We love, because He first loved us. 1 John 4:19.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אֱלֹהִים) says:
Love is never finished. Love has no end. Love is always new, but it is from everlasting to everlasting.
The LORD appeared to me from afar, saying, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness. Jeremiah 31:3.
Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were born or You gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. Psalm 90:1-2.
No beginning, no end, Love is the great I AM.
One Word from Me can open up your destiny and that one Word is love, for as you follow Me, directed you will be along the pathway for your life.
Love is everything. Love looks like Jesus. For love consists in this, not that you have loved Me but that I have loved you and given you Jesus as propitiation for your sins.
Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life. This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do. Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. John 17:1-5.
And that glory did not stop with Him, all He has is yours and all I have is His, so by the Spirit you have all I have through Him who emptied Himself to make you rich according to My riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. John 17:22-23..
Would you like to live the glorious life of love? I am offering it to you, and I have promised it to you. It is your promised land that I promised you before the world began in Christ Jesus in My everlasting Covenant of love.
How do you find this promised land of glory? Let Me show you the Way for love is your promised land.
Let us go back to the shadow and type of which Jesus is the substance. And you know to what I am referring. Just as you are rescued and redeemed from the slavery to sin and death that is in the world by the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, so My covenant people Israel, the descendants of Abraham to whom I had promised the land flowing with milk and honey, were rescued and redeemed by Me from the slavery to the worldly, pagan nation of Egypt by the blood of the lamb at that first Passover, and led by My glory to the promised land through the wilderness. I want you to learn how to enter, for only two of the first generation that I rescued and redeemed out of Egypt entered their promised land, but the vast majority did not. You can learn from them and from My Words about why that entire generation except two failed to enter and enjoy My rest.
I rescued them by great signs and wonders and redeemed them by the blood of the unblemished lamb. Once they were out, I did not pick them up and plop them down in their big homes and vast estates in the Promised Land. I led them through the wilderness so they could receive My Word, learn My ways, and get to know Me personally so they would be fit to enter. That had to leave the slave mentality and learn to reign in life through Me as kings and priests.
“You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to Myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Exodus 19:4-6.
I gave them the plan for My dwelling place among them and a wealth of materials with which to build it so that I could travel with them, dwell among them, and lead them to the land that I had promised to them by covenant oath many years before with Abraham their father.
I led them by My glory cloud that would hover over the Holy of Holies in the innermost court of the Tabernacle and then lift and lead the way whenever they were to break camp and go forward to the land I had promised. And today I lead you through the wilderness of the world by My Holy Spirit dwelling in you, Christ in you, your hope of glory. For those who are in Covenant with Me through Jesus are indwelt by My Spirit, the glory cloud Himself.
Like you, they were rescued and redeemed from slavery and condemnation by the blood of the Lamb, ate the lamb’s flesh with unleavened bread, were healed and well provided for (the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous), triumphed over their enemies, were called to all be My royal priesthood (though they turned this down, only the tribe of Levi proved faithful to qualify for the calling), and received My Word to cleanse and purify their minds and their words so that they would all know My ways. And I supplied the bread of life (manna) for them every day to sustain them on the journey. And when needed I poured water for them out of flinty rocks.
But with all this they never entered the land I led them to for their glory. Why?
They had a faith failure. They did not mix faith with My promises of victory. Faith comes by hearing and hearing My Word but not everyone listens to what they hear with their heart. If today you hear My voice, harden not your hearts. Like the first parable My Son told, the seed of My Word that fell on the hard footpath that the devil stole immediately. My Word cannot plant in a hard heart. You have to receive the implanted Word for it to grow and produce in your life.
Let us look at what happened that kept a whole nation of people who basically believed in Me from enjoying the destiny that I had planned for them before they were formed in their mother’s wombs.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you. Jeremiah 1:5.
