Seeking Jesus First - Sept. 21, 2023
These three remain, faith, hope and love and the greatest of these is love.
Faith, Hope and Love have always been at the core of relationship with God - especially on His end.
People are pretty good at focusing on other things.
Love: No-one can come to God unless He calls them. Until the love of God speaks, we have no ears to hear with.
Faith: Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the ‘rhema’ or revealed loving word of God.
Hope: Hope makes us unashamed because the love of God floods our hearts by His Holy Spirit which He has given to us.
For God so loved (LOVE) the world that He gave His only begotten son that whoever believes (FAITH) in him should not perish but have (HOPE) eternal life.
Love is understood in this, not that we love God but that God loved us gave His son as a propitiation for our sins.
Faith is the gift of God that allows us to receive what His love did for us. This and the fact that God is full of promises and good will toward us fills our hearts with hope.
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you (LOVE), says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope (HOPE). Then you will call (FAITH) upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you (LOVE). And you will seek Me (FAITH) and find Me (HOPE), when you search for Me with all your heart.(FAITH, HOPE AND LOVE)” (Jeremiah 29:11–13, NKJV)
Faith, Hope and Love are laced into all of God’s loving word. We are encouraged again and again to us the faith that was given to us to access God and all that He has for us. Faith, Hope and Love are keys to the kingdom of God.
When our help is delayed, we do not need to ask God why. We just need to remember His love for us and the hope that He gives us in His promises. Then we just need to believe and speak according to His word.
Ask God what to do and do it. And when it works out for us, give Him all of the credit and praise for the victory.
Confession time: I have boasted in my faith or in the faith of others. I have told people what I did in faith to receive from God. This is good if it is giving God the praise and glory. But if it magnifies self instead of God, we may find ourselves in a dry place for a while. God gets all of the glory. He shares His glory with us, but we give it all to Him. When He shares His glory with us, bask in His grace and love, but reflect all of the glory back to Him.
We need to come to grips with the fact that faith is the gift of God. We have faith because He gave it to us. We have hope because He made a promise. We are able to love because He loved us first.
Therefore, anything we do by faith glorifies God. We were able to do it by faith because God gave us the faith to do it.
When we are children, we think we are doing things all by ourselves. We learn to brush our teeth or stop wetting the bed. We start cleaning our own room or making good grades in school. And we see our accomplishments as things we have done ourselves. But when we are wiser, we look back and see all of the people (not to mention God Himself) who have helped us all along the way. It is wiser to praise The Creator and Giver of Life. It is wiser to give thanks to the people around us who have helped us. We take our rewards and lay them at the feet of those who have helped us.
The focus for believers is faith, hope and love. Of course, the real focus is Jesus. But in the kingdom of God, these three remain, faith, hope and love and the greatest of these is love.
“Father, thank You for Your love for us. Thank You for Your loving word that gives us hope. And thank You for the gift of faith to draw near to You and obey You. I set my affections on You Lord and on things above. I lay all of my crowns at Your feet. Anything good that I have accomplished in my life, Your grace has done it. I welcome You, Holy Spirit, to lead and teach me. I am Yours God and You are mine. Thank You, Abba. I am abiding in The LORD Jesus Christ and His words are abiding in me, so I am being transformed into His image by the glory of God.”
“We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father,” (1 Thessalonians 1:2–3, NKJV)
“But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,” (1 Thessalonians 5:8–9, NKJV)