The Love of God
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September 20, 2015 |
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 "We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" (1 John 4:16).
Senior Pastor Dr. Jaerock Lee
If you dwell in His love, there is nothing to fear and nothing you will be short of. Even though you don't have a high degree of intelligence, education, knowledge, money, or any background of value, God will take care of you if you completely rely on Him.
Anyone can experience answers and blessings in God's love if he or she keeps His commandments and lives in the truth. Now let's delve into God's love in detail.
1. The love of God is the love that waits for us to change.
From Luke 15 we can understand what a father's waiting is like. A man had two sons, and one of them required his inheritance in advance and went to a distant country. He probably had a dream to become successful in a new place. But the reality was harsh. He was not successful at all. But rather he indulged himself in dissipation and wasted all his fortune. When there was famine in the land, he could not even get the feed that was given to pigs.
Now he began to think about his father. He thought, "In my father's house, even the servants have enough food, and I am starving to death here. I should go back home." Of course, he could not expect for his father to forgive and accept him. Seeing him return to his father being in such a poor condition, he might just drive him away. Perhaps he might have already just erased his second son from his mind.
But the heart of the father was completely different from what the son thought it would be. The father gave him the inheritance money because he demanded it so vigorously, but since the day the son left, the father was not at comfort for a single day. He watched the way out of the village and waited for his son to come back. The problem was not about the wrong the son had done. It was because it was his beloved son and he couldn't give up on him. He was not waiting to scold him for his wrongdoings. He was waiting to take off his old and dirty clothes and put the best of clothing and shoes on him. He was waiting to throw a big party for him.
Then, what about the heart of God who prepared all things for us and created man according to His image? He waited for us to accept Jesus Christ, receive the Holy Spirit and change. He waited for us to eventually come to understand His heart, too. When we change into His true children, what God wants to give us is New Jerusalem.
He is waiting to share the glory of the beautiful heaven that He made with all His wisdom and power.
2. The love of God is the love that endures for a long time until we change.
There is earnest hope in God's waiting. He can endure to the extent of His earnestness. To endure is not just sitting back and waiting for the things to turn out the way you want them to. Endurance must be accompanied by equivalents in effort and responsibility.
As God has been cultivating human beings, He has suffered from so much sorrow and pain. One of the believers said he began to lament as he was reading the Old Testament about the Israelites during Exodus. He said he couldn't understand how people could complain so much against God and worshipped idols though God showed them such great power. But another believer said, "Brother, it is not just sons of Israel, that's what we were before we changed," and he couldn't argue.
True. It's not just the sons of Israel that forsook the love of God even after experiencing great things and receiving so much grace. Anyone whose heart is not changed by the truth would do the same. Yesterday they praised God but today they complain. In the face of hardship they soon complain, and if they don't get their answers to prayers quickly enough, they lose all the grace they received.
If your fullness of Spirit is not as much as before and if things of the world come into your sight, you first have to look back at your believing life. You have to check whether or not your fervor for casting away sins has cooled down; or whether your worship and faithfulness have become mere formalities.
But in many cases, if they lose the grace, they easily put the blame on others or the circumstances rather than looking back at themselves. They do not dare to openly complain against God, but they secretly harbor hard feelings against Him. In such moments, they want to believe the words of temptation rather than trying to follow goodness.
Even though they experienced one hundred miracles of God, if one thing does not agree with their thoughts, they completely forget about the one hundred miracles. Even if they remember, they begin to think it was coincidental. This is an attribute of flesh.
God sometimes had to let justice be served like in the cases of Noah's flood or Sodom and Gomorrah. If there is foot-and-mouth disease or avian flu going around, we cannot save the animals. In a spiritual sense, if the sin reaches a limit, there's no other choice and no further chances can be given. But even then, God does not easily punish us saying, "I've given you so many chances and I have no other choice now." Even when physical parents have to punish their children with a rod, their hearts are broken. And how much greater would God's mourning be when He sees the souls going the way of destruction?
Romans 8:26 reads, "In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." When the believers are too weak to live in the Light, the Holy Spirit also suffers with groanings too deep for words.
When God sees His children commit sins and suffer from trials caused by Satan's accusations, He suffers the pain with them. Such pain has been stored up in His heart for thousands of years. As written in 2 Peter 3:15, because of the love of God who has endured all those pains for a long time, there are countless fruits of heavenly kingdom.
3. God's love is the love that believes we will change.
The reason He can wait is because He believes His hopes will be fulfilled. If farmers don't believe there will be great harvest they won't sow the seed. You give birth to children because you believe that they will grow up well. If you invest all your life savings in a certain business, it means you believe business will be successful. If you think it could go wrong, you cannot invest all you have.
God began human cultivation because He believes in us. Though Lucifer betrayed Him and Adam disobeyed Him, and even at the cost of giving up His only begotten Son on the cross, He still fulfills the providence of human cultivation. It's because He believes in us. The disciples that were left in this world had various kinds of weaknesses. But Jesus believed that they would change and even be able to become martyrs. Because He believed this, He took the cross with joy.
The Lord is preparing your heavenly houses because He believes in you as He believed in His disciples. Until He meets us there, He doesn't even eat, drink or enjoy any festivity. He is just interceding for you and me in prayer.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, God and the Lord never cease to protect you while watching over you with eyes like fire and They believe that you will become God's true children. God never doubted that so many souls would come forth as fruits of New Jerusalem in this end time.
This faith, hope, and waiting will not change until the Lord comes back, and God will surely fulfill His providence. I pray in the name of the Lord that by remembering His love you will become precious workers who fulfill the providence of God at the end time.
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