This people I rescued and redeemed out of Egypt, gave in to complaining, fighting, pride, fear, and anxiety. They had been slaves all their lives and had never really had to take initiative to do anything other than what they were told to do by force. And set free of that control, they became unrestrained but worried about who was providing their livelihood if it was not their slave masters. So they constantly tested Me, though they had seen My works, to see if I would provide for them or not. Often, they threaten they would return to Egypt where at least their masters gave them fleshpots to eat from. And yet I rained down Manna every morning without fail and sent quail up on the camp in the evening if they asked for meat, awlthough Manna was a perfect food.
This was not faith. This was belligerent bullying of Moses and of Me. It did not please Me. And your complaints, worry and anxiety do not please Me either because it makes you rebel against My promises and doubt My goodness and leads others to do the same.
Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, here your fathers tried Me by testing Me, and saw My works for forty years. Therefore I was angry with this generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, and they did not know My ways’; as I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’” Hebrews 3:7-11.
For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief. Hebrews 3:16-19.
Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. Hebrews 3:12.
They were not able to enter because of doubt and unbelief. I opened it for them and gave it to them, but they would not take it. Please notice I called the wilderness a time of testing them to see if they would learn and be faithful, but they turned it around and tested Me. They found Me faithful, but I did not find them so. And where did I tell you that they went astray? In their hearts. I called their hearts evil and unbelieving, hearts that fell away from Me. Faith is of the heart. The Word has to unite with faith in your heart to be fulfilled.
You believe in your heart and speak with your mouth. They never spoke the plan, they never spoke the victory, because it never got in their hardened hearts.
What is the solution? Hold fast to your confession of faith for Jesus is the High Priest of your confession. In Greek the word translated “confession” is “homologia,” which means speaking in complete agreement. Speaking like words to Mine.
Now I want you to listen to the Words with which I responded to their words at the edge of the land I had promised to give them when they refused to go in. They had just heard the negative reports of ten of the spies sent in saying that the land was rich and fertile just as I had described but that the people were giants there with walled cities and next to them My people seemed as grasshoppers and that was how they saw themselves. And they told the people, against My Words to them, that they would never be able to take the land but the giants there would consume them.
Then all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night. All the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron; and the whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become plunder; would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?” So they said to one another, “Let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt.” Numbers 14:1-4.
Caleb and Joshua, however, though they had been with the spies spoke differently. They agreed with Me and said the giants in the land would be as bread to them which they would eat up in battle and win just as I had promised. Joshua and Caleb further assured the people, “Their protection has been removed from them, and the LORD is with us; do not fear them.” Numbers 14:9. But the people would not listen and tried to stone them.
And, due to the intercession of Moses I forgave them, but I did respond to their words.
“I have pardoned them according to your word; but indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the LORD. Surely all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned Me see it. But My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land which he entered, and his descendants shall take possession of it. Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites live in the valleys; turn tomorrow and set out to the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea.” Numbers 14:20-25.
They saw My glory, My signs and wonders, and My provision and yet they put Me to the test ten times. They spurned Me by not listening to My voice, they despised My Words as meaning nothing compared to what they saw with their five senses, but even that they colored with their own view of themselves, which they found later was not the view of those in the land.
I traveled with them and showed Myself to them on the holy mountain but they never cared to learn My ways. My ways, as David sang, are lovingkindness and truth. Grace and truth. Love and faithfulness. They rejected Me. They rebelled against Moses. They were never grateful for all the good I did for them. They even complained about the Manna that sustained them with no work and no cost in perfect health. Their feet did not even swell in the desert all those years. And I gave them perfect climate control by the cloud and the fire and kept them in perfect protection.
Are you grateful for the good things I give you? Or do you complain about everything constantly? Your job, your family, your boss, your in-laws, your health, your appearance, and I could go on. Do you speak against My promises saying you are not healed, and you are not blessed? Do you speak as if you have nothing when everything is yours in Christ Jesus if, like the Israelites, YOU WOULD ONLY TAKE POSSESSION OF YOUR POSSESSIONS.
The LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, “How long shall I bear with this evil congregation who are grumbling against Me? I have heard the complaints of the sons of Israel, which they are making against Me. Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the LORD, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will surely do to you; your corpses will fall in this wilderness, even all your numbered men, according to your complete number from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me. Surely you shall not come into the land in which I swore to settle you, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. Your children, however, whom you said would become a prey—I will bring them in, and they will know the land which you have rejected. But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness. Your sons shall be shepherds for forty years in the wilderness, and they will suffer for your unfaithfulness, until your corpses lie in the wilderness. According to the number of days which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day you shall bear your guilt a year, even forty years, and you will know My opposition. I, the LORD, have spoken, surely this I will do to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against Me. In this wilderness they shall be destroyed, and there they will die.’” Numbers 14:26-35.
By their words they had condemned themselves from entering the land I had given them. Not by My Words. By your words you are acquitted and by your words you are condemned. For the mouth speaks from the heart’s abundance. You have authority over your own life. I want to help you but there is a point when I must let you go your own way if you will not turn back to Me. I knew their hearts and they would not draw back. So I gave them up to the hardness of their hearts and let them have what they said, i.e., that they would rather die in the wilderness than enter the promised land. It grieved Me. They limited Me, but I could not fight their stubborn hearts.
What are you speaking in My hearing each day? Is it something I can work with to prosper and heal and bless you? I watch over My Word to perform it.
But now let Me tell you what the real problem is. It is not enough to say it was a faith failure, it is beyond that to the very root of faith. The real problem was love. THEY DID NOT KNOW ME AS LOVE. They saw Me more as adverse to them in that I could hurt them or could prosper them, but they were not sure which I would do at any given moment, in fact, they generally spoke the evil result. And yet they had seen My great love and care for them at every moment.
But if you are not sure of someone’s love for you, that they are acting with your well-being and best interests in mind, you cannot trust them. They had no faith in My constant and consistent love for them. What more could I do for them that I had not done? I had rescued and redeemed them from slavery by devastating the Egyptian nation for them, brought them out wealthy and healthy—laden with silver and gold and not a feeble one among them. I parted the Red Sea and drowned all their enemies in one of the most strategic battle strategies ever accomplished. I fed them, clothed them, protected them, gave them My Words and laws that were just and amazing, did wonders without number for them, and gave them creative artistic skills to build beautiful things for My dwelling among them. I traveled with them and kept them close to Me as My special treasure.
And yet they constantly complained about the journey and were constantly questioning whether I would see to their needs. They did not trust Me, they kept testing Me to see whether I would prove true or not. They kept accusing Moses of bringing them out of Egypt only to make them suffer and threatening to rebel, get another leader, and return to the slavery of Egypt.
And most people, even after all I do for you in Jesus, are still that way. They hope I will heal them but are not sure I will. This is an insult to My face. They are testing Me. I have promised you so many times, even given you My Covenant Name of the LORD YOUR healer but you still test Me in this and blame Me for illness, which was NEVER in My plan for mankind.
The problem is not just that the Israelites did not love Me, the real problem, and the reason behind their lack of love for Me, was that they did not know and understand My love for them. They had not come to know and believe in the love I had for them. And therein lies the key to a wonderful wonder-filled life. Love. Knowing Me as love. The love of your life.
We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear because fear involves punishment and torment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. 1 John 4:16-19.
If you do not believe I love you, you cannot put your faith in Me, for faith works by love, until you know Me as love and you have opened your heart to love your faith won’t work.
There is no fear in love because fear has to do with punishment. Perfect love casts out all fear. I punished Jesus in your place. The Israelites never would have feared the giants if they had known and believed in the love that I had for them. If they had understood the blood of the lamb and the Word of My testimony to them.
Love consists in this, not that you have loved Me but that I have loved you and sent My Son as propitiation for your sins. I made Him who knew no sin to become sin on your behalf so that you could be righteous with My own righteousness. You can only trust Me if there is nothing creating a barrier between us, and sin did that. Adam never feared Me or hid from Me until he sinned.
Without love there is no faith between two people. For covenant to be established where each is assured of the other’s care there must be a love that is willing to die for the other. Each is willing to give his or her life for the good of the other and would rather die than be unfaithful to the other.
