God's Love For Us

Day 5

God’s Love for Us

Jesus loves me this I know

For the Bible tells me so

Little ones to Him belong

They are week but He is strong

Yes, Jesus loves me

Yes, Jesus loves me

Yes Jesus loves me the Bible tells me so

We sometimes overlook the truth of this simple children’s song.  Jesus loves us. 

A child, when they sense a danger, will run to their mother or dad for protection.  They feel safe in their arms.  We too need to understand that God loves us unconditionally. We can trust Him in good times and times of trouble.  Romans 5:10 explains, God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 

It is difficult for us to understand true unconditional love because we have nothing on earth to describe it.  We use words like unchanging, sacrificial, impartial, unselfish, sincere, unconditional but I do not think we even come close to describing the true love God has for us.

In The Knowledge of the Holy, A W. Tozer writes.  “The love of God is one of the greatest realities of the universe, a pillar upon which the hope of the world rests.  But it is a personal intimate thing, too.  God does not love populations, He loves people.  He loves not the masses, but men.  He loves us all with a mighty love that has no beginning and can have no end.

It is essential that we understand God’s great love for us.  1 John 4: 18-19 says; there is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love.  We love because he first loved us.

As long as we live in this world, we will be subject to trials of one kind or another.  We can live without fear, if we understand that God loves us and wants what is ultimately best for us.

Do you sometimes find it hard to really believe that God loves you?  Why is that?

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How might life be different for you if you really believed and lived secure in God’s love?

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Prayer

Let’s read and pray this prayer of Paul from Ephesians 3 again today.   It is hard to envision a more appropriate response to all we’ve encountered this week about love. 

¹⁴ For this reason I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. ¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.

Contributors: John Brydon, Bob Klecan, John Lutz, Dave Montgomery

The Love Debt

Day 4

The Love Debt

On January 10 2010, on my first morning in the Dominican Republic, God began to teach me about love.  I had been reading through the Bible and that morning’s reading happened to be in Romans 13.  In verse 8 it says, “Owe nothing to anyone except for your obligation to love one another.”  I had often heard this verse (at least the first part of it) used in messages about finances.  “Don’t borrow money!”  But that morning in the D.R. I felt as if God was telling me to take a closer look.  The context here is about our relationships with each other and not about finances.  Ever since then, I have been exploring what it means to have a love debt.  As it turns out, I didn’t really understand love very well at all then.  Since then, God has “spoken” to me over and over about love through my scripture reading, other reading, conversations with other Christians, sermons and life experiences.  I feel as if I’m still learning about love but here are a few things I’ve wrestled with so far.

Love is a Debt (Romans 13:8)

How does that fact change the way I relate to others?  When I give someone a gift I might have expectations of gratitude but what about when I pay my bills?  Do I expect to be thanked when I pay what I owe?

Love is Undeserved (Romans 5:8)

The English language is weak in that we only have the one word “love” to describe so many different things.  In Greek, there are at least 4 words that we translate simply as “love”.  There is affectionate love, erotic love, brotherly love and the highest form of love (the way God loves each of us), agape love.  Think of someone you love.  Now ask yourself WHY you love them.  If some endearing quality of that person comes to mind then it wasn’t agape love that you were thinking about.  The different kinds of love are all jumbled together in our minds (at least in mine).  The lesser loves can be very strong and very good.  It’s normal to have more than one kind of love for the same person.  That’s OK- unless we mistake the lesser loves for agape love.  God loved us (and continues to love us) when we are completely unlovable.  That’s the gospel.  We don’t like to be loved as the unlovable.  Sometimes we do things to try to earn God’s love, to pay him back for his love (as if we could).  That’s anti-gospel.

Love is the Opposite of Selfishness

Most people think of love as a continuum with agape (perfect) love at one extreme, no feelings in the middle and hate at the opposite extreme.  I propose that it’s selfishness, not hate that is the exact opposite of love.  One of the ways that people are created in God’s image is that we are all “lovers”, each and every one of us.  God did not create us because he was lonely.  For the eternity before creation, God existed in a perfect relationship of love between His three persons- the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  We were created to share in that love.  The problem is that our love has been warped, perverted, turned in upon itself because of sin.  The love that we receive from God was meant to be reflected back to God and to everyone around us.  Instead we crave love from everyone else while selfishly loving ourselves.  The solution is not to somehow add love but rather to cooperate with God as he transforms our hearts and in so doing, “fixes” our broken love.  Can you think of any sin that a person can commit that’s NOT rooted in selfishness?  I can’t.

