June 22

“…This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it” 2 John 1:6

The scriptures labour at length to teach us all about that which is necessary for us to fulfil the will of God. In this verse we are taught that we can only truly love God, when we are obedient to Him by walking in His commandments! Many, in their own versions of the Christian faith, have divorced the necessity of unrelenting obedience unto God and His Word, from any evidence of our love for Him. They have made loving God a mere ‘fuzzy, warm feeling’, akin to what we may feel towards a favourite song, picture or other comfort; an emotional, temporary response to God, based on how we feel at the time. Given the ‘right’ circumstances, today we might ‘feel’ love for God, but not so much tomorrow, when the circumstances have changed, and the comfort or ‘warmth’ is no longer there! Such ‘love’ for God is at best a poor imitation, and is not a reflection of the true love, which the scriptures teach we are to have for God. In God’s economy, obedience to His Word, His directives, is the way we can measure and determine the reality and quality of our love for Him. The text also insists that God’s standard on this has not changed. The commandment of God, meaning His entire revelation to man through His Word, His entire counsel on how we should live our lives and please Him, has been the same from the beginning! Keeping His word then means to obey what He says we should do, make it our life, walk in it and reflect it in all our directions and dealings. It means determined obedience, even when it is not comfortable to do so, when others mock, disagree or disapprove. By walking in God’s commands, we are not making our obedience and therefore love towards Him, an isolated instance or once of condition. Walking intimates a continuing process, an ongoing exercise and a progression towards a goal or direction! Love for God is the greatest motivation for our service unto Him and cannot be based on the whimsical nature of human feelings. It is directed, strengthened and supported in response to the obedience we give the Lord. Our relationship with Jesus grows nearer and closer as we willingly  yield more of ourselves to His will and ways! What a privilege to know the Lord and to have the benefit of His word to teach us how to love Him the way we should!

http://www.pentecostalfamilychurch.com.au/devotion

June 21

“…as Christ also hath loved us…” Ephesians 5:2

The Holy Ghost through the Apostle Paul here instructs us to walk in love, in the same manner that Christ loved us. The high calling of the believers in Christ includes the privilege, honour and responsibility to demonstrate to one another and beyond reasonable doubt, the kind and quality of love that they have learned and experienced from Jesus. The love of Christ is open, manifest, constant, selfless and available to all. When such qualities are evident in ‘our’ love, we are approximating the example of Jesus and delivering a true message from heaven to those around us. It is noteworthy that we do not actually have anything like true love of our own, that is, in our natural fallen nature. Any love which is morally appropriate, godly and scripturally correct, is therefore a reflection of what God has imparted to us, and of what we allow Him to work through us. The best exercise we can enter into when considering love, is to look to Jesus and observe closely His pattern of love. The purity, altruism, gentleness and firmness of His matchless, unparalleled love, strikes our hearts with a sense of reality and causes us to long to be more like Him! We cannot imitate His Omnipotence, or His Omniscience and are limited in our physical ability to be in more than one place at once - but we can all learn to love more like Jesus does and follow the example He gave us! This is doubtless one of the ways by which we can most readily emulate the Lord, His manner and life. It is within the reach of every believer, and every day brings to us ample opportunities to practice His love. He told us this was His new commandment, the one by which others would identify us as His true disciples, that we would love one another by the standard and quality of His love! Even our love for God is quantified and qualified by the love we hold for each other! I think we can all readily admit that we are thoroughly challenged by the benchmark He has set for us, and that we all, even when we have been at this for a while, and may have made some progress, have yet a long way to go!  

http://www.pentecostalfamilychurch.com.au/devotion

Jan 4

“…Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” Matthew 22:37

There is ‘wholeness’ in the command by which Jesus summarised the early portion of the Decalogue, in this passage. The love we owe the Lord, is a wholehearted, whole-soul and whole-mind kind of love. Yielding only part of ourselves is not sufficient in achieving the correct and close nature of the relationship He desires with us. Contenting ourselves with half-hearted commitment to God, thinking that a ‘little’ of God in our lives is enough, and assuming that the Lord is pleased with such whole-less-ness, is a sorely mistaken notion and a largely misplaced effort. Nothing short of a complete yielding of ourselves in love and the willing effort to achieve this state throughout life, is pleasing to the Omnipotent God we serve, or worthy of Him. The command appears to be a high calling and it is, but it can only be that way, for to have anything of anyone in higher regard, love or esteem in our lives than the Lord whom we call our God and claim to worship, is to have entered into our own form of idolatry and spiritual adultery! Some actually justify their reticence to love God as He commands, for fear of becoming or being seen as ‘fanatical’! Sadly the same individuals often display a greater ‘fanaticism’ for many material aspects of life and do not find this misplaced affection a concern or a bother! There is also the tendency to mistake the object of our love and as a result to love Christianity more so than Christ and humanity more than the human individual. Loving God as He commands, is a far cry from empty headed and imbalanced fanaticism or merely generalised and religious affection. Committed love for God is godly, holy, balanced, humble, wise and kind. It portrays the principles of the faith firmly and lovingly and does not ‘lord it’ over others. In context it would be better for believers to fear far more, being too much in love with the world and the things of it, than too much in love with Jesus! It is our duty, privilege and joy then, to have the highest quality of love for God and hold it as supreme,  above all care and regard for all else in life. In the fulfilment of this command to love God with all the desire of our heart, all the passion of our soul and all the strength of our intellect, we will find the greatest contentment and personal fulfilment and the wisdom and power to carry out the other portion of God’s law – to love others as we love ourselves.


http://www.pentecostalfamilychurch.com.au/devotion