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by Rose Murdock Here’s the scenario. God says to love. We try. We do good things and say nice things because He says to and we don’t want to sin because we don’t want to go to hell so we try and be nice. We don’t always do so hot so we try harder. We get irritated at people because they are so hard to love. They make us angry. They bother us. They’re mean and sarcastic etc. The more we try and love them the madder we get at them, (and at ourselves), because we can’t do it. We can blame them and say, "They’re impossible to love. Only God can love them." Or we can get more and more down on ourselves and feel guilty because we can’t obey God’s commands. We start out with such good intentions and we end up in a messy, guilty, depressing, irritated state of existence. If you are at this point of a guilty, depressing, irritated state then you have learned a very valuable lesson. In fact, you’ve learned more then a valuable lesson you’ve learned a vital lesson. One that you must learn if you are going to get any further in your walk with God. "What have I learned? Just that I’m a miserable, rotten person that can’t obey God’s commands?" Yes. That’s a very important starting point. Once you realize that you can’t do it, that you can’t love people then you are in a position for victory. But don’t stop there or you will remain miserable and defeated. Before we go on, there are two things to remember:
The truth is that God doesn’t expect us to try and love people with our own love. We can only love with His love. We have no love of our own in terms of what God means when He says to love others. This was the message of the Old Testament. The purpose of the law was to be our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, (Gal. 3:24). In other words, to teach us that we can’t do it on our own, we need someone to help us. What does it really mean to ‘love’ anyway? To love means to be affectionate and to be inclined to do kind deeds. Love is about doing good things. And there’s a certain amount of emotion and feeling involved in it too. (Talking about God’s love-Agape). We don’t naturally have this love in a pure unselfish form in ourselves. We can only love others after receiving God’s love. We must receive His love first but it’s more then just knowing we need His love and saying we receive His love. It’s got to get down on the inside of you. We have to deprogram our thinking which has caused us to behave a certain way for so many years.
We must understand with our hearts what the love of the Father really is, (and is not), so we can truly begin to receive it into our lives. Only then will we have the kind of transformation in our thinking we need to love the way He intends. We all need love. We all crave it. Most of us have had very poor examples of the true love of God. We’ve been manipulated to behave in a certain way and when, (and only when), we behave that certain way do we get the "love" we crave from those we crave it from. This normally starts with parents and then goes on to friends, teachers, spouses, bosses, people in the church etc. If we behave a certain way we are "approved". We have "earned" the right of their attention and affection. You’ve got to get this out of your thinking right now that that is love. That is not love. And we try and convince ourselves it is love because we don’t want to admit that so many of the people we want to "love" us really don’t or haven’t loved us. We think that is too devastating of a thought that people don’t love us. They don’t--not the way God does, not with the kind of love we are craving. The love of people will not satisfy the craving in our heart we have for love. Only God’s love can satisfy that craving. Those around us may be nice to us, they may do good things for us, but ultimately we must receive love from the Father. We can’t look to people to satisfy our love craving. They may satisfy it temporarily. Especially if they are loving us with the Father’s love, (and not with manipulative deeds to get a certain behavior out of us). But even if they are moving with the true love of the Father, it should only steer us to His love and not get us dependent on them. Many people around us are doing the same thing we are and are looking for certain behavior out of us to make them feel "loved". People show it in different ways. Some look to have their ego fed. Some act like they don’t want your love, they want to do everything on their own (Which is actually a plea for someone to pursue them making them feel wanted and loved). Some out of guilt do every nice thing they can think of to get you to say something good about them. Some will be sarcastic or critical in an effort to get you embarrassed about yourself so you will try and get their approval because they feel if someone wants their approval then they must be worth something. It’s a twist to them looking for approval from you. There are a zillion disguises for the craving of God’s love and we have mastered our attempts to disguise our need for it. Actually, the devil has mastered the disguises to keep us from recognizing our need for God’s love and receiving it.
