Good Morning from England! Today on a happier note, take a look at the ultimate love, the kind of love we love to give, and the kind we live to give. BE BLESSED! Yours, PK x CONFESSIONS OF A SAINT~ An Act of Love “Follow after charity (Agape love)…” 1 Corinthians 14:1a. “He that loves not knows not God for God is love (Agape)…God is love…” 1 John 5:8 & 16. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love one to another.” I come to you today once more holding forth the Word of Life. My prayer is the song of my heart, from the very depths of my being, that you will hear the message, and you will grasp hold of what I am led to share. And not only that, but that you will grab it with both hands and pull it close, not to keep, but to share with others. I come to you, in demonstration of love, to share God’s love with you in the first of several short teachings on love. Each one will include a Confession on love based upon the Word of God. I am asking that you read the teaching, write down the included scriptures in the front of your Bible, or someplace where they will always be at hand, and copy down each of the love Confessions to say out loud every morning. But when you speak them, speak them from your heart, from your spirit, not your head. And ah, yes, speak this love out loud as one great Man liked to say, "Say it so that God can hear you, say it so the angels can hear you, say it so the devil can hear you, and say it so that you can hear yourself!" Start off your morning with a Confession of love, along with at least one scripture about love. Prop that love Confession card up right beside that cup of coffee! Make it your goal today to put on love, for when you put on love, you put on Christ, then you truly will go with God each and every day. Instead of greeting the world with “Make my day,” make love your goal, and make someone else’s day. Each teaching on love will include many scriptures several scriptures on love. It is not my intention to explain each one. They are for you to feed on. They are yours to study, to confess, to meditate upon, especially when the enemy is tempting you to show coldness, or anger, or to react to a person in an unlovely way. I don’t know about you, but he does this to me frequently. How do I fight him? I fight with the one weapon we are given—the Word of God, the same weapon Jesus used. Jesus won every battle satan threw at him, not only in the desert after being weakened by a 40 day fast, but throughout His life here on earth. The enemy threw everything he had at Jesus—hate, persecution, ridicule, fear, threats, rejection, ego. If he could find some way to cause Jesus anguish, you can bet he did. On top of this, Jesus had all of our sorrows, our pains, our sufferings, our sicknesses, our diseases (This is one big reason He is called the man of sorrows), not only while He was hanging on the cross in the last hours of His death, but from early on in His ministry (Look closely at Isaiah 53, then turn over to the fulfillment of this prophetic prophecy, Mt 8:16-17.) But Jesus won, and so can we. God has provided the winning weapon, the same weapon Jesus used. And notice this: no matter what the situation, Jesus spoke the Word. He did not speak words of the enemy—doubt, fear, or unbelief. He said what God said, and nothing else besides. And His actions were ruled by love. When we let love rule us—and letting love is letting God!—we will choose, as Jesus did, to show warmth in the face of coldness, softness in the face of anger, loveliness in the face of unloveliness. We’ll let God shine like a beacon from within us. Let the Word supply of your heart remain sharp by continual sharpening with the Word. We’ve all played “stone, scissors, water” at least once, haven’t we? Well, Jesus, The Word is all three: He’s the stone the builders rejected, and He’s the water of life for our thirsty souls(spirits). “Wait!”, you ask, “What about the scissors? How is Jesus the scissors?” He’s not a simple pair of scissors. He’s even sharper. He’s the sharpest most cutting and slicing blade of all. His Word is a two-edged sword. (Read about it in Hebrews 4:12)His Word is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. And we know this: the Word of God cannot be dulled by anything. It remains sharp no matter what. It’s us. We are the ones in need of sharpening. For we must remain sharp in our supply of His words on the love He has given us to share. And do so at all times. We do this by continual feeding. Have you heard the old song, “Neverending Love”? It came to mind as I began to write today, after realising that the 5th chapter of 1 John is the most amazing chapter on love in all of the letters to the Church. In it we can see why we need to make this love our greatest aim in life. We are not shown this once but two times in the span of eight verses. First, we see in verse eight, “…for God is love.” Then this major truth is echoed once more in verse sixteen, “God is love…” “…for God is love…God is love…” His love is what I will praise Him for more than anything else, here on earth and throughout eternity, because it is only because He IS love, and He loves us so much, that He has poured out such a huge abundance of grace (favour we don’t deserve, but still receive). His love was first. God loved us first. And this astounding love toward us preceded the outpouring of His grace. What did God do with His love? He took action. He loved so much that He GAVE (John 3:16). If He hadn’t loved us, we would all be getting what we deserve, which is certain death, for all of eternity. But because He loved us so much, His grace was triggered, and He gave His unique Son in exchange for our lives. He loved us first. His love for us was action; our love for Him, reaction. We reacted to His act of love. The greatest act of love ever shown, for when we were yet enemies, Christ died for us. Because He loved us first, we love Him. Now, in response to His amazing love, we are to love others just as much as we would normally love Self, which we are now to deny daily. When we loved Self, how did we treat it? We protected it. We put its needs first. We put its rights first. We catered to Self’s every whim, lust, and desire. In other words, we were self-absorbed, self-centered. It was “What about me? All about me--me, me, me!” Now that God is living in us, we take the love we had for Self, now dead (Romans 6), and we turn this love outward. As we express His love, we become increasingly selfless, serving others instead of serving Self. 1 Corinthians 14:1 makes the importance of love very clear. What does it