Wisdom from God’s Word – Pt 1
“Getting wisdom is the most important thing you can do. Whatever else you get, get insight.” Proverbs 4:7 (Good News Translation)
As we transition from knowing and loving God through His Names to our Identity in Christ series coming up in a few in the next few weeks I will be sharing simple but powerful nuggets of wisdom from the Truths and Principles of God’s Word.
We want to bridge that gap from knowing and loving God in Christ to knowing and loving who we are in Christ…our identity in Him…and that Bridge is LOVE! We wrapped up the series on the Names of God last week with the 2 most powerful Names…God is Truth and God is Love!
I pray that these devos over the next few weeks will encourage and challenge you and either way they bless you in your walk with Christ as Savior and Lord.
Love is a commitment, an act of the will! It has many emotions attached to it, both good and bad, but is defined by our choices. It is the bridge from God to us!
“If you love me you will keep (obey) my commands; just as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples: if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35).
“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and follow His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. For whoever has been born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world: our faith” (1 John 5:2-4).
How well are you loving God and others out of obedience and commitment to His will and commands?
Love does not exist apart from God. Try as we may and even with the remnants of love that we try to share in our flesh as being created in His image…we fall short. The Bible tells us clearly why this is so and how we can love.
1 John 4:19 simply and clearly states, “We love (only) because He first loved us.” I added the emphasis (parentheses) to make the point that we so often fail to grasp and then try to live and love in our own flesh and strength. The only way we can truly love is by God’s indwelling presence in and through in Christ and His Holy Spirit.
We can have great passion and emotions, attraction and feeling, and yes, those are remnants of love in our flesh from our fallenness. But Love as a faithful commitment, chosen freely and acted upon with no expectation of return is found only in God’s agape (selfless, sacrificial, self-giving love that prefers Him above all else) in Christ.
Do you know Him and His Love? If you do are you sharing it with others. If you don’t, contact us at loveandlordship@gmail.com for more.
We’ve been looking at Love and the Only Source of it in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as our final Names of God revealed to us! His agape love is far different than what we call love in our humanity and flesh. Only in Him and by Him can we truly love. So what does that look like?
In a recent devotional time, Oswald Chambers in “Still Higher for His Highest” refers to The Love Chapter, I Corinthians 13 and then states the following, entitled, and I love this title even as the world and culture can’t stand it…
“The Discipline of Love” (more on this next week, Lord willing)
“First Corinthians 13 is the description of how Christianity works out in a man’s actual experience. Love is the sovereign preference of my person for another; (remember that agape is Godly love that works out in me as I prefer Him over all else…mine and added) my love for Jesus Christ means that I deliberately identify myself with His interests i other people—and the Lord is interested in some funny folk (I just have to look in the mirror to see this…mine and added). Jesus Christ demands, if I am born from above and have inherited His disposition, that I show it, not to fictitious people, but to the people I live beside. Our Heavenly Father has an amazing sense of humor; He will bring across your path the kind of people who manifest to you what you have been to Him. If you have been obstinate, that is why you have got that fellow around you just now, and Jesus says, “Show him the attitude I showed you.” That is experimental Christianity with no humbug (love that word because it reminds me of “A Christmas Carol” and Scrooge…mine and added). It means showing the disposition of Jesus Christ to the man who deliberately wrongs you, and it takes some doing.”
Are you loving those closest to you (spouse, children, family, church family) and those He places in your path and you in their path just as Jesus loved you? Even your enemies? We can only do this if He is Savior and Lord of our life.
Love and Lordship…Food for Thought – Love is God and only found in Him with remnants in our character of being created in His image. However if we are not in a relationship with Him through Christ in faith by grace then our love grows cold…for Him, our self and for others! This can’t be for those of us who claim to be saved and disciples of Christ!
Love and Lordship…Action Item –
- Read the Scriptures in this article and ask The Holy Spirit to teach you.
- Write down what each of the Names of God in this post mean to you.
- What did you learn about God from His Word in today’s post?
- How will you apply what you’ve learned about His kind of Love…the only real Love that exists?
Contact us at loveandlordship@gmail.com to find out more about how you can know God the Father, Christ His Son and The Holy Spirit.
Check out this week’s Love & Lordship Mentoring Minute Video