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Love The Lord!

Matthew 22:37

And He replied to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (intellect).

Jesus gives us the greatest of all His commands – an ideal for life.

An ideal is a model we hold in our minds, a standard we reach for.  Ideals determine our priorities.

Ideals are powerful because what we love, desire and focus our beings on is what we become.

The greatest revelation in the history of the world is that God is love and God loves us.

The sweetest of all human emotions is love.
The greatest of all possible human experiences is love.

God has unimagined blessings for those who fully love Him.

1 Corinthians 2:9
…Eye has not seen and ear has not heard and neither has it entered into the heart of man, [all that] God has prepared (made and keeps ready) for those who love Him.

Our love for Him must be proven by the involvement of our entire being.  It is the highest kind of love for it motivates you to do what is right and noble regardless of what you may be feeling.

This love Jesus commands is the noblest, purest and highest form of self-sacrificing love.

We are never totally right with God until our heart, soul, mind, and strength manifest our love for God.

Love for God must be more than a confession.  Our entire being must manifest that love.  Love like this is manifested through obedience to His commands.

Love is always the first step.  God keeps covenant with those who love Him and keep His commandments.

When we are troubled, when we don’t have an answer, when we don’t know what to do, when our resources are not sufficient to meet our need, when we are frustrated, confused – just start with God and love Him with your entire being.

When we start with our circumstances, our challenges, our lack, and our doubt we are so limited.

Our problems are solved by responding to His love.  Start with God and then go to your need, your lack, your challenge, and your circumstance.

The whole purpose of life is to lead us to the final and ultimate truth that God is the one who loves us and can fully satisfy us.

When we start with God and loving Him with our entire being – presenting our bodies (all of us) as a living sacrifice – then we love our families, we love our neighbors, we even love our enemies, and we lead them to Christ.

We must renounce every competing affection, and be willing to lay down our lives for the advancement of His kingdom.

Handling Life’s Challenges

South India grows a plant called “Glorious Superb” a type of tall lily.  In the open field, it grows only a few feet tall and does not spread out very much. But plant it in the crowded lanes, surrounded by cactus and aloe (great, strong, assertive plants that choke others out), and it will flourish growing up to eight feet tall.  Challenge it with thorns and thistles and it will assert itself masterfully.

The greater the challenge, the more beautiful its flowers, the more brilliant its colors, and the taller it grows.

We need those same built- in, survivor/over comer instincts.

For us, dark, desperate places become the place of vision.

The very things which are meant to break us, with God’s grace, will make us.

The message of the Bible helps us to transcend the moment of our circumstance, challenge to become better because of it.

God’s power is given to us to reverse life’s adversities.

When the world is at its worst, God is at his best.

When the world gives us greatest conflict, God gives us the greatest comfort.

When the world exhausts its remedy, God becomes our resource of faith.

1 Corinthians 10:13 No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it.

Too many people today are just going from one crisis to another ─ always one step ahead of the devil.

Somehow we have to see ourselves as children of destiny. We are a part of what God is doing in the world- His great master plan.

• Our lives are not based on our circumstances.
• Our lives are not based on our adversities.
• Our lives are not based on our emotional status.

We base our lives on one simple fact- that if we are born again, filled with his holy spirit, living the spirit-filled life, then we know one thing- God is at work in us and what he has started, He will carry on to completion until the day Jesus reveals himself.

We understand God has placed us in a strategic position in his kingdom.

You either respond with position or punishment- you choose which.

Choose punishment and you get an offended spirit with a victim’s mentality.

When God permits a challenge, it is for a purpose; sometimes that purpose is greater than our understanding.

In all our adversities, God is shaping us, forming us, and bringing us into the place we can be of the ultimate good to him.

• There is no gold without the refiner’s fire.
• There is no steel without the heat of a blasted furnace.
• There is no diamond without the heat, pressure, and time.
• There is no statue without a hammer and chisel.
• There is no disciple without the potter’s wheel.