Love Requires Action and Sacrificial Giving (1 John 3:18, John 3:16, 1 John 3:16 and 17)

Agape love is NOT a feeling!  I used to think that a message about love was the church-equivalent of a “chick-flick”.  Guys, you know what I’m talking about.  It’s a boring movie with no action, lots of long scenes of dialogue and just before you nod off, you look over at your wife and she’s crying.  That comes from a misunderstanding of what love is.  An example of a real love movie would be Last of the Mohicans where Major Duncan Heyward loves Cora so much that he gives himself up to be tortured to death, knowing that it means that his rival Hawkeye would get Cora.  Another good love movie is Forrest Gump where Forrest risks his life over and over, going back into the combat zone trying to save his friend, Bubba.  Re-read 1 John 3:16-18.  Think about it.

Love is Impossible without the Holy Spirit

Galatians 5:22  Love is first in the fruit of the Spirit.  1 John 4:7-8  Love comes from God because God IS love.  Notice it doesn’t say God is loving as if that was just another part of a description of God.  What does it mean to you that God IS love?

Love is not just the icing on the Christian cake- It IS the cake.

What did Jesus say would mark us as being his followers?  It wasn’t our strong faith or living lives free of sin (although those are important) but rather it was that we would love each other.  “All men will know you are my disciples if you love one another.” John 13:34

Love is what keeps the church body healthy and growing.  “Do EVERYTHING with love.” 1 Cor. 16:14  “Let love be your HIGHEST goal” 1 Cor. 14:1 (emphasis mine, of course)

In what ways has your thinking about love grown so far this week? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How might life be different for you if you really believed and lived secure in God’s love?

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Prayer: Reflecting specifically on this devotional, write out a prayer to God. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Pre-Eminence of Love

Day 3

THE PRE-EMINENCE OF LOVE

     Do we hear so much about love that we grow hardened, or spiritually deaf, at the mention of love?

     I’d like to ask you to try something that I’ve tried (and with some fairly amazing results).  Read I Corinthians 13: 1, 2 & 3.  Read the verses repeatedly, slowly, deliberately, thoughtfully.  Don’t allow your mind to wander; savor each phrase. (Hint: to understand the New Testament concept of  “prophecy”, look at I Cor. 14:3; doesn’t it sound like preaching??)

     Before you start reading these verses, ask the Holy Spirit to counsel you, to open up whatever the Lord wants to reveal to you.

    After reading these three short verses, I find it both stunning and sobering to be told – bluntly – that achievements which would ordinarily be considered the highlight of a life of effective Christian service, mean NOTHING unless they are motivated by love.  Our marching orders are clear: whenever we undertake to do something, love must pre-dominate.

     Now for the hard part: the Apostle Paul isn’t just talking about showing love when we’re in church….is he?  Scripture is pretty plain that love is to be behind everything we think, say and do, or we’re wasting our time and effort, in God’s eyes.

     The concept of love encompasses: God’s love for us; our love for God; our love for others (brothers and sisters in Christ); and our love for the lost.  See the Vision section from the VIM triangle at the end of this devotional.  Upward Training will help us put God’s love into action in our lives.  Please note that the classes of love listed at the beginning of this paragraph are not truly categories;  they are inescapable aspects of a Christian life.  You cannot choose to allow two and ignore the other two, because in fact the lines between them blur.  What does not blur is the fact that God’s love should permeate all we think, all we say, all we do.  We truly need to be “all in” when it comes to love.

 Look for the focus of every sermon, the focus of every devotional to tie in with love.  Embrace God’s love as it also becomes the focus of your life each day.  While it’s not likely that all I think, all I say, all I do, every day of every week, is going to focus on God’s love, I can do better than I am doing now.  How about you?  With God’s help, we can close the gap between where we are and where the Lord wants us to be.

