Love is…

Love is not there to fill us, but love is to form us. God is love and therefore when we receive His love we are becoming more like Him. We can only receive love if we accept the love of Christ and in that we are formed into God’s image and likeness.

…I also pray that love may be the ground into which you sink your roots and on which you have your foundation. This way, with all of God’s people you will be able to understand how wide, long, high, and deep his love is and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God.
(Ephesians 3:17-19).

In the same light, God knows us by our love in Him. (Like Kelley Varner says, "God is out looking for God")

I know your works and love and service and faith and your patience, and your works; and the last to be more than the first.
(Revelations 2:19).

But concerning the sacrifices to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.
(1Co 8:1).

Everyone will know that you are my disciples because of your love for each other.
(John 13:35).

May we learn to give love God’s way and to receive God’s love His way and move away from our worldly mindsets of wanting love for ourselves, just for gratification – We are not in this world to make people "feel" better or to "please" people or to keep anyone "happy". We are here to give "true" and "pure" love from the Father, a love that will bring people into relationship with the father, a love that will edify and strengthen His body. This love is not the "nice guy love" that we know so well, but it is a love that brings truth and correction, brings justice but also gives mercy.

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves another has fulfilled the Law
(Romans 13:8).

 

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The Desire to Love (3)

This whole aspect of love is pretty intense, wouldn’t you say? Everybody needs love, desire love and even when they believe they don’t need love it is their greatest desire. This goes even further, like the desire for peace and social justice is a desire that is of great importance right through every country and nation. Billions of money is spend on this and yet the impact of these noble efforts is lost in a world of war. It seems as if every person is so involved with an unknown battle that nothing else seems important or even noticeable…

The hindrance that you face when it comes to love is based on seclusion. All of the pain and fear you tend to hide from has driven you into a stronghold of seclusion… This lonely place has become your place of safety. The walls are high and thick and inside all the fear, rejection and pain are armed with weapons, ready to attack any love, acceptance or healing that dares to wander to close. War is the only thing you know when it comes to love and being tired of it you withdraw even more, building hedges with sharp edges and a moat all around this tower of yours. The only enemy that is left is your loneliness. You do what ever it takes to fight the loneliness without allowing any thing or anyone to come near you. Your whole being cries out for salvation, yet your spears and arrows destroys every saviour…

The only way to changes this is to accept Jesus’ love for you. You need to know, trust and believe that He loves you and only wants the best for you… ask the Holy Spirit to show and teach you about this love God has for your. The more you grow in this love, the more your armies are disarmed and salvation is allowed to come closer and closer…

Jesus said:

And I do not pray for these alone, but for those also who shall believe on Me through their word, that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. And I have given them the glory which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one, I in them, and You in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that You have sent Me and have loved them as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that those whom You have given Me, that they may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me, for You have loved Me before the foundation of the world.
(John 17:20-24)

With this knowledge we can and may desire more of His love in our lives!

With this love we have to learn to love others, for it is only when we love one another that love really grows and flow through us with powers of healing and restoration…

May you accept His love for you and keep growing in Love.

Our Struggle with Love

We continue to struggle with love…
Why can’t we accept God’s love for us completely?
Why can’t we love those around us?

Loving Lord‚
do you never tire of being good to me?
Why then am I so slow in showing my love to you
by being good to others?

As you find joy in the happiness of your children‚
let me also find joy in my service to others.
O Lord‚ give me what I lack.
Make me into what I am not.
Let the proof of your forgiving and merciful love
towards me‚
encourage me to patience‚ forgiveness and mercy
towards others
Amen

by John Wesley

WE NEED TO LEARN TO LOVE BY GIVING IN TO GOD’S LOVE FOR US!!!

The Desire to Love (2)

It sounds so easy to say that you should live in love, but to say the truth, it is hard. The first step of love is always a step of faith and then after that you still need to keep walking. The most difficult thing about this walk of love is the fact that nobody truly knows what love is. The only way to know (some of) it is to spend time with God. The second difficulty is that although love is good and everybody needs it, people’s first reaction is to reject and fight love. Because of fear, misunderstanding and misrepresentation of love, love cannot be accepted for it awakens these past memories…

Never the less you need to walk in love!! It is only by love and in love that you truly live and find your purpose.

God is the giver of all desires and also the fulfiller there of.:

Trust in Jehovah, and do good; dwell in the land and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in Jehovah, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to Jehovah; trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. And He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.
(Psalms 37:3-6)

In committing your life to God, God is able to fulfil your desires – or is that desire?

Jesus said:

I am the Vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered. And they gather and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My Words abide in you, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done to you.
(John 15:5-7)

You have to abide in Him as He abides in you that you may be able to live this life of love. If you do not abide in Him you are dead of love and cannot love…

In this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, so you shall be My disciples. As the Father has loved Me, so I have loved you; continue in My love. If you keep My commandments, you shall abide in My love, even as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
(John 15:8-10)

First step of love (which is by faith) is to accept the love of God and receive it into your life and then to abide and continue in this love. God gives the love, you receive the love and then have to stay committed to it. The reason for this is to live a life of joy:

I have spoken these things to you so that My joy might remain in you and your joy might be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.
(John 15:11-13)

This commitment comes with a commandment, to love those people around you. The same love the Father has for Jesus, He has for you and this same love is alive within you. Therefore you are enabled to love those around you. The commandment is to love and love is also the empowerment to obey the command. Thus without love you can do nothing! With love you are empowered to love unto death!

