Just Stay for A While

John 15:9 “I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. 10 When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. 11 I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! 12 This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.13 There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. 16 You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. 17 This is my command: Love each other.

When we are born again there is a precedent set into place in our heart, our mind, and our will. The precedent that is set there is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Luke 10:27 The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ That new love given to us by Jesus is to remain in us and it is to generate everything our life does. If we do anything without this love we are "clanging cymbals" or just making a lot of noise. Paul wrote on this subject in 1 Corinthians 13: If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. We can put on a lot spiritual airs and be a “bag of air” without love being the source of what we do.

Love has become an easy word to say, but very difficult to live in our modern day Chrstian world. Terms like "love ya" seem to be acceptable to show we have love and then that same person who says it to you will stab you in the back, so.... Pretty empty isn't it? I guess a shortcut in realism might be where we leave a person, slug em, and then say love ya, so it will show just how meaningless the word means in the instance. Oh come on. Come back to reality. We even say things to cause more confusion by saying "love is an action." That is the total opposite of the 1 Corinthian 13 scripture above, so don't believe it when someone says it. Love is heartfelt and it comes from the depths of a heart that has been changed by the Holy Spirit. Gary Chapman writes about the five love languages and they are follows,Words of Affirmation - Saying supportive things to your partner Acts of Service - Doing helpful things for your partner Receiving Gifts - Giving your partner gifts sethat tell them you were thinking about them. Quality Time - Spending meaningful time with your partner Physical Touch - Being close to and caressed by your partner.

When we need to help married couples try to learn how to love each other we might be a little further away from the intent of Jesus' words than we need to be, much less loving strangers. I know some spouses who do the opposite of the above love languages and they speak those love languages more to others than the one they married. Now that is sad and very dangerous, and that is a contributing factor to the amount of Christian divorces that rival the world's numbers. When did we lose the love of becoming "one."

In the above verses in John 15 Jesus says to "remain in my love." His love looks a lot different than our love, but ours has the capacity to change....if we want it to. Remaining in the love of Jesus means we "consider" our neighbor more than ourselves. We are called to love like Jesus, not as a slave, but as a co-heir to the promises of God. The capacity to love like this is way beyond what we can do, so we rely on the Holy Spirit to give us that kind of love. We don't warp in and out of this love, but we "remain" in this love and that enables us to give this love. Jesus first loved us and then we love others. John wrote this in 1 John 4:19

19 We love because he first loved us.

Jesus gives us the ability to follow the commandment and He does this by showing us this love (the cross), guiding us toward this love (the Holy Spirit), and empowering us to love like this (children of God). To remain in this love means we have to buy in from our heart and that buy in looks like this. We must be born again, because without being anew in the Spirit the Spirit cannot change us because we don't have Him. Some call this the Spirit-filled life and yes it is a better life than a world-filled life!! The next thing we do is get to know what God wants and not try to analyze God but just follow Him and His ways. There is a tendency to try to prove who God is by some intellectuals and they might get all of the information, but without the Spirit of God it is lifeless and once again, a clanging cymbal. Paul brought it to our level in Ephesians 3:14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

So we see why we need to remain in the love of Jesus. We have to rely on it for every relationship, whether marital, or anyone else. His love is translated through our will and that will must bow to Jesus, for our love to be real and Christ-like. I have said this again and again our love must come from our inside and it will be real love if our heart is surrendered to God, because God is love. When I write these messages I experience Jesus telling me "David your opinion is wrong, but with my Word you can find the right way." Jesus has made it plain to born again believers what it means to continue in our salvation and part of that process involves change, which means we have to accept that change with a willing heart. We must have a heart that accepts His teachings, but especially His teachings about remaining in His love. Our lives depend on it. Paul wrote the following words to the church in Philippi in Philippians 3:12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

It is a pilgrimage to walk into truth and life. Live it!

Today's Message,

David Warren