Forgiveness Unlimited 9.27.11

Romans 8:1-2
^1-2With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

Unlimited—vast — without measure – boundless—  are just a few of the words which describe the universe which God created.

Light travels at the speed of 186,000 miles per second which is mere than 11 million miles per minute or approximately 700 million miles per hour, or 17 billion miles in one day, or 64 trillion miles in one year which equals a light year.

Likewise God’s forgiveness of and removal of our sins are just as mind boggling as these numbers.

Everyone everywhere has placed themselves under a legal penalty by the fact that they have voluntarily broken God’s law.

Jesus came and took upon Himself men’s spiritual liabilities and paid the otherwise impossible price of redemption.

The purpose of forgiveness is to restore man’s relationship with God to the state it was in before sin entered. 

God alone cannot restore man to fellowship, man must desire that fellowship.

Repentance is a positive, glorious gift of God that enables us to avert divine judgment for our sins.

The change which repentance brings about is so deep and radical as to affect the whole spiritual nature and to involve the entire personality.  Psychology shows repentance to be profound, personal, and all-pervasive.

When God’s principles are followed, God’s promises are performed.

We must change our attitudes before God will change His judgments.

God forgives us even though He knows us better than we know ourselves.

Guilt is such a destructive force in our lives that Satan does everything in his power to see to it that the guilt is not remitted toward self.

We must never uncover what the Blood has covered.

The Truth of God!

Genesis 1:1
¹In the beginning God (prepared, formed, fashioned, and) created the heavens and the earth.

What is truth?
How can we know truth?

In America, for many years we had certain presuppositions which influenced the way life was lived.

The basic presupposition was that there really are such things as “Absolutes.”

We accepted the possibility of an “Absolute” in the area of “being” (or knowledge), and in the area of “morals.”

If anything is true, the opposite is false.  If one thing is right, its opposite was wrong.

Today our world is in a “mess” because of the rejection of Biblical absolutes.

The greatest absolute in the entire world is found in Genesis 1:1- In the beginning God…

Without this absolute nothing makes sense.

Man can never understand himself by beginning with himself.
Man can only understand himself by beginning with God.

What every man needs to do is to meet God.  God has revealed everything about himself that we need to know to respond to Him in worship.

Worship of God is always limited to our knowledge of Him because we cannot extol Him beyond our concepts of Him.

Many Christians are more interested in the principles of God than in the person of God. They give to God, receive from Him and work for Him, but never enter into a personal relationship with Him.

The purpose, the reason for man’s existence is found in the first commandment of Christ:

Mark 12:30 - And you shall love the Lord your God out of and with your whole heart and out of and with all your soul (your life) and out of and with all your mind (your faculty of thought and your moral understanding) and out of and with all your strength. 

This truth causes me to know what man is and who I am.

What will you do to get to know Him better?

God’s Love!

Love is perhaps the greatest subject of all the written and spoken poems, essay and writings.

Both in human terms and in Biblical teachings it is the world’s strongest force.

Someone said love is blind.  Another answered, love is not blind – it sees more, not less.  But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.

Some say love makes the world go around.  It may not make the world go around, but it sure makes the trip worthwhile.

Love can be pictured in many and varied ways:

• A parent holding a newborn;
• A child lovingly holding an animal;
• Two young people sitting and gazing into each other’s eyes;
• A young couple being joined together in marriage;
• An older couple celebrating a wedding anniversary;
• A poppy swinging his grand-daughter.

Without a doubt, love is the greatest of all the forces of heaven or earth.

John simply said “God is love.”  His love is impartial and universal.

There is no single human being created for any other reason than because God loves him.  Love is the supreme and ultimate law of the universe.  Love can subdue the world.

Love binds us together from within.  Love can never be annihilated. Love is the premier teaching of Christianity and an undying expression of Jesus’ doctrine.

Love is more powerful for the building of the church than any, or all, of the various manifestations of God’s power.