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master does. But I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it to you. These things I command you, that you love one another.
(John 15:5-17)

In this love and the command to love, you bare fruit when you love. The desire of the Father is that you bare much fruit by love and continue in doing so. In this relationship of love you may ask what ever you desire and it will be given you. The purpose for all of this is that you are enabled to love all the people around you.

Now you know that you were called to love, for the sake of love, by Love.

Prayer For Love

Heavenly Father, Great is Your name,
Holy and perfect,
Your love and grace knows no end.

Holy Spirit,
make known to us Your awesome love,
awaken us spiritually,
that we may discover,
experience,
Your love for us.

God of love, we need you,
to love one another,
never withholding love from anyone.

May we live in Your love,
with the desire for love,
that perfect love
may be revealed through us.
for where Your love rules,
there peace rules also.

Lord Jesus, teach us your love
give us your peace
that we may live it through You.

Amen.

The Desire to Love (1)

I said that our first, if not only desire, is love. Love in the modern sense has lost its meaning, for we say ‘I love chocolates, I love swimming, I love the movies…’, but this is not the love I’m talking about.

The fulfilment of each desire is imprisoned by choice. You have to conquer fear and choose to love. The first step of love is a step of faith – against all you choose to love…

Choose to dream dreams without limitations. Let your mind go… invite Him along with you and just go. We were taught to rather be safe than sorry… safe for who… sorry for what…  ‘…in Him we live and move and have our being‘ (Acts 17:28).

We should dream without limits and allow Christ Jesus to be our boundaries. In living love with out limits and dreams without limits we are truly free and truly alive! The only way to have no limits is to live and move in Him. I know this ‘in Him’ concept is not that easy to understand and sometimes impossible to comprehend, but never the less we are living in Him, why not let go of everything except Him. Sure we will lose some things, but some things are worth loosing…

True freedom is to know Christ Jesus as your only boundaries!!! The secret of this knowledge is found in love… It is a love incomprehensible if you are not found in Him. This is confusing to the human mind, but it is so true… only love bring entrance and only inside love it is known…

This love of God for the world does not withdraw from a reality into noble souls detached from the world, but experiences and suffers the reality of the world in the harshest possible fashion. The world takes out its rage on the body of Jesus Christ. But he, tormented, forgives the world its sins. Thus does reconciliation come about.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Meditations on the Cross

Dion once wrote that this love is

…getting to know people, and searching for God’s words of challenge and encouragement for their lives (and mine)… I longed to hear what God would have me say to them, and then I would enjoy weaving together words and concepts, parables and pictures that would inspire, encourage, challenge, and even rebuke.
by digitaldion (Dion Forster)

This love never thinks to highly of it self, is patient and kind, does not envy or boast, is not arrogant or rude, does not insist on its own way, isn’t irritable or resentful, does not rejoice in the lie, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things and this Love never ends… (1Corinthians 13:4-8.)

This love gathers His people into relationship with Him and one another…
This love is not to be understood, but to be lived!!!

It is not about you or me, but about us, His people! I’ve heard it said that to be totally wrapped-up in God is selfishness, but that is impossible for when we are totally wrapped-up in Him we cannot but love every soul around us.

Our first, if not only desire, is love!

My first desire for you is to discover the fullness of God’s love for you. Dreams needs to come from the knowledge of God’s love in our lives. A good place to start is John 15-17. After reading it a few times, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal God’s love for me, I have found more of God’s love in my own life. See, our first, if not only desire, is love! Yes we have millions of desires concerning life, but true love brings true life. When true love is embraced we cannot help living it and thus it becomes our life.

John explained it like this:

For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?
(1 John 3:11-17)

Living a life of Love is actually the fulfilment of Life! We believe that our greatest desires are to be happy and joyful, but it is actually to love and be loved…
Without love some part of you is dead and you have this empty hole somewhere inside of you and you do no know how to fill it… TRUE LOVE is the only thing that will fill it and bring restoration and resurrection to the rest of your life!!!

What is true love and how do we get hold of it?

Jesus said:

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
(John 15:9-10)

So, we have to do something to live this life of love and that is to follow Jesus’ commandment!

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.
(John 15:12-13)

Ok, what is His commandment? To love!!!

Thus the only way to fulfil your life is to love and to love is to abide in Christ Jesus in such a way that you are willing to lay down your life for a friend.

Precious Jesus, come and fill my life with You. I cannot live this life of love without You, I need You more than food, more than the air I breathe…
I NEED YOU!!!

What is this desire to love?

Read: Desire to LOVE!!!