We have to recognize that we have a need for His love. Then we need to realize that the only thing that will satisfy our craving for God’s love is His love. We need to see Him, His love and ourselves the way He sees us and not the way our past has told us it should be. In the New Testament, you can go through and read the places where it talks about God’s love for us and you will find a few very simple points (If you do this, resist the urge to read about your love towards God and others, just focus first on His love towards you). Here are a few highlights: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16 For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. John 16:27 You may read that verse and say, ‘hold on, is He holding out His love for us until we love Jesus and believe in Jesus?’ No. He already gave His love when He gave His son. The Greek words here in this verse, (John 16:27), are not ‘agape’ but ‘phileo’ which means to be a friend, to be fond of and have a personal attachment and affection for. Once we respond to His love (agape) which was shown in Jesus dying on the cross for us, then we respond back to Him and begin a relationship, a friendship with Him. This verse is saying that the Father loves, (is a friend), to us because we have loved (been a friend) to Jesus. Again, we don’t earn the Father’s love but we do begin a relationship with Him by responding to His love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:9,10 We love him, because he first loved us. 1 John 4:19 Isn’t it interesting that the disciple who is called, ‘the one who Jesus loved’ wrote more about love then anyone else? By receiving Jesus’ love he developed a great understanding about the love of God. We love Him in response to His love for us. We love Him because He first loved us. How was the love of God given to us? Through Jesus. First of all, we must receive the love of Jesus. Jesus loved us by coming and dying for us. Love is an action. Love does kind deeds. Jesus loved us by dying for us. We cannot receive the Father’s love apart from Jesus and we cannot love Him apart from Jesus. Before we can have any hope of pleasing the Father by loving the way He commands, we must receive the love of Jesus (Which is really the love of the Father because the Father sent Jesus, but it’s shown to us through what Jesus did). Then, in response to that love, or you could say with that love, we love and believe in Jesus and keep His commands to love as He loved us. There’s two steps here after receiving His love. You love Him in response to His love, then our of that heart of love for Him you keep His commands and love. Don’t skip the step of receiving His love and don’t skip the step of responding first by loving Him before others. You don’t earn this love. You just receive it and express it back to Him. It’s like a husband and wife who love each other first and out of their love for each other they become intimate and produce children, whom they then love. In the same way, we develop a love relationship with Jesus and the Father through Jesus before we can ‘produce children’ or love others. Then and only then can we keep His command of loving others as He loved us. How did Jesus love us? With the Father’s love. He loved us out of a love for the Father and with the love the Father had given to Him. He also loved us out of obedience to the Father, to please Him. That is how we are to love. The same way. In response to His love for us and with the love that He’s given to us. In obedience to the Father and a heart of pleasing the Father. You love your spouse, your parents, your co-workers, your friends etc., with the love the Father has loved you with. You love them out of a heart of wanting to please the Father because you understand and receive the love He had for you in sending Jesus to die for you. After we receive the love of Jesus, only then are our hearts made pure and then the Father can come along with Jesus and ‘make their abode’ with us. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. ... If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. John 14:21, 23 God’s desire has been to have a love relationship with us. To fellowship with us like He wanted to do with Adam and Eve in the Garden. With the nation of Israel, the love and mercy of God was founded in God’s covenant with Abraham and God’s people keeping His commandments. The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations; And repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face. Deuteronomy 7:7-10 The people knew and understood that His loving acts and mercy were dependent upon their keeping His commands. Sometimes they forgot this but circumstances had a way of reminding them. Time and time again it was proven that His people could not obey His commands. They would end up getting caught up in worshiping other gods and participating in the sins of those nations around them. You could say they would end up in a messy, guilty, depressing, irritated state of existence. God would raise up a leader who would tear down the idols, the people would repent, God would forgive them and they’d be restored back to where God wanted them to be. But none of those leaders could do what Jesus did for us. Because of God’s love for us while we were still sinners , before we had done any good thing, before we had done anything to ‘earn’ His love, before we kept any of His commandments, He sent Jesus to die for us. Knowing that for His people to stay in relationship with Him it had to be from a heart of love. He knew we had no love in ourselves. He knew we had nothing in ourselves that we could reach Him with so He sent us His Love. We had no way to purify our hearts in order to touch Him. The only way is through Jesus. He is the only way we can be cleansed of our sin and selfishness so we can reach God and have a relationship with Him. Ask the Lord for a greater understanding of His love for you and receive it. There’s absolutely nothing you can do to earn it so don’t try. Be sure that you’ve received His love for you before you try and love those around you. God Bless you and have a great day!
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