Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. John 15:9.
So Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her. Genesis 29:20.
You have perseverance and have endured for My Name’s sake and have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Revelation 2:3-4.
But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. John 4:23.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
I have many attributes but I AM Love—pure, perfect, living, unadulterated love. And My many attributes flow from that, for love gives and love serves and love heals and love blesses. I think in love, walk in love, and speak in love, nothing else enters or remains with Me. And My love for you is manifested in Jesus and NOTHING can separate you from My love once you are IN CHRIST JESUS your Lord. Romans 8:38-39. You are more than conquerors over all the works of the devil through Me, your Father, who loves you. Romans 8:37. For it is by this that My love manifests in you, that I sent My only begotten Son into the world so that you might live through Him. 1 John 4:9.
And that is today’s life lesson in this study of how to live your life IN CHRIST, which is also through Christ: “A Life of Love.” Perfect love casts out all fear. If you have fear and dread, anxiety and worry, you are not living a life of love in Christ Jesus your Lord.
THE LIFE OF LOVE IS A LIFE IN THE CENTER OF MY BEING BY WHICH YOU ENTER INTO THE DIVINE FLOW. It is the very essence of grace and truth, which come through and in Jesus.
In this you understand My love, it is not based on your love for Me, but My love for you, and that is clear in that while you were living in sins and trespasses against Me, I sent My Son as propitiation for your sins and made My pure Son who knew no sin to be sin on your behalf so you might be made righteous with My own righteousness in Him. In Him you will never have divine justice fall upon you, for in Christ you have eternal life, and do not come into judgment, but have passed out of death into life. John 5:24.
And the night before He gave His life as propitiation for your sins, Jesus told you, “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.” John 15:9. He told you that He loves you as I do, He not only obeyed Me to take all your sins and sickness and pains and bear the punishment for you, but He did it willingly with joy. And He told you that you are to live on in His love. You are to live a life of love in the One who loved you and willingly gave Himself for you. Galatians 2:20.
Notice that He says that just as I have loved Him, so He has loved you. He is My beloved Son, and in Him, so are you but there is more. I tell you how I loved My Son. “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.” John 3:35. Everything that is Mine is His. John 16:15.
In My love for Him, My trust in Him, My oneness with Him, I have given all things into His hand. And He tells you who are His disciples that He loves you as I loved Him. In Him it has pleased Me to give you the Kingdom. All things are in His hand and I have entrusted you into His hand also, and in His hand you are in Mine. When you believe in the gospel of your salvation and receive Jesus as your Lord, I seal you in Him by the Holy Spirit as a pledge and My will is that He lose nothing of what I have given Him but raise all I have given Him up on the last day. John 6:39. There is no snatching out of His hand. Love protects and love never fails.
Jesus also told you how to live a life of love in Him. “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 15:10. And what are His commandments? For Jesus tells you right after He said this that “These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” John 15:10. So His commandments are not burdensome but a joy. 1 John 5:3. And He told you that commandment: “This I command you, that you love one another.” John 15:17. And He gave you greater insight into this command, “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:11-12. This is My commandment, that you believe in the Name of My Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded you. 1 John 3:23. And you know that He abides in you by the Holy Spirit whom He poured into your hearts from Me. 1 John 3:24.
I AM love, and the one who abides in love abides in Me, and I abide in him. And when you abide in love, love is perfected with you, so that you have confidence in the day of judgment; because as Jesus is, so also are you in this world for you who believe are IN CHRIST. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. You love as a response to My great love for you. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love Me whom he has not seen. And that is what the commandment of Jesus is about, that the one who loves Me should love his brother also. 1 John 4:16-21.
He who does not love abides in death. There should be no divisions in the body of Christ among its members on earth. Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. You know true love by this, that Jesus laid down His life for you; and you ought to lay down your lives for your fellow believers. But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother or sister in need and closes his heart against him, how does My love abide in him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. James 2:15-17. Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it. Do not say to your neighbor, “Go, and come back, and tomorrow I will give it,” when you have it with you. Do not devise harm against your neighbor, while he lives securely beside you. Do not contend with a man without cause, if he has done you no harm. Do not just love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. If you are walking with Me in love, I will show you what to do, and I will provide you with all sufficiency for your own needs and an abundance for every good work according to My riches in Christ Jesus in glory. 1 John 3:14-22.
But in reality, you were made by Love and to love, and to love is a joy. By living in My love you will have a life of My joy in you, making your joy full and complete. You know that when you have great love for someone that serving them is easy and comes up from your heart. When you know and believe in the love I have for you everything in your life should change. Your love for Me is a response to knowing and believing in the love I have for you and all I have done for you and continue to do for you in Christ. When Jacob fell in love with Rachel, Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her. Genesis 29:20. It is My love for you that impels you to love and serve Me in others whom I send to you. Jesus washed the feet of His disciples giving you an example of service for the brethren.
When you have received Christ and He comes to dwell in your heart through faith, then you are rooted and grounded in love, and you should press into that mystery guided by My Spirit to be able to comprehend with all the ones being sanctified in Him what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up with all My fullness, that is, the very fullness of God in you as you live IN CHRIST and tap into My divine nature, that is, as you tap into Love and all Love gives you. For I have poured My love into your heart by My gift of the Holy Spirit that I have given to you through and in Christ Jesus your Lord. Your love for Me is a response to My gift of My love to you.
