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THE
BLESSINGS
OF
RECEIVING
GOD’S
LOVE
A publication of
THE
ALLIANCE FOR CHRISTIAN
FELLOWSHIP INTERNATIONAL
An alliance of Bible believing Christians
seeking fellowship through a personal
loving relationship with our Lord.
WE KNOW THAT OUR LORD GIVES US HIS
LOVE,
BUT AS WITH ANY GIFT—ESPECIALLY
THE
GIFT OF LOVE—WE MUST ACCEPT IT.
FOREWORD
There is a sweet satisfying
companionship with the Lord that every believer needs every day
of our lives. The scripture reveals that the secret of
possessing this precious companionship is in receiving Gods’
love and returning His love. Husbands and wives, of course, do
this in varying degrees, but with God, receiving His love is
special because His love empowers us to overcome our old sin
nature. We then can actually return the love of the God of the
universe and enter into a real exchange of love. The friendly
companionship or fellowship that follows is the connection we
need to receive our Lord’s many blessings.
This little book is about God’s
many blessings and the recognition that they must be received by
receiving His love. It is true that we sometimes receive His
blessings just because we have a great need. But to receive His
many blessings, we must be connected to Him through a personal
loving relationship. His love is the foundational blessing for
all other blessings. When received, His love becomes a channel
for all of those other blessings. With this channel of
blessing, we can be and become all our heavenly Father has in
mind for us in this life and the life to come. If you are a
born-again Christian and want to “go on” in the Christian life,
this little book is for you.
THE
BLESSINGS OF RECEIVING GOD’S LOVE
The blessings of God are the
manifestation of His marvelous grace and are greatly desired by
all of us. But Christians everywhere have needs and desires
that are unfulfilled even though they know from the Bible, that
our heavenly Father loves us and is most desirous of blessing
us; “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think”
(Ephesians 3:20). And yet, most of us settle for a bare minimum
of the blessings God has stored up for us. Why is that? The
answer is best exemplified in children.
A teenager that has not learned to
love and respect his parents has only a surface relationship
with them that sometimes becomes hostile—there is very little
communication between them. Without communication, there is
very little guidance for a young person that is not very capable
of living life successfully.
The parents can put a roof over
his head and food in his mouth—things that are necessary for
anyone, but that is where his blessings end. Without
communication, that teenager receives no wisdom or guidance or
character training—things that are necessary to live life
successfully.
Communication is the channel all
parents need to bless their children. Well, it is not different
with our heavenly Father. His great desire to bless us
physically, emotionally and spiritually is frustrated by our
failure to develop a personal loving relationship with Him.
Without that, we are like a teenager with no communication—no
channel of blessing.
There was a time in my life that I
looked at God as a thing hung up in heaven somewhere. I did not
realize that He is more of a person than I—that I am a person
because He is a person. The Bible says that “we are made in His
likeness” (Genesis 1:26-27)—that we can love and be loved by
Him. To receive God’s love and love Him back is a blessed
thing, but more than that, it is the greatest channel of
blessing in the whole universe. With the personal loving
relationship that is the result of this exchange of love, we are
not only heard by God, but we can hear Him. We can then receive
guidance that leads us right into the plan that He has for our
lives.
The Bible says that our heavenly
Father has a plan for each of our individual lives. To fulfill
that plan is nothing less than ultimate success in life. The
more we allow Him to lead us into His plan for our lives, the
more He is able to bless us physically, emotionally and
spiritually. It all begins when we receive His love and begin
to return His love. Out of the relationship that follows, we
can go from some blessing to abundant blessing, but we must not
fail to receive God’s love. Receiving God’s love is the most
important thing we can ever do—it is the key to knowing God
personally and the key to receiving His blessings.
Receiving
God’s Love
Today all over America, to one
degree or another, devastation occurs in families and individual
lives because all of us tend to offer human love in our personal
relationships. But it is God’s love that produces the fruit of
the Holy Spirit, which is joy, peace, long suffering, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians
5:22-23). These are the character qualities our Lord wants us
to have. Anyone of them is worth more than any price we could
ever pay.
Can you imagine a personal
relationship between a husband and wife breaking down if these
qualities are present? Certainly a teenage child would behave
differently in the presence of these qualities. Many people
expend a lot of energy in a great show of human love, but if
they are not giving God’s love, the relationship breaks down.
