God Speaks More About Love

Have you found love? For thousands of years, mankind has been on the search for love. Throughout the

centuries, countless books, poems, and songs have been dedicated to the subject of love. In more recent years, the Beatles declared, "All You Need is Love", but "Can't Buy Me Love". Robert Palmer was "Addicted to Love", while Elvis Presley, "Can't Help Falling in Love". Stevie Wonder says he "Just Called to Say I Love You", while Tina Turner asks, "What's Love Got to Do With it?"  Whitesnake and Foreigner are still searching, asking "Is This Love?" and "I Want to Know What Love Is". The group Roxette is confused about love as they proclaim, "It Must Have Been Love". Diana Ross and Lionel Ritchie have an "Endless Love", while Whitney Houston (and previously Dolly Parton) "Will Always Love You". 

Well, I have news for the world! I have found love....and it's not in the form of a book, song, or poem. It's not in the form of a person, although I do find love in some people. The love that I find is the truest form of love and that is in the form of God. To re-title a few of those popular songs: The Beatles might declare: All You Need is God's Love and Can't Buy God's Love (Because It's Free). From Robert Palmer and Elvis Presley, I'm Addicted to God's Love and Can't Help Falling in Love with God. For Tina, God's Love Has Everything to do With It. To answer the questions of Whitesnake and Foreigner: "God is Love". Roxette has a good handle on it, it WAS love that caused Jesus to come to earth and then die for our sins. Diana, Lionel, and Whitney were correct if they were proclaiming about God's Endless Love because He Will Always Love Us. 

God's Love came to us as a baby, grew to be a man Who told others about His Father, and then died our spiritual death for us as a free gift. All we need to do is accept it! This Love is Endless; God will always love us. His desire is for us to be with Him after our physical death, but we must accept the free gift He has given.  John 15:13 says, "There is no greater way to love than to give your life for your friends." Likewise, John 3:16 proclaims, "For God expressed His love for the world in this way: He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not face everlasting destruction, but will have everlasting life."

My prayer for you today is that you will find the one true love that is God and accept His free gift of Jesus. His love is THE Love for which you are searching. God does not ask us to do anything difficult to gain this love. It is freely given if only we accept it!

God Speaks Love

Are you ready for Christmas yet?  Have you been able to get your shopping started? Will you get together with family this year? Is that all there is to this holiday? 

This past Sunday was the second week of Advent at our church and the theme was love. What a great time of year to talk about Love, especially if we can focus on the Love that God has for us. God's love for us is displayed in many ways. First of all, the simple fact that God created each one of us means that He loves us. 

"Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life." (Psalm 143:6)

He is also available to us at all times of the day, 24/7, 365(6) days of the year. Also because God made each of us, He knows all about us and cares for us. God knows what we need, sometimes when we don't even know what we need. God does not want any harm to to come to us or our families. This also means that God is working on our personal life events and desires that nothing but good comes to us. 

"Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." (Lamentations 3:22-23)

If we ask God, He will provide direction for our relationships with others. As mentioned in the last post, God thinks about us and rejoices over us in singing. These are all great examples of how God shows His love! (adapted from 10 Ways God Shows His Love For You! POSTED ON JUNE 1, 2017 BY DEBRAPEDROW)

The best example however, is when God sent His Son, Jesus to earth as a baby. Can you imagine the sacrifice made by Jesus Himself for us? Jesus was already in Heaven with God and He knew God's plan of salvation for each of us. Jesus willingly came to a dirty, sin-filled earth as a humble baby to begin a very rough journey of love for us. 

"and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." (Ephesians 5:2)

He was born into a world of sinners, many of whom treated Him unkindly, and endured 33 years before offering Himself as the ultimate sacrifice and bridge for our entrance into Heaven. God the Father suffered for us by sending His Son out of the safety and "wonderfulness" of Heaven and into the wicked world. Not only that, God knew that the mission for Jesus would require great suffering on the part of His Son. Parents do not typically send their children out of safety to a place where they will suffer, but God did. Both God and Jesus sacrificed even more by the death on the cross. 

"But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)."  (Ephesians 2:4-5)

When Jesus died, because He had consumed the sins of the world (the Bible says He BECAME sin), God had to turn His back on Jesus. 

"He orchestrated this: the Anointed One, who had never experienced sin, became sin for us so that in Him we might embody the very righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21)

As a parent, I cannot imagine willingly turning my back on any of my children. Imagine Jesus too, at the time that He needed His Father the most, God turned His back because He WAS sin. Fortunately, this was a short-lived occurrence. Once Jesus released the hold that the devil had on those He loves, Jesus went back to Heaven. Still, God and Jesus willingly made these sacrifices in order to save the ones they love....anyone that calls on the name of Jesus for salvation!  Remember this Christmas season that the cute little baby, whose celebration we await, became SIN for us, so that we would be able to celebrate Him for eternity!

