For God Has Given Us a Spirit of Love

Over the past few weeks God has been doing a work in my life. A work which I can not even grasp the full extent of, but a work I will none-the-less attempt to explain now.

I think I shall start with a word that God gave me maybe 2 weeks ago-I was in a cafe reading my Bible, and I just had this inexplicable need to write the following down:

When did we stop being real?

When did Christianity exchange the Holy Spirit's fire for half-heartedness and a culture that prefers to push possibility and opportunity aside, rather than use the power that is ours to use-our inheritance!

"For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline"!

Jesus said we shall do greater things than He-yet we prefer to believe that this will always be the call upon someone else's life, rather than our own.

We are told to love God with our entire being-told that this is the commandment. Yet we live in a society consumed by a material and hedonistic lifestyle.

We are apart of a generation that suffers from higher levels of metal-illness and obesity than any other generation before us-but if we only lift our eyes off of our worldly surroundings and look to God we would find a love that surpasses understanding, that gives us freedom from fear and a new identity!

Why has Christianity become more about religion and less about relationship? And who deemed that we could judge another human being? Where does the second greatest commandment fit into this scenario?

For we are called to love others with the same love that God has shown us-not to judge others, but to give and love freely regardless of our brother's and sister's social standing, their 'sins', their jobs, their race, their sexuality, their beliefs.

We are called to live a life that honours God-not one that pulls others down so that we may be made higher.

For it says in Philippians "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped..."

When will we take our eyes off the small part of the canvas and look at the full picture? The picture that would show us that we are here to love. To live a life that reflect's Jesus' life here on earth. A life that casts aside religion and embraces our brothers and sisters in Christ with the same love that God has shown to us.

And honestly, to look back on that now, two weeks on-I don't think I truly had any comprehension of what it was that God had put upon my heart.

And it is this that God has shown me.

That God has the power to do great miracles-miracles of healing, of setting people free, of casting out the demons. And He has given us this power to through the Holy Spirit.

But the true power behind these miracles is love.

It is God's love that set's people free from mental illness, from guilt, from Satanic powers!

And He has has shown us this love!

And it just keeps hitting me. I have this love. God has shown me this love. He Loves ME.

And I have the chance-the ability-nay, the OBLIGATION to share this love.

For in His love I have found freedom, I have found meaning and I have found Life, and Life abundant.

And there could truly be nothing more selfish of me than to hold back on showing other people this love.

So where are you at?

Because where ever you are in life-God is there with you too. And He feels it all. And He wants you to know that He LOVES you.

And in His love we will find the unselfish nature that so much worldly love lacks.

And so it is this that I am learning, and never before did I believe that God's call over everyone of our lives could be summed up into one word. But it can! It is love. LOVE LOVE LOVE

And it's not a corny love, it's not cliché. It is a powerful, cleansing, all consuming love- there is no fear in His love, no conditions, no traps. His hearts desire is that the world would realise that He LOVES us.

It is a Furious Love that is fighting a battle over our hearts and minds, not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

*Insert Major Mind-Explosion*

(To most definitely be continued)

Courtney