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LOVE IN THE LORD

This may be too long to read all at once. It is all the articles I wrote under this heading. Please read at your own pace. If you do not finish come back again next time you visit.Please try to practice what you learn.

LOVE IN THE LORD 1

 JESUS LOVED ME THIS I KNOW......
 
 

Do you remember the song? Yes indeed, he loved us! But if we know that he loved us this much why do we still struggle with loving our fellow brothers? And if we fail to love our brothers do we hope to be ever able to love our enemies as he commands in his word?
 
As Christians we often struggle with this issue of love and yet our relationship with God is based upon love. The bible discusses love very widely and that being done with indepth into the topic. But still we as bible reading Christians still struggle to dish out this emotion.
 
First of all we should realise that we were brought back to God by his grace and his love for us. The bible, in our everyday verse John 3:16, talks about how God so loved the world that he gave his only son that we may have eternal life. This shows us that man was faced with eternal death before Jesus died for us.So we can see how love saved us from what we couldn't have saved ourselves from.
 
People say that we are struggling with love because we are people of flesh and blood and therefore we have a weakness, I say that is utter rubbish! For how long have we been hiding behind this 'flesh and blood' excuse? When God command us to do something  he does so with the knowledge that we can do it, flesh and blood or not!
 
Now, it happens that some people were born again because of fear of hell. We used to be told stories(very scaring ones) about hell then we were blackmailed with hell to be born again. While this was not in any way wrong, it still helps to know of God's love for you as his child.2Thes 2:16 says ; May our Lord Jesus Christ who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope....
There is also John 3:16
 
When we sin against God we go against his will and therefore do not deserve his love.But Him because he is God continues to love us Rom 5;8
 
Now I urge you to search for God's love in every aspect of your life. You are reading this message because he gave you the air you are breathing, food to sustain you and even the opportunity to be sitting in front of this computer! God's love is shown in every aspect of our lives and it is only after acknowledging it that we will feel obliged to try and love him back.
 
One powerful man of God once said "God knew that our hearing and sight would not comprehend the amount of love with which he loved us. That is why his blessings affect our whole lives, eg Calvary."to be continued.....

LOVE IN THE LORD 2

 
CONTINUED!!!!!! 
Now that we see that God has loved us what do we do in response for that love?
I believe the first thing that we should do is to turn away from our sins and accept Jesus as our Lord and saviour. This step goes far in showing  God how much we appreciate his love. It tells him that his son did die for a purpose. Giving our lives to Jesus is accepting the gift of eternal life he offered on the cross. At calvary, not only did he ensure eternal life for us. He also freed us of pain and disease bcause the bible in Isiah 53:5 says:    ......and with his stripes we are healed. So surely if we are in our right minds we will see the need for us to acknowledge and return the love of  God.
 
Now the question arises: Is accepting Jesus as our Lord and saviour enough for us to say " We have done our part. He saved us, we acknowledged his love and thanked him for it now it is good" ? Certainly NO! Look at it this way we accepted him as our Lord and I hope we all love him for whom he is ( our Lord and Saviour). Now this would mean that we are his servants and we should be waiting for his command and serve him diligently. This being out of respect  and even more importantly love for him. When you serve someone you love, you don't see that as being a burden to you but rather you delight in it. That is the way it is supposed to be with the way we serve the Lord! This is why I want us to know and feel the love with which God love us and try to find in our hearts love for him. Now since we are his servants, what does he command us to do?
Deutronomy 6:5 says: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. 
Now, this is a command! We are supposed to love God with all our hearts,mind,soul and might. What does this tell us? It tells us that whereas we might love the Lord for what he did at calvary, we should also love him because he commands us to do so in his word. This is one of the powerful commands in the bible. I mean where would you go with hating God? NOWHERE! This being because he created that same heart you would be trying to bear the hate in!
 
Meditate on this today: Finding deep in your heart the love for God.
I can assure you that once you begin to truly love him you will see that there is no burden in leading a good christian life.
TO BE CONTINUED....... 

LOVE IN THE LORD 3
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In the past article I wrote above the first two steps through which we can respond to God's love. We should at all times remember to read God's word and live according to it. In this article I will only deal with the issue of love. This does not mean that it is the only important issue in our christian lives. Other topics will be covered by the mighty men of God in the guest pages. And other issues will have their own pages as the time comes and the Lord ministers to me and other contributors of this website.

God also commands us to love other human beings. Leviticus 19:18
  Matthew 19:19   Matthew 22:39   Mark 12:31    Luke 10:27   Romans 13:9
Galatians 5:14    James 2:8  The bible in these scriptures tells us about how we should love our neighbours. Now it keeps saying that we should love them as we love our selves.