The result is indifference, quarrels, divorce, teenage
rebellion, etc.
Only God’s love works in this
life. If it is not God’s love given through His children, it is
just not real. And if it is not real, it becomes a show in
which we are the play actors. People everywhere spend much of
their time and energy starring in a play written and directed by
themselves. The play is generally about giving and receiving
love—human love. The reason humanity gives and receives human
love is because most people have not received God’s love—we
cannot give something we do not have. It is vital in all of our
lives that we receive God’s love so that we can love Him back
and love those around us with His love.
If you are a Christian, the fact
that God gives you His love is not new to you. What may be new
is that you have to accept it (receive it) or it will not become
yours.
Suppose someone offers you a new
wireless phone—a loving gift. That phone will never be yours
until you reach out and accept it and make it your own. If you
think about it, that is true of any gift—especially the gift of
God’s loving forgiveness.
The essence of salvation is
receiving God’s forgiveness, which is part of His love. So all
Christians begin by receiving His love. If we are born again,
we have already received His loving forgiveness. But to grow up
in the Christian life, we must continue to receive His loving
forgiveness because we continue to sin.
When we receive His love, we
receive Him because He is love (1 John 4:8). When we receive
Him, we can become victorious over sin. Jesus paid the price
for our sin with His life, but that was not the end of it—He was
raised up (resurrected) by the power of the Holy Spirit. With
His death, forgiveness of sin became available to anyone who
asks for it with a repentant heart.
With His resurrection, He provided
victory over our future sin—when we receive Jesus, we receive
His resurrected life, which is eternal and very powerful. His
bloody death on that cross and His resurrected life from the
grave provide us complete victory over all sin as we receive
Him.
When we receive Him, we are “born
again”—not physical birth, but spiritual birth—the very life of
God. With this new life we have the power to do what He wants
us to do, which includes the power to obey His command to
forgive those who have offended us. All of us, to one degree or
another, fail to forgive those who, knowingly or unknowingly,
have hurt us. It is here that we must choose to go on in the
new life God has given us – we must choose to continue to
receive His forgiveness by becoming a forgiver ourselves.
If we are not willing to forgive
others, we become spiritual cripples because God will not
continue to forgive us. Here is what Jesus said about this:
“For if you forgive people their trespasses (their reckless and
willful sins, leaving them, letting them go, and giving up
resentment, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if
you do not forgive others their trespasses (their reckless and
willful sins, leaving them, letting them go and giving up
resentment), neither will your Father forgive you your
trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15 AMP). We must choose to forgive
others if we are to get the forgiveness we so desperately need
from our heavenly Father. As we forgive others, a barrier
between us and the Lord comes down and we begin to receive more
and more of His loving forgiveness.
The more of our Lord’s loving
forgiveness we receive, the more of Him we receive because He is
love. And the more of Him we receive, the more we are filled
with His Holy Spirit because the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are
in perfect union. The Holy Spirit then gives us the power we
need to be what He wants us to be (Acts 1:8). Then love begins
to appear in the form of spiritual fruit, which is part of our
Lord’s plan for our lives. But all this is possible only as we
receive more and more of God’s forgiving love. Then as we begin
to return His love, we have a personal relationship with Him—a
channel for God’s blessings.
Some of the things Jesus said
about relationships were: “receive Me,” “abide in Me,” “come
unto union with Me as I am in union with the Father,” and then
He said that the greatest commandment is “you shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with
all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). That is a very close personal
relationship.
It is clear
that He wants us to abide in His love just as a branch abides,
or is in union with the vine. If a Christian, who is a branch,
abides in Jesus, the Vine, through a loving relationship, he
comes into union with Him and with our heavenly Father. The
branch then progressively produces the fruit of the Holy
Spirit—joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
We then, to a degree, have these
qualities in common with God and they become the basis of an
even deeper relationship with our Lord (John chapter 15).
It is exciting to know that the
God of the universe wants to build us up in His grace to the
point that we can be that close to Him. He actually makes it
possible for us to obey the “greatest commandment” as we receive
His love. But there is something we must do before that can
happen and that is to humble ourselves (Micah 6:8). Over and
over the Bible says that we must humble ourselves. In 1 Peter
5:6, it says “humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.”
