Deuteronomy 7:7-16, "The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands. But those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him. Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today. If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the LORD your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land—your grain, new wine and oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you. You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young. The LORD will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you. You must destroy all the peoples the LORD your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity and do not serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you. "
I often joke that I need a YouTube player that I can use all the time. Because as I read this passage this morning I was thinking, Tina Turner, What's Love Got to Do With It? The answer is everything. Because of God's love for us, and oh how I love CS Lewis's definition, God did everything to get a hold of us. Jeremiah 29:11 tells us, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Proverbs 31:12, "She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life." That is love. That is what love is all about. Hoping for good, no matter what the current circumstances, looking towards the future with expectation. The circumstances may be rough, the forecast may be bleak, but the Lord, who still lives his covenant of Love is still loving us and creating ways for us to find him again and do him good and not harm all the days of our lives.
God created us for the sole purpose of having a family to love. Imagine being love and having nothing to pour it into. Now imagine being love, creating creation, pouring love into it and then seeing them not hogging it all but sharing it amongst themselves. If we are saved we all sit in the same position to God, what is possible to change is the personal relationship with have with him. The amount of meddling power we give him in our lives, the amount of time and energy we devote to him. You have heard me say it before that there is a major difference between being a Christian and being a disciple. Have you ever heard Joyce Meyer sing, "This is the way we go to church, go to church, go to church, this is the way we go to church every Sunday morning." That is what a Christian does, they come, sometimes, they come looking for something, get filled up and then walk out. A disciple, comes in and has prepared before the got there. They have been in the Word all week. When the pastor starts preaching, there is an agreement in their Spirit because the Lord has already been putting His finger on this area of their life. They come full, they come to give to others. That's what devotion and love can do to a person. We can tap into the source ourselves and quit standing in the Spiritual Welfare line looking for handouts.
Just because you had it once doesn't mean you have it now. I know people that have walked in the anointing, that have been true disciples and now are too weak, too frail to even stand in the welfare line. They want to sit an be beggars, looking for someone, anyone to walk by. They have great giftings of the Lord, they flowed so easily in them once but circumstances, have left them full of shame and guilt and now they don't feel "worthy" to do anything with them. They know that they want it, that they need it, but their lack of self worth keeps them sitting begging instead of walking in the authority that God gave them. Then they are so full of excuses in why they think it is okay to rob the body of Christ of their gifts, of the provision that God placed in them for the corporate church. God left the flock to find the one, why? Why would he leave 99 to find one? Because he loves them and wants them to be 100 instead of 99 and that one.
God's purpose was family. It was for us to look at him at the head of the table and know that he is our Daddy, but beyond that it is to look around the table, and know that we are all family. If we believe by faith, in the Lord Jesus, we are saved and we are family. I have Baptist sisters, Methodist brothers, does the denomination really matter? If we are redeemed, if we accept the cross as the only means to get to God, if we trust Jesus as the High Priest and Intercessor, then guess what, we are family. When we sit at the banquet table when Jesus comes to get his bride, we will all have a very special thing to place on the table. It's about sharing of ourselves, not hording, not getting spiritually constipated. Sometimes we have to retreat back into ourselves to find God again, sometimes the circumstances are there just for that reason. So that we will cry out to Jesus once more, so that he can come in and remove some more clutter from our hearts so that he has more room to work. Let us not get stuck there. Let's continue to learn, to love, to grow and move from glory to glory. Let's take our claws out of the door jams, quit fighting to cover our mess, and let use it for his glory. They whole reason it was placed there anyway.
1 Corinthians 13 (The Message)
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
Lord, thank you for your love. Thank you Father. I can't even begin to fathom your love for me. Even as I struggle, even as I retreat back into myself you are awesome to call my name, you find me in the night when I am at rest in you. Father, your heart for me exceeds my comprehension, your love for me keeps me on my knees. You picked me Father, you chose me, for such a time as this. You know every day Lord before it gets here and you give provision before I have even opened my eyes. You dance over me with joy even when I sit at the foot of my bed and cry. You are good to bring me to the river of snot, and then you are even more awesome to sit there and wrap your arms around me. I continue to see you in everything. I love you, I will continue to do you good and not harm all the days of my life. Bless you, all glory and honor to you...in Jesus Name. Amen.
I appreciate the post. It blessed em and my family. I LOVE you,
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