The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. 1 John 4:8-14.
I am the Most High. I am the Almighty. There is nothing too hard or too wonderful for Me.
And I am faithful to you. I so loved you I gave My Son to die for your sins so you would never perish but have eternal life. And if you notice, those who understood My love and what I have prepared for those who love Me, were willing to go into fiery furnaces, lions’ dens, prison, the sword, boiling oil, desert islands of exile, or gladiators arenas with no hesitation. Perfect love casts out all fear, even fear of death. For you know in life and in death I have you covered in love. You are with Me always and all I have is yours. That is covenant love.
“Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death. Revelation 12:10-11.
The Israelites had another problem as well, but it stems from not knowing My love and not loving and trusting Me. They did not love one another either. They never became a unified team that encouraged one another to go forward with the plan to take the promised land. They did not act as one body with Me. Each one was out to take the best for himself. Moses had to set up courts to settle the constant disputes and law suits they brought against each other because these disputes were way too many for him to handle alone.
They also divided into factions and rebelled against Moses and Aaron whom I had designated as leaders. They were hostile, proud, and disrespectful. They divorced their wives and sinned against one another. They could not keep the Ten Commandments from the day I gave them. No love. There is no law that needs to be imposed against true pure unselfish love.
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 God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. 1 John 4:20-21.
Though I offered a perfect life to them, the Israelites never enjoyed it. They never had the days of Heaven on earth I so wanted to give them in the beautiful land flowing with milk and honey full of beautiful homes, cities, agricultural and pastoral lands I had prepared for them in advance. And the reason? They would not listen to My Words and let them plant in their hearts, they never believed in the love I had for them though I showed them constantly, filling their lives with good things. They never were thankful but complained about everything. And what you do not value, you lose. They lost it all for no good reason at all except that they hardened their hearts to love.
And now I am offering you a glorious life of love. Your promised land is love. Will you follow the glory cloud across the wilderness to the promised land and make a spring of it?
Think if the Israelites had not only gone in to take the promised land but had also enjoyed and profited from the journey where they had Me all to themselves and were in a community of believers working on artistic projects, offering the fragrant sacrifices, and being taught the Word by Moses and the Levitical priesthood?
What if they had worshipped, composed songs to Me, and danced as they did after I had parted the Red Sea and brought them out of slavery? What if they had kept the Passover and not forgotten it? What if they had gathered with the silver trumpets and the shofar and made the joyful shout and the voice of thanksgiving their way of life? What if they had kept singing the song of victory and conquest of the promised land that Moses composed when they first left Egypt? Exodus 15:1-21. You would have seen a whole different outcome, the beautiful one I had planned.
But they would not.
How about you? Check your worship and praise level. Check your joy and thanksgiving level. I had to force the Israelites to celebrate together with Me by setting up MANDATORY feast days and festive holidays such as Passover, First Fruits, Pentecost, Trumpets, and Tabernacles. And every week I gave them the beautiful ceremonies of the Shabbat. They were very neglectful in keeping these. Do you celebrate life and the life in those close to you as well? Or are you a constant complainer and nagger?
I am offering you the opportunity to live the glorious life of love. Do not turn down such a great invitation. Do not be like the guests in the parable that Jesus told that were invited to the glorious wedding feast of the King’s son but spurned the invitation, being too busy with worldly affairs to come.
How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Matthw 23:37.
The question is: Where is your heart? Where your heart is, that is where your treasure is. But if you find the pearl of great price, you will not need to look any further. Come live in the light of My love. It will be amazing. If people only knew Me and what I have prepared for them, nothing could hold them back from Me.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was [l]raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:31-39.
Love alone is Heaven on earth and Love is what makes Heaven Heaven.
I love you. Do you know it? Let Me show you by showing you who you are and what you have in My Son. With length of days I satisfy you and show you My Salvation (Yeshuah). All My Covenant Names and magnificent promises are yours in Jesus. Do not spurn, do not neglect, so great a Salvation.