Mentoring Minutes

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Proverbs 9:10

As we continue to look at Love as the Bridge between God and us…both as we receive His Love and learn to love him, ourselves and others, we must pause to recognize why this is so…

God is The Author and therefore the Authority over all things. As we continue to focus on Who He Is, in particular that He is Love, we must pay attention to what He said and did to define and model love for us. Even His very definition of Authority is rooted in loving service (Matthew 20:20-28) and His modeling of it in Christ as God in the flesh as well (John 13:1-17).

So what does that say to us about Love? I think first of all we need to lay down our definitions of Love rooted in emotions, feelings, attractions and desires. Even though these can be and are part of love they should not define Love. We must find it in our willful acts of obeying Him and serving others. We touched on that extensively in last week’s post.

Here’s some food for thought, and hopefully life transformation, over the next few days…ponder what Jesus, The Author of Love, felt like in each of these situations and then apply His kind of real Love in your life and relationships.

1. How do you think He felt relationally on the night He was betrayed (John 13:21, 38; Matthew 26:31)? If Love were a feeling then He would have stopped then and there and found a new set of friends that made Him feel better. But Love is not a feeling, it is a discipline that we can only learn and grow in when we are found in Christ!
2. If love was a feeling then how could Christ love us after the emotion in the garden where He was in such anguish that He sweat drops of blood (Luke 22:44)? That’s Love! If love was based on feelings He could have and should have cut and run at that moment if He hadn’t already after all His closest friends abandoned Him (see yesterday’s post).

No, Love is commitment and as we will continue to see, The Author and Authority of Love, Himself, showed us clearly the reality of that Love in His commitment to His Father and to us.

Do you know Him? Do you know that kind of Love or only the rollercoaster “love” of emotions and feelings? You can know His Love. I pray you know Him and are growing in His Love and sharing it with others. Contact us a Love and Lordship if you’d like to know more.

We’ve looked at Love from the perspective of how Jesus felt relationally when His closest companions abandoned Him in His greatest moment of need. We’ve looked at how He chose to Love even in the mental and emotional anguish of hematohidrosis, sweating drops of blood usually caused by extreme stress which we know He was facing.

If Love were a feeling surely The Author of Love, Love Himself, would have said, “No way, this is not Love so I’m done.” But He continued to show us what Love truly is.

We continue with the questions and look at how He felt…and loved… even in social isolation and rejection?

Have you ever been the brunt of a group’s joke, or intentionally left out of social functions? Wonder how “loving” Jesus “felt” when the mob cried “Crucify Him!” Crucify Him!” (Matthew 27:22-23) just days after they had praised Him and laid their coats and palm branches before Him as a sign a homage and honor to royalty? (Matthew 21:1-10) How do you think He felt socially?

Surely this would be the “straw that broke the camel’s back” and He would respond in kind. Or how about when the guards mocked Him, spit on Him, tore out his beard and hair, He would recognize that Love would not need to go this far? (Matthew 27:27-31) How do you think He felt physically?

No, He responded in Love by remaining committed and not even opening His mouth at any time. His Love is Love and it goes far beyond and much deeper than how we feel. It is remaining committed to God, to others and to what is right, regardless of the cost…so others can see and know Him.

Do you know that kind of Love or is your love rooted in your desires, satisfaction, wants and feelings? Christ showed us what real Love is and you can know that and live that out in your marriage, family, friendships…even with your enemies (Matthew 5:44). If you want to know this kind of Love contact us at Love and Lordship.

I’ll continue next week with 2 more pressing questions that help us see Love as commitment, as a choice and act of the will rather than as emotions, feelings, circumstances and infatuation…it is so much more!

Love and Lordship…Food for Thought – How have you seen, defined and lived out love in your life and relationships? Is it based on your feelings, hormones and circumstances only…or is it rooted in commitment that stays the course when things get tough?  

Love and Lordship…Action Item – repeat the same questions from last week

1. Read the Scriptures in this article and ask The Holy Spirit to teach you.
2. Write down what each of the Names of God in this post mean to you. 
3. What did you learn about God from His Word in today’s post?
4. 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.

“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 –

1. Read the Scriptures in this article and ask The Holy Spirit to teach you.
2. Write down what each of the Names of God in this post mean to you. 
3. What did you learn about God from His Word in today’s post?
4. 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

“All the earth bows down to you; they sing praise to you, they sing the praises of your name.”  Psalm 66:4

I close this series on the Names of God with 2 names that express everything about Who He Is and what He does. It encompasses every one of the other approximately 75 Names of God that we have covered over the last 6 months… and remember our prayer is that you have come to, are coming to, or will come to know God and His great Love for you…and how to begin and/or continue to grow in your love for Him so you can love others in His Truth and Love. This leads us to our final 2 Names and the first we find in Nehemiah 9:17; 1 John 4:8…

El Hesed – God of Faithful Lovingkindness (Nehemiah 9:17; 1 John 4:8)

The word “Hesed” in Hebrew most closely represents The Love of God and its counterpart in Greek in the New Testament that we know as “Agape.” Simply put…

God is Love and The words or “names” in Hebrew for this description of God is “EL HESED – GOD OF FAITHFUL LOVINGKINDNESS” as found in Nehemiah 9:17; 1 John 4:8. Look at the descriptors that are encompassed in this name in the Nehemiah text… “ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and you did not forsake them.”

