to your children. Talk about them when you are sitting around your house and when you are out and about, when you are lying down and when you are getting up.” CEB
Mark 13:30-31
“and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, You will love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.’” CEB
The Lord through His Word has given us, His children, this very clear and explicit command. And it’s so simple, there should be no confusion or doubt about it. As mentioned, the command is to love Him with all our heart, all our being, and all our strength. He even charges us to pass the knowledge of this command on to the next generations by speaking about it and demonstrating to them what loving our God looks like.
The Word also says that this first commandment is not a suggestion but a must-do. But how do we live this out and demonstrate it to others? The answer to that is by not compromising our standards as people who have learned through experience to trust Him to be a God who loves us and believe that He’s righteous, just, powerful, faithful, and able to take care of us, answer our prayers, and save us from the wiles of the enemy.
One thing that ensures our protection and keeps us in the shadow of His wings is our obedience to His Word, and to the promptings, He gives us by His Spirit as He stirs our heart in the direction He wants it to go in our daily lives like He directs the course of the waters (Proverbs 21:1). For this, 1 John 5:3 tells us what it means to love God and that loving Him is not hard to do. All it takes is a determination to live to do His will and please Him no matter what others may say.
“You see, to love God means that we keep His commands, and His commands don’t weigh us down.” VOICE
2 John 1:5-6
“So now, dear lady, I am asking you to live by the command that we love one another. I’m not writing to you some new commandment; it’s one we received in the beginning from our Lord. Love is defined by our obedience to His commands. This is the same command you have known about from the very beginning; you must live by it.” VOICE
As we have seen, loving God means we obey Him, without this, we could not fulfill the second command to love others as we love ourselves. Indeed, this command is charging us to look outside of ourselves and demonstrate the love, mercy, and loving-kindness of our God to those who waver in their faith, and also to not ignore those who have soiled their garments of righteousness with the filth of the earth. We’re called to pull them up and out of the pit, but being careful to not fall in the same traps they fell.
God is showing us in His Word ways we’re to partner with Him to disarm, dismantle, and overthrow the enemy’s tactics against us and those around us who, in their weakness, fell short of His will for them and may feel they can’t get back up on their own. To do this, we cannot behave as we have never sinned. Instead, God’s calling us to roll up our sleeves and stoop down to reach them so they can see our light shining for them to bring them out of the pit of darkness and release His presence by becoming His hands, His feet, and His mouth, and when necessary, His pockets too.
Jude 1:22-23
“Keep being kind to those who waver in this faith. Pursue those who are singed by the flames of God’s wrath, and bring them safely to Him. Show mercy to others with fear, despising every garment soiled by the weakness of human flesh.” VOICE
Galatians 6:1-3
“Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important.” NLT
Luke 6:27-31,
“‘But I say to you who hear [Me and pay attention to My words]: Love [that is, unselfishly seek the best or higher good for] your enemies, [make it a practice to] do good to those who hate you, bless and show kindness to those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other one also [simply ignore insignificant insults or losses and do not bother to retaliate—maintain your dignity]. Whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. Give to everyone who asks of you. Whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. Treat others the same way you want them to treat you.” AMP
Walking in the love of God is important for His Church to rise to higher a dimension where we can have a better view, guided by His eye, of the situations we encounter and see others in the same way He sees them. The command of God to love Him and others as we love ourselves also demands that we dig deeper and examine ourselves with humbleness and judge ourselves so we do not walk blindly and legalistic, pointing at the speck in the eyes of others when we have a whole tree, branches, roots and all, covering ours (Matthew 7:3-5).
For as Ephesians 6:12 reminds us, our fight is not against people, but against the rulers, authorities, and powers of this dark world. It is against the powers of evil that work from the spirit realm in heavenly places and seek to rule in the earth by controlling the minds and the hearts of people who give in to their lies and fear. Therefore, we must be suited up with the armor of the truth of the Word of God and our obedience to Him to demonstrate we’re His and also that there’s a better way to live, and only Jesus is the answer out of despair.
The Book of 1 John chapter four also defines for us the meaning of true love which comes from God. It tells us that for us to be recognized as God’s children and that we know Him, we need to be able to show His love to others. He loved us first by sending us His Son to sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins. This example should suffice for us to express His love for others no matter how far they may have gone in the way of darkness just like He did.
1 John 4:7-12
“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.” NLT
When the gang and mafia members, homosexuals, Freemasons, murderers, sorcerers, the young down and out, Satanists, prostitutes, pimps, or even women that didn’t sell their bodies but only own skimpy clothes, white collar crooks, drug lords, and even our unlovable family members cross our path, or when they make their way through the doors of the Church buildings, how are we going to respond? Are we going to receive them with acceptance and an embrace, or are they going to get our judgmental walls of rejection?
The Lord is touching hard hearts that many thought would never come to know Christ and get saved. So let’s ask the Lord to prepare our hearts to ride this wave of the grace of God by loving the unlovable with an eagerness to put our arms around them and say, “welcome to the family” because when sin abounds, grace abounds even more through Christ Jesus and for the glory of God alone.
Romans 5:20-21
“All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.” MSG
To God alone be all the glory. *
Images by Google Images
No comments:
Post a Comment