     It beats gaining nothing.

                We love because He first loved us.  I John 4:19

In what ways has your thinking about love grown so far this week? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Prayer: Reflecting specifically on this devotional, write out a prayer to God. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Day 2

 Love: The Greatest Power and Person

The Greatest Power

You may have heard it said that love is a verb, that love is action.  This is true…but that is only part of the story.  Love is not presented as something we just do, i.e. “look at this description of love here, look at the way you are living, and adjust the way you are living to be more like this love.”  It is is true that this love is our goal, our aim.  But it simply isn’t the whole story.  What needs to be noted here is that love is personified, treated as a person.  This is a poetic device, but more than just being poetic.  The Apostle Paul, under inspiration of the Spirit, personifies love to indicate that the love of which he speaks is not something which we muster up from within ourselves.  It is a love which we must encounter, be overtaken by, a love whose source is from outside of ourselves. 

We know what, actually who this source of love is.  Romans 5:5 tells us that …God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.  And Galatians 5:22 tells us that love is an aspect of the Fruit of the Spirit.  We know what love is by the love of God toward us, demonstrated in the giving of Jesus for us (John 3:16; 1 John 4:7-11).  We receive the power to love through the Holy Spirit (1 John 4:13).  Perhaps the greatest expression of this truth is found in Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:18-19, where Paul prays that we will be “apprehended” by the full dimensions of the love of Christ. 

The Greatest Person

Love personified begs for us to try to find a person who truly loves like this.  Could you insert your name into verses 4-7, i.e. John is patient, John is kind, etc.?  How about your spouse’s name?  How about your pastor?  It’s obvious – there is only One Person whose name goes there legitimately.  Jesus is patient, Jesus is kind, Jesus is….  Likewise, the Holy Spirit is patient, kind, etc.   And the Father is patient, kind, etc.   So loving with a higher love isn’t a matter of mustering up strength and willpower to love.  It is about our relationship with Jesus.  It is about living in and being filled with the Holy Spirit.  It is about living as a beloved child of our Heavenly Father (Ephesians 5:1-2; 1 John 3:1).  Love personified reminds us that love is only truly known and experienced through the Three Persons of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

Personal Reflection or Discussion Questions

Read and pray this prayer of Paul from Ephesians 3.  It is a prayer to experience God’s maximum filling of love.    

¹⁴ For this reason I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. ¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.

Love: The Greatest Priority

Day 1

Love: The Greatest Priority

Higher Love is our theme for this series, and we find the most concise and powerful presentation of such a higher love in 1 Corinthians 13, often called the “Love Chapter.”  Here we find that love is…

The Greatest Priority (12:31-3:3, 13)

It is hard to adequately communicate how radical this teaching is.  Familiarity with this passage has caused many of us to lose the wonder, to stop experiencing jaw-dropping shock when we read these words.  Perhaps it will  help us to see this pictured as our thoughts regarding “godliness,” our understanding of what a fully devoted follower of Jesus should be like.  This first list  is full of thoughts that are “wrong” according to 1 Corinthians 13:1-3: 

 I will know I’m godly if I…                                            

                               

 Speak well about my faith

Know More about the Bible

Have supernatural experiences

Give more sacrificially

Live with absolute conviction

If we gave a quiz in churches throughout our land, and even around the world, it is likely that what is listed above would be applauded as an exemplary Christian.  When we look at what 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 actually says, it is quite shocking.

                If I speak with the tongues of men

            or of angels, but do not have love, I

            an only a resounding gong or a clanging

            symbol.  If I have the gift of prophecy and

            can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge,

            and if I have a faith that can move mountains,

            but I do not have love, I am nothing.  If I

            give all I possess to the poor and give over my

            body to hardship that I may boast, but do not

            have love, I gain nothing,

These words are spoken in the middle of an extended teaching on spiritual gifts to a Corinthian church that was very active and “proud” of their gifts.  They even experienced remarkable manifestations of clearly supernatural power!  Paul brings their gifts into perspective in chapter 13, where he describes God’s highest vision for their lives, lives of love.  This love is the absolute, best way (12:31), is superior to all other manifestations and ministries (13:1-3), is character that is demonstrated in how we relate to one another (13:4-7), and is the greatest of Christian virtues (13:13).   No matter how great our gifts and even our sacrifices, Paul says, the failure to make love the top priority renders all else we do as empty. 