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." (John 15:13)

Life--"Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die;" (John 11:25)

Obedient--"And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!" (Philippians 2:8)

Value--"For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come."  (1 Timothy 4:8)

Eternal--"Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." (John 17:3)

God Speaks Love

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What is love? According to merriam-webster.com, love is both a noun and a verb. As a noun, the first definition of love is a strong, affection for another from kinship or personal ties; attraction based on desire; and affection based on admiration. As a verb, love is defined as holding someone dear; to feel passion for; and to take pleasure in. These are some of the ways the world has come to understand the word LOVE. The website mentioned above actually has about nine definitions for love as a noun and four for love as a verb.

In classic literature, love seems always to be determined through both celebration or tragedy and almost always based on feelings.  In literature, there tends to be the "happily-ever after" love where the two characters meet, fall for each other, break up, get back together, and get married. This seems to be the most common form of expression of love in movies and books. This type of love is often based on the feelings they have when around each other. Butterflies in the stomach; hearts a-flutter, etc.

Then there is the love based on tragedy. Romeo and Juliet is probably one of the best-known examples of this. Two characters secretly meet and fall for each other and in the end they both end up dead because they can't bear to be without each other. This type of love is also based on feelings. "I will never feel love again", "There is a hole in my heart". I am not discounting love with feelings. It is an essential part of life. Without feelings, we would all be rather robotic. My point is that, in the view of the world, love based on feelings is all that there is.

Kari Farnell

God and His Word beg to differ with this viewpoint. In The Voice translation of the Bible, there are 818 verses about love.  Many of them DO deal with a type of love based on feelings. The New Testament was originally written in Greek. Two Greek words used for love are philia or phileo, meaning friendship and eros meaning sexual love. These Greek roots you are probably familiar with. The word erotic stems from the Greek eros and the name of the city of Philadelphia has its roots in the Greek as well. That is why it is referred to as "The City of Brotherly Love". In the Bible, there are many references, especially in the Old Testament, to the eros love. When Adam and Eve first begin to "multiply"; when Abraham and Sarah had Isaac; and even in the Book of Solomon.

There are quite a few more examples in both the Old and New Testaments about the philia/phileo love. The most well-known example, found in both Testaments, is otherwise known as the "Golden Rule": Love your neighbor as yourself. Verses speak of the love between friends like Jonathan and David or even Jesus and Lazarus. Jesus even encourages us to love our enemies.

And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as he loved himself.

1 Samuel 18:3

and everyone noticed how much Jesus must have loved Lazarus.

John 11:36

But I tell you this: love your enemies. Pray for those who torment you and persecute you—

Matthew 5:44

The Greeks had a few more words for different kinds of love which I'm sure can be found in the Bible, but the word I want to focus on is the greatest word for love and that is agape. This type of love is an unconditional love. This can be described as a familial love as well. As parents, we hate it when our children screw up and do the wrong things. It disappoints, but it doesn't keep us from loving them. It might even anger us, but still we love them. The same usually holds true if our parents or siblings do something that disappoints or angers us. It doesn't cause us to stop loving them. We may not like them very well at the moment, but usually we still love them.

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This is the type of love that God has for us and that we should have for God. There are many verses in the Bible that describe and refer to this love of God for us. This type of love is NOT based on emotion or feelings. Unconditional--God loves us regardless. He may often be disappointed or even angry with us; but He does not stop loving us!  We are His children and because He is God, He loves us far beyond what any human could.  Even if we screwed up so badly that our human family no longer loved us, God would still love us! He so desires a loving relationship with ALL people that Jesus came to earth as a baby; grew up the same as the other children of that day; spoke with friends and strangers day after day to tell them of God's love for them; and eventually died on the cross, even though He didn't do anything wrong. Because humans do bad things, otherwise called sin (but God still loves us), and God cannot be around sin, Jesus took our consequence. He was sent to hell instead of us. This doesn't mean we no longer do bad things, it means that the consequence of those bad things, which was hell, is no longer a consequence for those that believe in what Jesus did, tell Him they are sorry for their bad things, and ask His forgiveness. It also doesn't mean that those who DON'T accept what Jesus did are free from the consequence of hell.

There is no greater way to love than to give your life for your friends.

John 15:13

But think about this: while we were wasting our lives in sin, God revealed His powerful love to us in a tangible display—the Anointed One died for us.

Romans 5:8

For God expressed His love for the world in this way: He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not face everlasting destruction, but will have everlasting life.

John 3:16

We know what true love looks like because of Jesus. He gave His life for us, and He calls us to give our lives for our brothers and sisters.

1 John 3:16

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The great news is that Jesus did not stay in hell. He paid our penalty and then came back. This gives us the assurance that we will come back to life after we die, either in heaven, if we accept Jesus' gift, or in hell if we don't.  More to come on this later. If you want to know more about this NOW, click here.

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So we can see there are many types of love in the Bible, but that the greatest love of all is the love offered to us by God. That agape love that we all desire is the love that God has for all of us.