Love is the church’s most effective weapon, without which all the various gifts of the spirit are of no avail.

Love is the essence of God’s nature, as well as the perfection of human character. Love is the most powerful, ultimate force in the universe.

God the Father is love in its highest form and reality (John 3:16).

God the son reflected the essence of the Father (John 14:21).

God the Holy Spirit produces in our hearts the fruit of love (Romans 5:5; Galatians 5:22).

Paul said that the only continuing debt we should have is that of loving one another. The Biblical command is to first love God and then to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

We are to love out of the fullness of God’s prior love to us. Our experience of God’s love provides the inner motivation toward love.

We are not required to create or develop a quantity of love.  Love is not an ideal – it is a relationship.  It is the result of a dynamic and growing relationship with Christ.

Love only happens when you become vulnerable, trusting. Are you ready to love the Lord and trust Him today?

The Will of God is the Real Life of Man

Advertising and marketing agencies often use images to show us what “real” men and women look like and do.

“Real men” ride Harleys, climb mountains, and use bow flex machines.   “Real women” use certain cosmetics, work out at Curves or Lifestyles, and dress in certain ways.

In fact, you could do all those things to perfection and still not be real.  No one is real until they become God-like, because as one becomes God-like, they will find that God’s will calls into play all those powers which God gives to them.

You only have the possibility of truly becoming real when you know and do the will of God. Only then will the gifts and abilities placed into you at conception be released without limits into your life.

No one can experience this kind of fulfillment until there is a renewing of their mind with the mind of Christ.

The conquering principle of life according to Paul is an inward renewal of the mind.

There is a two-fold process of coming to know and do God’s will:

• Do not be “conformed” to the pattern of this world.
• Be “transformed” by the renewing of your mind.

Only then will anyone be able to test and approve what God’s will is.  Every day we must choose to do these things.   All around us a whole climate of life is pressuring us, squeezing us, and insisting we conform, making it costly to us if we don’t.

The only way to escape this “conformity to the world” life is by the transformation of our minds.

Literally, our thinking must be changed by Christ’s mind in us.  Everyday the thinking of the world around me tries to influence “my mind set.”

Worldliness (opposite of godliness), lust, anger, vindictiveness, jealousy, greed, confusion, doubts, and fears take aim at my mind.   To be empowered by His will, we must surrender. 

The will of God is the real life of man.  When we recognize, accept, and agree with His will, our life discovers the harmony of all its powers, the fulfillment of all its hopes, the satisfaction of all its desires.

If you missed this weekend at TheChurch on Strayer 10.17.11

From the beginning of humanity, God intended the family to be the premier institution of life.  Love, faithfulness, and truth are the highest virtues of the human mind.  None is possible without the faithfulness of God. 

To have a faithful family, we must understand that “preparation always precedes production.”

Building a faithful family involves at least three steps:

1.  The pre-requisite of discipleship.

The term implies all that belongs to the completion of a home, a family ─ the idea, the dream, the plan, the construction, the furnishings and most importantly, the filling of the home with the living community. What’s the foundation you have laid for your family?

2.  The process of discipleship.

Teach fitting and sound doctrine which provides right living.  What types of activities and habits are you displaying in your home?  Are you using sound doctrine to teach your family?  Each of us is to be an example of good deeds.  We are to model, show a pattern of Godly living within the home.

3.  The product of discipleship.

The way we live in front of each other should be a deposit of a precious treasure into their lives.  Our lives should be sound, fit, wholesome, above reproach, giving no one an opportunity (a reason) to speak evil of us. As we pass on our “family experience” to our children, we have a sober responsibility to “fully obey what we know as His Truth.”  What we do and teach our children and family will have an everlasting effect on them when they leave the home.

“I Love You!” Love, God

Romans 8:39
Nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Some things in life simply defy definition.  Love is one of those things.

Love is easy to recognize by the way it acts. Love is the basic principle of spiritual and relational health.

