Keep Your Love On!

It is undeniable that loving the way that God loves is part of our inheritance. 

• We are called to love: "God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." (1 Jn. 4:16)
• We have access to love: "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Rom. 5:5)

We have been given everything necessary in order to love like Jesus loved. It is God's heart to make provision for us to love like Him, but His provision includes the choice to do so or not. So once we understand that we possess everything needed to love the way that God loves the only thing left is to "keep your love on". I'll explain that more in a second, but first it is important to keep in mind that this requires a conscious decision to be others focused, even in the face of inconvenience to yourself. Loving like God means that "counting others more significant than ourselves" (Phil. 2:3) is a necessity. 

If you have been a Christian for any length of time you know that daily we come face to face with the decision to deny ourselves in light of serving others, and if we are being honest we have all blown it a time or two. What many have failed to understand is that these daily opportunities are a major part of our inheritance as well. These opportunities are not just random happenstance but were actually designed in wisdom by God for His children to walk in (Eph. 2:10), and thus they need to be stewarded well.

So how does a believer steward well over their inheritance of those daily opportunities to love? I believe the answer to this question is found in "keeping your love on". This is what I believe the apostle Paul is communicating in 2 Corinthians 6:11-13 where he tells the Corinthian church that his heart is "wide open" but that they are "restricted by their own affections" and that they are to "widen their hearts also".

Paul walked with an incredible measure of discernment and wisdom regarding God's supernatural avenues of victory over the schemes of the enemy. This is one of those instances where we get a glimpse into what Paul saw was happening in these people that he loved so much. What Paul recognized was that the people of the Corinthian church had become self-focused - meaning they were worried, anxious, fearful, self-centered, etc. Basically, they had turned inward and thus restricted the flow of God's love through their lives to alter the environment around them - especially the lives of people. This is one of the enemies tactics - he desires to make you self-focused by attempting to steer you towards worry, fear, doubt, etc. Satan knows that by doing so your affections will be closed off and you will hinder the anointing of God's love from affecting the lives of those around you. But, in the words of Paul, "that is not the way you learned Christ!"

When Paul encourages the Corinthians to "widen their hearts" he is saying that they no longer have to live under the weight of deception. Instead they have been equipped to both enjoy and impart the love of God, provided that they are not turned inward, but rather they live "wide open" - AKA they "keep their love on"!

My conviction is that if together we would live with our love on, this world will experience the love of God through His church the way He intends it. We owe the world an encounter with Jesus - an encounter with the great Lover of our souls. Each and every person was fearfully and wonderfully made with a desire to love and to be loved, and prepared before us today is an inheritance of opportunities for us to live in that reality as well as usher that reality into the lives of others! So if you haven't already: turn your love on and keep it that way! There is no better way to live!

The Holy Spirit is Your Friend!

“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you. And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment…” (Jn. 16:7-8)

You will find these verses above to be red letter in your bible – meaning that it was Jesus Himself that said them. He was teaching His disciples about the person and work of the Holy Spirit just hours before He would be lifted up on a cross while bearing the weight of all sin on His shoulders. Listen; when Jesus said to His disciples that it was to their advantage that He would go because then the Holy Spirit would come He was not exaggerating in the slightest. As followers of Jesus it is important that we comprehend why!

“the Helper...”

The bottom line is that the Holy Spirit has been given to us in order to help us – which is great news! His willingness to help us in everything is beyond measure; He simply waits for our surrender.

“He will convict the world…”

Jesus goes on to describe three aspects of the Holy Spirit’s ministry in our life. Don’t be troubled by the word convict, it simply means that He will convince us of certain truths about God. The Holy Spirit is in the business of persuasion, not accusation. There is one who sits in the seat of accusation, and I assure you that our God is not him (Rev. 12:10, Jn. 3:17).

1. First, the Holy Spirit desires to convince us that sin is destructive – it is deadly. This is a foundational revelation of the Old Testament: that the wages of our sin is death. This persuasion of the destructiveness of sin is the only way that you and I could become aware of our need for a Savior! Praise God for the persuasiveness of the Holy Spirit concerning sin!

2. Second, the Holy Spirit makes it His mission to convince you of your righteousness – your right standing before God through Christ. The realization that you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus (2 Cor. 5:21) is just as supernatural as the realization that you were once lost. Many believers are so conscious of their old sinful nature that they refuse to embrace the truth that they have been declared righteous! The nature of sin is to always cling to hopelessness and shame; it always gravitates downward, never upward. That is the disposition of the mind that is not under the control of the Holy Spirit. If this describes the way you think about yourself, now is the time to surrender to the righteous persuasion of the Holy Spirit!

3. Lastly, the Holy Spirit has been sent to continually remind us that the ruler of this world (Satan; Jn. 12:31, Jn. 4:30) has been judged - that Satan has been crushed under the feet of Jesus! He is an outlaw and no longer has authority over our lives. Come on, that is good news! Thank you Holy Spirit for convincing us of the demise of our enemy!

All this being said, the Holy Spirit is your friend and you have no reason to be afraid of Him. He has been given to help you to live victorious in Christ. The abundant life that Jesus promised can be yours through an intimate friendship with God, the Holy Spirit.