Seeking Jesus First - Aug. 2, 2023
Love.
Unselfish love.
Un-manipulative love.
Where did this kind of love originate in a scientific, evolutionary, “survival of the fittest” kind of world?
Love
The kind of love that made moms famous for their desire to protect and their willingness to share.
But not the kind that made parents infamous for trying to control through lies and manipulation.
This kind of love originates with The Creator who has love as His core nature.
The Creator made us in His image. This is why we respond to this kind of love so readily. Our physical heart in our chest is not shaped like a Valentine heart, but our inner-man, the heart of every person, has a true desire for this kind of love. Our hearts can only be filled and forever satisfied with The GOD of LOVE Himself.
We temporarily fill the void with other things: Games, Food, Drugs, Alcohol, Relationships, Sex, Entertainment, Money, Possessions. These things distract our true desire for God’s love because they point us at a temporary lust of the flesh.
This is why “sin” is actually “missing the mark”. More accurately, sin is “missing the mark because of aiming at the wrong mark”. It is aiming at the wrong answer. It is going to the wrong source. It is focusing at the wrong target. When we try to satisfy our inner self with the thing we are dreaming about, we focus on the dream until we achieve it. Then we realize that the dream was a temporary filler as well. So we are either disappointed or we dream a bigger dream. Whether something is “good” for us or not is not the point. If we look to something besides a loving relationship with God to satisfy us or make us whole, we are missing the mark.
Stop for a minute and look at Jesus. He is the target and focus for true love and inner peace. Other dreams and desires are not necessarily bad. They are just secondary. With Christ in the proper focus, pursue your dream. Jesus will help you get there. Holy Spirit will comfort, coach, guide, lead, strengthen and protect you on your dream journey. With God, all things are possible. Without God, all things are vanity.
Christ Jesus refocused His disciples with the command to love one another as He loved them.
Apostle Paul made this command practical by telling us, “By love, serve one another.”
Neither one of these is possible until we have received God’s love. You can’t have the God kind of faith until you receive the God kind of love. Fortunately, the God kind of love is a free gift. God even gives us a partner to help us experience, grow in, and utilize the God kind of love - Holy Spirit.
Apostle Paul boiled the new covenant gospel down to three remaining things, faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love. If you grow in love, you grow in faith and hope. Love strengthens every aspect of your faith walk.
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:1–13, NKJV)
Are these thoughts the result evolution? Can this kind of love even exist in a world with no loving God present in it?
One of the most effective “proofs” for God is the existence of this kind of love.
Love conquers all because all wants to be conquered by love. Love starts with God. It flows out of Him like a never-ending river of life. That river flows around us and through us. Let it transform you and carry you along. Let love flow through you freely. Let it wash away all wrongs, hurts and offenses. Let the love of God flow through you forever without stopping it up. Let God’s love conquer you and you will experience the greatest life and freedom that is possible.