And how does love for another manifest? You desire to be with and to please the one you love. You honor them with your life and you give them gifts of value, not things you are looking to throw away and that you do not want. David said he would not offer anything to Me that it had not given value for, he was extravagant with Me in everything, and towards the end of his life with his offerings for the building of a house for Me that I entrusted to his son. But that did not stop him from making the plans and funding it with all his treasures that he had set aside for Me when he conquered enemy armies and nations. But above all his extravagant love for Me erupted in worship—in psalms and hymns of praise, thanksgiving, love, trust, and victory, and that since he was a youth watching his father’s sheep. He loved My Word more than heaps of fine gold and found great reward in keeping them. My Will and ways he sought as treasure, and he sought them in worship. When he had the authority to do so, he gathered the Levites and appointed them musicians and singers before Me for twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, by lot in groups of twelve so that a total of 288 Levites, sons of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, were employed to sing in My house before Me, with cymbals, harps and lyres, under the his direction. 1 Chronicles 25.
My servant Paul was extravagant in His love for Me as well. His one aim was to please Me whether in this life or the next. And he counted all his trials as pure joy in his great love for Me and for My people, to save all he could for the praise of My glory. He delighted in My presence and sought to bring others into a relationship with Me that was like his. Just read his prayers for you. They are all about revelation knowledge of who I am, of your inheritance with Me, of your calling, of My glorious Kingdom, of My magnificent promises, of faith in My Word, and, above all, that you will know My love as manifested in Christ Jesus. Forgetting what lay behind, cleansed by the blood of My Son, he ran forward to embrace his high calling in Christ.
Love is the only way your life will not be burdensome to you and others. And the commandment Jesus gave you to love one another is not burdensome but it is the royal law of liberty. It is the truth and the truth will set you free. I seek those who worship in spirit and truth. They are flowing in love, My love.
If living life for Me has become burdensome to you, if it has become painful toil, then you have lost your love for Me. How do you get it back? By worship and thanksgiving. It is the language of Heaven and it is where I dwell.
My Son told the church at Ephesus, “You have perseverance and have endured for My Name’s sake and have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” Revelation 2:3-4. They had not quit the faith but it had no joy in it for them, they were no longer excited about it. How did He tell them to get back in first love? “Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.” Revelation 2:5. First, repent, you have to change your mindset for you have begun to look too hard in a negative way at your life, resources, and abilities, as well as at the people around you. You must see things in the light of My love from a heavenly viewpoint where you are seated with Christ at My right hand. And be careful what you are listening to and with whom you are spending your time. Spend time in My Word and speaking My Word, singing My Word, shouting with joy. It will change your atmosphere. Burn-out comes from no fellowship or resting in Me. And then Jesus said to do the deeds you did at first. What is He talking about? Intimacy and fellowship. Think about people in love before they marry, they cannot spend enough time with each other, even doing nothing but sitting at a table talking together, they want to be always in the other’s presence, and when apart they think about the other with excitement and pleasure and send messages and gifts to each other. Nothing is too much to do for the other. And then when they are first married it is the joy of being constantly there with one another, but often as the years go on, the cares of life, financial burdens, work and family, they stop all that fellowship and barely speak but a few words or commands to each other. They work hard to keep the finances up to live in a good style but it loses its joy and even becomes a source of blame and bitterness. What happened to the first love? They forget the deeds they first did because they did not go to ever greater heights of intimacy, fellowship, and partnership. They no longer walked the same path.
Do you see? The love you have for Me now should far exceed when you first heard of Me for I am always ready to fellowship with you and share great revelation. Call on Me and I will tell you mighty things you could not know. Delight yourself in Me and I give you the desires of your heart. You may be in lack and dryness because you stopped worshipping and singing songs of praise and thanksgiving. David never stopped worshipping. In fact that is what he did after he had sinned with Bathsheba and things went wrong in his life. And that is what you need to do also.
Fan into flame the fire I have put in your heart when I poured in the unction of the Holy Spirit. All Jesus had to do was show Himself in the Word to the depressed disciples on the way to Emmaus whose hearts were cold having experienced the crucifixion and death of Jesus, instead of remembering His promise of resurrection, and had given up hope. But Jesus showed them the Word and the promises therein concerning the Messiah and fanned those cold hearts back into hearts on FIRE! And they ran with joy to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples that they had seen the risen Lord Jesus. They wanted to set the whole world on fire. And they did.
You may be in a place now that is pulling you down out of your first love, and you are in pain and saying, “LORD, where will this all end?” and you are thinking of death as the only way out, but take courage, for I will tell you right now how it will end if you will put your trust in Me and worship, IT WILL END IN A MIRACLE. You will have trials in this world but I have given you Jesus that you may live through and in Him, and He has overcome the world. Resurrection power trumps all and it is in you now. And love is stronger than death, it is a relentless flame and a consuming fire, and love never fails. It is time to make LOVE your first love and fan that fire back into flame. For I AM LOVE. There was a reason that bush was burning where I revealed My Name to Moses. And Moses ended full of that fire too.
Have you ever worshipped long enough to be caught up in My love? It lifted Paul up to see the third Heaven where I dwell. And whether he was in or out of the body he did not even know.
I love you. LOVE IS THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING. And love worships and gives thanks.