The Love of God

The Love of God 

My goal in this blog is to point you in a direction with hope that you will take the time to study the scripture and search it out. At the end of the blog I will give you a few scriptures to get you started, but this subject is so vast and it’s a truth that needs to be studied, meditated on, and prayed about, it needs to become a revelation that impacts our entire being. We need the revelation of the love of God. 

Recently I had an experience where God began to show me how He works through love in a profound and powerful way. Without taking the time to share the entire story, I have a friend who was caught in sin and the Lord asked me to approach him with a heart full of love. Knowing that the bible says “We love because He first loved us”-1 John 4:19 I began asking the Lord to fill me with His love for my friend. After spending a couple days talking to the Lord about the situation and allowing Him to fill my heart with love rather than judgement or frustration, the opportunity to approach my friend presented itself. Long story short, I met with my friend and God came in power and radically impacted both my friend and I, the landing pad for His Spirit and power was love! 

In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul talks about Spiritual gifts at work in the church and how we should desire them. The gifts of the Spirit are an amazing way by which the church is edified and the world is encountered and impacted by the Spirit of God. Paul transitions into the next part of his conversation at the end of 1 Corinthians 12, by making this statement. “But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.” – 1 Corinthians 12:31. What is that more excellent way which Paul goes on to talk about in 1 Corinthians 13? It’s the way of love! Paul is saying that we should desire Spiritual gifts, so don’t hear me saying we shouldn’t, but an even better way, a greater way by which God’s life and power moves is through the way of love. 

Often we in church have fixed our eyes on faith or hope and missed the importance and the power of God’s love at work in His people. As I read about the love of God in the scriptures I find that faith and hope work in a very profound way through love. It is as though you can’t know the love of God without it producing faith and hope in your life which also causes the gifts of the Spirit to work through a person in a dynamic way. 

Think about it, if you know how much God loves you and how much he loves others, you will be filled with faith and hope. It won’t be difficult to believe that God wants to and will work in and through your life, that it’s His heart to be one with you and one with everyone you meet. You will have faith that God is wanting to encounter and change the life of each and every person, that they might know Him. Love is so powerful, Paul said “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”—1 Corinthians 13:13 

We see faith and hope is a part of love: 

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”—1 Corinthians 13:7 

Faith works though love: 

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.”—Galatians 5:6 

The foundation and confidence for our hope is the love of God: 

“And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” —Romans 5:5 

Over and over again the Bible makes clear the power of God’s love at work in His people. So I encourage you, search it out. Talk to God about it, start at the scriptures above and go from there. May a revelation of God’s love transform each and everyone of our lives. I leave you with this passage: “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”—Ephesians 3:14-19 

~Timothy Glasgo