It is the creator of character and the revealer of truth.  It is the solution of all difficulties and the cure of all evils. It is the secret of vitality and the essence of true life.

Love elevates every aspect of our lives.  By loving others we elevate them to a higher plane of living.

The prime fundamental to Christian living is love.  When we say “God is love” we speak of “descending love” and “ascending love.”

Humanity’s condition was not the motivating force behind Jesus coming into this world.  God’s divine love for humanity was the impelling power of the incarnation of Jesus.

With the coming of Jesus, God declared “I love you” and demonstrated His willingness to reveal that love to us.

The heavens declare the glory of God, His actions reveal His grace, nature shows His handiwork, but in Jesus we meet God’s demonstrated love.

His love lifts us from our sin-scarred, life wounded, battered image higher and higher until the image that was lost in Adam is restored in us in Jesus.

Love found us where we were, but lifted us to where God is. Love reached us as we were, but transformed our nature into His nature.

Love looked upon us in our shame but caused us to look upon God in His splendor.

How different is His love from the emotion that we call love. Our love is caused by something in the object of our love, something that meets an inherent need.

We love because we need.  God needs because He loves.

With Open Arms

No one can doubt that man was made a social creature and was meant to live inter-connected with others like himself.

Man was born with a longing for belonging.  We have an innate need for meaningful interaction with others.

Every sane person wants to be wanted, accepted, enjoyed, and loved.

Only by living together in the community of faith can we experience a sense of wholeness, self-worth and a healthy self-concept.

Only in the context of connection with others is it possible for our deepest needs to be met.

God’s plan to redeem fallen humanity revolves around building a community of faith where genuine love, acceptance, forgiveness and affirmation are experienced.

In the last forty years, there has been a serious decline in community life in America. 

• People who volunteer in a political campaign is half what it was in the 1960’s. 
• Active membership in local clubs and organizations, like parent-teacher groups, has dropped by about half since the 1970’s.
• People visit less and have friends over less frequently. 

Although the level of connectedness between people in our society has dropped severely, their need for connectedness has not.

I Peter 4:8 – Above all, love each other deeply…

We must love each other enough to tell the truth to each other.

Let me give you a big word with an even bigger meaning – magnanimous. 

To be “magnanimous” means that you have a “great heart,” “a generous spirit,” forgiving, too big to hold a grudge.

That is what community looks like – real, genuine love, brotherly affection, great-hearted, generous acceptance and affirmation.

We need open doors, open walls.  We need to be out there meeting and loving people (not necessarily their behavior) where they are.  Don’t just do community, but do it with all your might.

If you missed this weekend @ theChurch…

“Love, With All Your Heart”

John 13:34-35 (AMP)

I give you a new commandment: that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you too should love one another.  By this shall all [men] know that you are My disciples, if you love one another [if you keep on showing love among yourselves].

If you wanted to express the ultimate theme, message, law of the Kingdom in one word, that word would be “Love.”

Jesus came to show us, to give us a Kingdom, which is founded upon perfect love.   More than 500 times, love, and its many derivatives are used in the Bible.

God is capable only of “perfect love.”  He can never love more or less – His love cannot be enhanced or diminished.

Everything Jesus said and did was a demonstration of Kingdom love.

Every “Godly action” of our lives is the result of His Kingdom love within us.

The positive manifestation of the Kingdom attitude is God’s love within us.

Everything God intended for us is included in His love to us and through us.

The world’s greatest revelation is that God is love and God loves us.

Love is who God is – His very nature.  Thus, He can never cease to love us since His very essence is love.

God has chosen to pursue a love relationship with us as He takes the initiative to bring us into that relationship.

To be loved by God and to love God is the highest relationship, the highest achievement and the highest position available to mankind.

Join us this upcoming weekend as we continue to talk more about “Love, With All Your Heart” and we celebrate “Friend Day” at theChurch, Feb 18^th & 19^th!