tell us to do? “Follow after charity (Agape love)…” 1 Corinthians 14:1a. This means to me that we can never get enough, and we can never get too much. Hey! No overdose danger here! We cannot overdose on love. How about that? Now, how to get more of this gorgeous love. In His Word, God shows us how. 1 Corinthians 14:1 gives us His instruction. Follow after. Follow after this love, the love we already have within us in a measure, Follow after for more of it. To follow after is the same as pursue; to run after in order to attain something of great importance; to chase; to harness. When I think of “harness”, I think of harnessing great power. I can picture solar panels on the roof harnessing energy. In the same way we are to harness the energy or power of love. We don’t do this by prayer. We can pray, “Please Lord, give me more love for my neighbour”. We may as well save our breath, as our prayer will remain on the unanswered list. This prayer does not remain unanswered because God does not want us to love our neighbour. He has said for us to love our neighbour as our Self, so we know that it is His will that we do. He doesn’t answer simply because He already has. He placed inside us a measure of love when we were born again. We are given a measure of love. But, what do we do in order to increase it? We are to pursue it, to follow after. Like a seed, it grows when it is watered and renewed by way of study, confession and meditation upon love scriptures. Then we take this love, and release it. W release love, and all other spiritual things, into the air by confession—we say the same thing God says. We release it to work in others’ lives by action. Agape love is not a catch-me-if-you-can kind of love. And it is worlds beyond natural, worldly love. Worldly love speaks of “falling” in love. People fall in love and they fall out of love. To fall means to descend. I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to descend anywhere any more. I’m through with descending. We cannot and do not fall into Agape love. Agape love is constant and certain. It hopes all things. It believes all things. It endures all things. Agape never fails. God’s love will never fail us. It will never fail others when we use it to love them. God’s Word tells me to look up, so I’m looking up, and the more I look up, the more I love. Whenever I catch myself looking down at the cares of this world, even for a split second, I immerse myself back into God’s Word. This is how we look up, by way of the Word. The Word is our lifeline, our food, our “how-to” manual, the cleanser of our sin, the builder of our faith, and our mighty weapon. The Word is this and much more. By worldly love, men love the ones who love them. Agape love is different. It’s not a feeling. It’s not something tangible we can see. But as we release it, the results of this love will be seen. By Agape, we love others in the same way God loves. We achieve what is not achievable with natural, earthly love. By Agape, We love our enemies, all those ones who hate us. For God loves them too. He loved us when we hated Him. He showed us this love by giving His life in exchange for ours, in exchange for the lives of all those lost ones around us. We allow God to love them through us, just as someone else allowed God to reveal Himself to us through the love He place in them. Jesus came to seek and save the ones that are lost. The Bible tells us, “seek and you shall find”. Jesus confirms the reward of seeking on down in this same passage, “he that seeks, finds…” There’s no “if” here, and there’s no “maybe.” If we seek anything from God, or search intently for it, we will get it. This is the same when we seek after Agape love. We will find it. The only way God will use the word “if” in a promise will be to say, “IF you seek Me, you will find Me, when you seek after Me with all your heart.” In this same way, He would guarantee: IF you seek after Agape love, you will find it. Agape love is an action word. Like our gift of salvation, it is not just a thing of beauty, a butterfly we pursue and capture, placing it in a glass jar, so we can watch it slowly die. And again, in contrast, natural love is out of control because it’s based on emotions. It is a reaction to feelings, or to the behavior or mood(based again on feelings) of the other person. Agape is a love we control by decision. We agape by choice. We love with Agape love, from the heart, because we choose to. We remain in the driver’s seat at all times when we do anything from the heart (or spirit). Agape is not a love we selfishly capture for ourselves as a prize for our own glory. Agape is a love to be given away. It is ours to give for God’s glory. And it comes with great reward. When we love with Agape, we draw nearer and nearer to God, and He draws nearer and nearer to us. This is the greatest reward of all. When we give this amazing love within us to others, something happens. This love grows within us, so we have even more Agape to give. When we love we take action. Let’s do it! Instead of “me, me, me” today, let Agape love rule your day, and make someone else’s day. LOVE CONFESSION (1): I confess from my heart, I will walk in love this day, and every day. I will not criticize others because God’s love works no ill to his neighbour, therefore I do no harm to my neighbour. When I am walking in God’s love, I can claim God’s best blessings in life. I will be tenderhearted and forgiving, forgiving others as God through Christ forgave me. I will treat others not as they treat me, but as I want to be treated. I will keep my tongue from speaking evil; I will eschew evil, and pursue peace with every man. I thank You, Father, that as I endeavour to grow in the fruit of love, You will help me be all that I can be in You. I will do for others whenever You give me the opportunity, as You command us to do when we love with Agape love. I will decrease greatly so that Jesus can increase greatly. Thank You, Father, in Jesus’ name for quickening my spirit with Your precious Holy Spirit. By faith I release the measure of love You placed within me when my spirit was born anew, that from within me your precious love flows out this day. Praise You Lord God forever more! “Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted and forgiving, forgiving others as God for Christ’s sake forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32. “But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith (faithfulness), meekness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 04:47:59 +0000
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