One of the principles that we get from the passage  above is that we should love ourselves. We have to compare the love by which we love our neighbours to the one for ourselves, which means that if we do not love ourselves it will be difficult to know how to love our neighbours. Do you really love yourself? You were wonderfully and fearfully made by God , so appreciate what you are and thank him for making you as he has done. Psalm 139:14. Now, after  establishing how much you love yourself, dish out that love to your neighbour!

Many a time people ask themselves "Who is my neighbour?" 

Well, let us look at it this way. Have you ever been in church and heard the preacher say " Turn to you neighbour and  tell him 'It is good to be in the house of the Lord tonight' " ? Have you ever heard them say that? The person sitting beside you at that time is your neighbour! This applies even in classes, combis, parks and everywhere where there is people. So go out there and love people because the bible tells you in so many a verse to do so.

Jim Reeves sings:' If ever your life is lonely,if ever you're feeling alone. There is one thing you must remember , a stranger is just a friend you do not know. A one smile can bring the two long. A one Hi! can make it all. There is no need of being lonely, a stranger is just a friend you do not know.'

So I urge you to take the words of this song and go out there and start reaching out to people. Let the love for other people be felt where ever you are because God commands you to do it. Now ,I sometimes hear  saying "Love just comes, you can't make yourself love someone" This is what I like to call utter rubbish. The bible in Matthew 19:19 does not say the love for thy neighbour shalt come upon thee. No! it just commands us clearly to love our neighbour. This shows us that it should be of our own doing!

Next time I will be talking about loving one's enemies.

LOVE IN THE LORD 4

This will most probably not be your first time to hear that we should love our enemies. Remember, we did not deserve the love God loved us with. We had turned against him and we deserved to be his enemies but he loved us so much as to give his only son for us.

 

Missed Love in the Lord 3? Click Here!

I was thinking about this the other time. Why does God command us to love those who do us wrong? Why doesn't he give us the powers to harm them and get rid of their annoying beings? But then  this came to my mind.

1- Never ask God why because you might not understand his reasoning. Why ? I said never say why! But because He is God and he looks at the overall picture( a picture so complex that no human being will ever get to undestand).

2- We should love our enemies so that we don't revenge against them. This being because revenge has never been sweet as the world says. How can you feel good after doing a bad thing to someone? (Well, if you do then post a prayer request in the guestbook because you need some serious praying for!)

But we should love our enemies because Jesus Christ (who is God himself) said that we should love them. Luke 6:27. Not only should we love them but we should do good to them.

There are good reasons for loving ones enemy.

1- You will be knowing that you are doing what commanded you to do.

2-You will be allowing hatred no room in your heart.

3- You will not waste much time planning on revenge but you would be using the time to plan on doing something good for the person.

4- Your good works may minister to the persons heart and bring one or more lives to the kingdom of God, (therefore celebrations in heaven).

Bretheren, let us go out into the world and love those whom we have been taking as our enemies.

"The only way to completely getting rid of your enemies is by making them your friends"Unknown source.

LOVE IN THE LORD(final)

Final article under this heading.
 

Well, we are comming to the end of this series. This does not mean that I have written all there is to be known about the love of God.No, this is just a very tiny bit of all there is.We are still going to see more of the topic more especilly under the feature pages. Please use the guest book to tell me wherther the article has helped you in anyway.
 
 
I was suppossed to be writing the summary for the whole series in this article, but it is not going to be so, because I have aburning issue in my heart concerning this issue of love. The issue is about love in the church.
 
As christians we sometimes take this issue for granted. Where there is love there should be fellowship and where there is fellowship love abounds. It is common to hear people say I fellowship at such and such a church. Now, my question is: Do you really fellowship or do you just go there to receive a sermon and go?
What do I mean by fellowship?
By fellowship I mean friendship. I mean getting intimate and knowing each other, trusting each other and having that warm atmosphere of brotherliness.
This is one valuable aspect that the church should promote because if people don't find frienship in the church they will start to seach for it in the world. And in the world they will find it. The world has realised that to keep someone you have to provide them with intimacy and they provide people with what I would like to call false friendship. this false friendship is more like fattening for killing .
 
What are you doing to promote friendship in the church?
A lot of times when we get to church there are some people we like sitting next to.While this is not in any way wrong we have to be careful that we are not alienating others. I will not talk much on the forms of alienation that I have observed going on some of them being done by me. But every time you see someone you haven't met at church before, try to reach out and dish out some friendship. I am writing this because friendship is one of the relationships based on love.And we are supposed to live lives of loveEphesians 5:2 because the God we serve is love1 John 4:8.
 
With that I would like to urge you to make church a warm place for some one. This week make sure that you make atleast two new friends at church.
 
This is the last of these series of LOVE IN THE LORD. This is not all there is about love in the Lord. You will be getting more from other people still in this website.(Remember , we have a guestbook, go there and meet other christians)