This is our challenge during Upward Training 2.  Our minds need to think more like the second list throughout the course of this series, embracing and living out God’s truth, that love is the super-abundant most superior excellent way (1 Corinthians 12:31). 

How does your thinking about godliness line up with what is taught in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3? _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 In what ways has your thinking about love been stretched so far?   _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Prayer: Reflecting specifically on this devotional, write out a prayer to God. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Higher Love

Upward Training 2

 Higher Love

    ³⁴Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. ³⁵One of them, an expert in the   law, tested him with this question: ³⁶“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” ³⁷Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’³⁸This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  ⁴⁰All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

 Matthew 22:34-40

       Jesus makes an extraordinary statement in this passage!  He clearly states that these two commandments, Love the Lord Your God with all you are and love your neighbor as yourself are the greatest. They are the foundation of all of God’s Word and the goal toward which all of God’s Word points.   He goes on from there to declare that all the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments. 

Last year Upward Training focused on the first love, loving the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.  Upward Training 2 will be a focus on the second love, loving our neighbor as ourselves,  which we are calling Higher Love. Upward Training 3 will focus on a special type of loving our neighbor: loving the lost, sharing our lives and the gospel with those who need Christ.  We are called to live out the gospel with a Higher Love.  

Make Up Your Mind

   MAKE UP YOUR MIND

                                                          

We spent our first season of Upward Training considering how we can love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.  We looked at how to love the Lord with each of these aspects of our being.  Your feedback was overwhelming:  our focus on loving Him with all our minds was the most impactful, the most obviously relevant, of the four.  So we will take the month of January to re-open this focus on loving the Lord with all our minds, which we will call Make Up Your Mind.  We will learn how to “fix” and “feed” our minds, to knock down strongholds in our thinking and bring every thought captive to obedience to Christ (1 Corinthians 10:5),  and to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Romans 12:2).  

One important reality regarding mind renewal…it is much more than an intellectual exercise, far more than knowing the right facts.  It is an intensely spiritual issue, a matter of serious spiritual warfare.  During this month we are emphasizing two spiritual disciplines to help us engage in the battle for our minds: fasting and prayer. 

We are encouraging our First Baptist family to consider January 6-27th to be a special season of fasting, prayer and alignment with the mind of Christ.  

Fasting

Douglass Rumford, in his book Soul Shaping, has very helpful insights into the role of fasting in spiritual growth: 

Fasting could be called the italics of the spiritual life; it adds emphasis to other activities we may already be pursuing, such as prayer or repentance or discerning God’s purpose for us (or, as in our case, renewing our thought life.)  It brings a sense of urgency and earnestness to anything else we are undertaking.[i]

Think about our minds.  How often do we know in our heads what is true but struggle to actually live by the truth.  We often wonder why mind renewal doesn’t always “take.”  Could it be that some breakthrough comes by prayer and fasting?  Not as a magic formula, but simply as a way to bring spiritual truth to life, to “italicize” it.

A  resource on fasting will be provided the next few weeks explaining the whys and hows of fasting for spiritual transformation.

Prayer

We encourage you to also pray specifically for the renewing of our minds during this time.  Below is a daily prayer process. 

*Start by praying Psalm 139:23-24 as a prayer of searching…

²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; ²⁴ And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.

Father, I confess that my thinking has been anxious, hurtful and worldly in the following ways:______________________________________________________

*Then pray the following…

Father, please help me not to love this world or the things of this world.  Empower me through the Spirit to grasp the magnitude of your love,

to aim my mind toward heavenly things, and to fix on what is true, right, and consistent with my high calling in Christ. 

Then read Philippians 4:8:  ⁸ Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Pray this every day starting January 6^th, and it would be outstanding to find a prayer partner to share this prayer emphasis with.  It is not necessary to pray this together every day, but to simply be praying this same thing for yourselves and each other, and communicate regularly as you are praying this for one another. 

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[i] Douglas Rumford, Soulshaping, pg. 287