About That Love Part 2

In previous issue, we gave you an explanation of love. To recap, Agape love is used of God to express the deep and constant love of a perfect being to entirely unworthy objects. The idea here is to realize that God’s perfect love has been poured out to us - the undeserving objects.

We see this with God’s Mercy and Grace.  If you deserved his Grace, it would cease being Grace. By the same token, we don’t deserve his love, but Praise God, we get it anyway. As a matter of fact, the more undeserving you are the greater candidate you are for the love of God.  If you are undeserving of the love of God, you are the target. You are the reason Jesus left heaven.  At one time, every one of us was lost. God sent Jesus for the lost.

Jesus left heaven for you. He went to the cross for you. That is the love of God manifest. 
Now, Agape love also produces this love back to the Father and also produces a practical love of those who are also partakers of that love.
There are three times in the bible that we’re told to love God. We are told to love our enemies three times also. We are told to love our neighbor, which, sometimes can be harder, four times.  The hardest one of all is to love our brethren and we’re told this 20 times in the word of God.
If you are born again, you have this same kind of love in you. It’s in there, you may need to develop it, but it’s in there.

Now what I want to talk to you about is being a mature believer in the love of God. God’s goal for us here in the earth is to bring us to total maturity, Amen?
How many of you understand that we are to grow up in Jesus?  That basically means to become like him, act like him, talk like him, walk like him, and minister like him.

That’s God’s goal for you. Once you’ve been saved, and baptized in the Holy Ghost, his goal is to bring you from a new born babe in Christ into a full blown son of the Most High God, just like your elder brother, Jesus. 
Our goal should be just like God’s goal and that is for you to mature. We tend to look at maturity from a different  angle that God does.

We look at people to see how much scripture they have memorized, or we look and see how much they pray. And here’s the deceptive one, we look to see how gifted they are, whether they could prophecy or not, whether all kinds of gifts are flowing through them. We’ll look to see how charismatic they are, how wonderful they are, how powerful they are and think that’s mature.

Now some of you may be going, huh? That’s not mature? No, that’s not mature. That’s not what maturity looks like. I’m going to tell you the gifts have nothing to do with maturity. A brand new, born again believer can prophecy, and by no stretch of the imagination are they mature in Jesus. Amen?
Now, scriptural memory work isn’t a sign of maturity. I’ve talked to some drunks before who could quote more  scripture than I could. Sometimes, they sit down in these bars and quote scriptures back and forth to one another, but does that make them a mature believer?

In 1st Corinthians 8:1, we read, “Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.  Now, we know that we have knowledge, but Paul here is going woopy doo.
Knowledge is puffed up, in other words, proud and arrogant. Would you call someone mature if you see them prancing around boasting and bragging about how much knowledge of the word of God they have? No, that’s not maturity. So, someone’s level of scriptural memory work doesn’t necessarily mean they are mature. 

The point I’m trying to make here is that you do need the word in you as much as possible, but I’m telling you the knowledge of the word without the love of God will bring pride into your life.  In the scripture above, knowledge is boastful but charity, or love, edifies. It lifts one another up, it builds up. So, someone with the knowledge of the word would use the word to build someone up and not to show off their    spiritual expertise, they wouldn’t  use the word to tear them down, or use the word to judge them.

Spiritually mature people will learn the word of God, they will prophesy, they will use the gifts, but their main goal is the love of God. Praise the Lord. 

1 Corinthians 13 is what we call the love chapter. Paul says here that even though he has all these things, even though he can prophecy, if he doesn’t have love, he has nothing. If you want to be something, you’re going to have to start walking in the love of God. Understand that there will be no reward for works done if they are not done in Agape- the love of God.

In His Love,
Doc