Isn’t that the kind of Love that you desire…that we all desire? It can only be found in God Himself as we see in the 1 John 4:8 text describing very plainly that “God is Love” and then again in 1 John 4:19, reiterating the principle found in vs. 8…only those who know God know love and we love “only” because He first loved us. This is nowhere more evident than in Christ!

This Name of God, “Hesed” is revealed in the New Testament as “Agape” as Love in Greek being rooted in God and means a pure love that prefers God above all others and from which His sacrificial, self-giving, selfless Love is derived. It literally means “to prefer God above all else.” In other’s words, our love for others has to be grounded and rooted in our love for God above everyone and everything else.

Once again and as always we find this Love in Christ. In His sacrificial life and death He reveals Himself as The Love of God (John 3:16; Romans 5:8; Ephesians 5:2)! In John 3:16, He is The Love that gave Himself to save the world (all who believe in Him); in Romans 5:8, He is The Love that gave Himself for us even while we were still sinners, and; in Ephesians 5:2, He is the perfect and pleasing sacrifice, because of His love for us, that satisfied God’s wrath against sin.

Don’t miss the power of these names and character traits that are all rooted in Love and our final Name of God. The world and many of our churches have proclaimed this “love” while falsely teaching “love” (actually lust of the flesh) and/or failing to teach in such a way that people truly know what this Love consists of and that we can only have by knowing God in Christ!

How much more love do you need to know that He is Love, that He loves you and He has given everything to save you. Won’t you put your trust in Him and receive His salvation by grace through faith?

You can because of Christ…and there’s no better way to wrap up the Names of God and Who He Is then with our final Name declaring just as with Hesed and Agape, everything He does is loving…this final Name declares that everything He says and does is Truth…and that’s the Name itself…

El Emet – God of Truth (Psalm 31:5)

“EL EMET – GOD OF TRUTH” He is Truth (Psalm 31:5).

Isn’t it interesting if you look at the version that I chose to link this Scripture text to that El Emet is described as The God of Truth and Faithfulness. How awesome is that His Hesed or Faithful Lovingkindness is tied to His Faithfulness in Truth! This is Who He Is and we would be wise to understand that He is both Truth and Love in everything that He does…even when we don’t like it or understand it!

This Name of God, Emet (Truth) is revealed in the New Testament where “Emet” is translated in Greek as “Aletheia” or Truth rooted in God and absolute. This is where we can find the foundation for Hesed/Agape as His Love is rooted in His Truth. He can be and do no other. Everything act of Love is Truthful and every point and action of Truth is Loving. Let that sink in because we have very much compromised both of these by making out His Love and Truth to be what we want them to be even as we read and share about them according to His Word of Truth. It is absolute and never fails…just like His Love!

Once again and as always we find this Truth in Christ. In John 8:31-32, we find that it is His Truth that sets us free…not His Love, although as I just stated, He can never separate Himself from either…so His Truth is Love and His Love is Truth! In John 14:6 He declares that He is The Truth (Aletheia) and there is no other! Now that’s ABSOLUTE! Do you know His Truth.

I must point out that so many are familiar with John 8:32 because so many messages and sermons have been preached on it and nearly every message I’ve ever heard on it says little or nothing about v. 31. The only way we can know His Truth…and know Him as Truth is by being His disciples as we remain in His Word. This is not only what reveals Him as Truth to us…El Emet – The God of Truth…but also allows us to know and grow in Him as Truth…and know that we are set free!

Again, as I close this series on The Names of God, my prayer is that you have come to know Him in Christ and are walking in His Truth and Love, sharing it with all that you are given the opportunity to do so. If you have you will understand why I reiterate that even in this fallen world everything He does is Truth and Love!

However, while these words, descriptions and Names of God appear throughout the Old and New Testament in numerous scriptures, I pray above all else that you remember this…God is Truth and Love and everything He does is Truth and Love…even when we don’t like it, when it doesn’t feel good and/or we don’t agree with it!  

If you don’t know Him as Truth and Love I pray that you will come to know Him.

Contact us at loveandlordship@gmail.com if you’d like to know Christ as Savior or know and love Him more as Lord! His Truth and His Love is LIFE…LIFE ETERNAL!

Love and Lordship…Food for Thought – He is El Hesed – The God of Faithful Lovingkindness! There is no other way to know Love but to know and love Him as Love and to know and Love Him! Jesus taught and displayed this sacrificial, unconditional, selfless, self-giving Love as God in the flesh in order that He could be our Savior and Lord. This is the only way to find Love! He is also El Emet – The God of Truth! Once again He reveals Himself as The Only Truth and Christ tells us the same in that He is The Only Way, Truth and Life…there is no other. The only way to know this is by spending time in His Word so you can know this Absolute and Only Truth! I pray that you do!

Love and Lordship…Action Item –

1. Read the Scriptures in this article and ask The Holy Spirit to teach you.
2. Write down what each of the Names of God in this post mean to you. 
3. What does it mean for God to be Love and Absolute Truth to you?
4. Reflect and journal on how you’ve defined and applied love and truth in your life and how that has aligned with (or not) God/Christ as the only Source of Truth and Love.

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