It is not possible for our hearts to receive anything or anybody
if we have not first humbled ourselves. It is true that
receiving another’s love promotes humility but we must have a
measure of humility to begin a loving relationship.
In the Bible, born again believers
are called the bride of Christ—so the physical example that God
has given us is marriage. In this life, marriage is never
consummated unless the bride receives the physical love of her
husband. In trusting humility, she receives him and they come
into union with each other. That is exactly what Jesus wants
for us. We, the bride of Christ, are to come into union with
Him as He is in union with the Father (John 17:21).
This, of course is spiritual
union, but the principle is the same—union that is physical or
spiritual, if it is genuine, must begin with humility. Humility
is absolutely necessary to receive God’s love, but He would
never pressure us to be humble. If today you were forced to be
humble, you would become a robot because you would no longer
have a will of your own. I think you will agree that it is not
possible for a robot to enter a loving relationship.
Receiving love from another is something we must will to do in
our heart—we must put aside the love and concern we have for
ourselves to make room for the love of another. God’s love is
all around us all the time—if we make room, He will surely come
in.
You may ask: how can I control
this ego of mine and humble myself so that I can receive God’s
love? In his classic book, THE IMITATION OF CHRIST,
Thomas a Kempis puts it like this: “Never desire to be
singularly praised or loved; for this belongs to God alone, who
has none like Himself. Neither desire that anyone’s heart
should be taken up with you; nor be you much taken up with the
love of anyone; but let Jesus be in you and in every good man.”
That is the exact opposite of the desire of the ego.
Every one of us since the fall of
Adam wants to play God on our own private stage. Our ego
doesn’t want to be dependent on anyone, it wants others to be
dependent on us. But there is only one who is not dependent on
anyone and that is God.
We want to be praised and loved as
somebody special even to the extent that other’s hearts are so
taken up with us that they will be so dependent on us that we
will be “like God.” That is how Satan tempted Eve and then Adam
with the idea that they could be “like God” (Genesis 3:4-5). If
we were like God, then we would be alike or equal to the One who
created us. The truth is: we were created in the likeness or
image of God. We are to be a reflection of Him to be more and
more like Him. That is far different than being equal to Him.
We live in a society that competes
among ourselves to be somebody special. In the course of that
competition, it is decided who will lead and who will follow.
The followers commit themselves to the leaders expecting to be
part of a group that is “something special.” Even though they
are followers, they are part of the rebellion against God that
began with the first man, Adam. They satisfy themselves with
the idea that they are part of a group that is special (“like
God”) and therefore they are somebody special. This desire to
be singularly praised and loved simply must be controlled in our
lives because singular praise or special praise and love belong
to one person and one person only—God.
Most of us lacked humility when we
began our new life in Christ. For years, I was totally lacking
in humility—I simply modified my thinking and my behavior and
began producing my own stage play. Much later, I began to
understand that we are a new creation and that old things are to
pass away and all things are to become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).
If we continue to modify our old
sin nature instead of controlling it, we will still have that
desire to be “like God.” As long as we allow that desire to
remain, we will actually be God’s competitor and not His
subject. He is the King and if we want to receive the love of
the King, we must humble ourselves. As we humble ourselves, our
faith rises and we become more dependent on God. We are then
able to give up the desire to control people and circumstances,
which had been necessary to gain the status of somebody special
or part of a special group. Life then becomes more real and we
see ourselves in a new and better way—not fearing what men may
say, but striving to please God who loves us so.
It is said that a humble person
does not stoop smaller than he is; he stands at his real height
seeing the reality of how small he is compared to God. When he
humbles himself, he does not have to put on an act anymore
because he has the real thing. He, of course, is opposed by
those who do not have the real thing and experiences some form
of persecution—such as a loss of friends. Jesus said: “if they
persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.” But humility
causes us to begin to fit into God’s Kingdom and into the
purpose He has for our lives which is fellowship with Himself.
In trusting humility, we can open the door of our hearts to
Jesus Himself and consummate our spiritual marriage to Him
through a real, personal, loving relationship (Revelation 3:20).
Simply put, any relationship is an
exchange of love—the giving and receiving of love. Our Lord
makes this exchange possible through the power of His love that
He offers us continually. The Bible says that we can love God
because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). Jesus holds His love
out to us 24 hours of every day—He is that available.
We can receive His love anytime
simply by humbly opening the door of our heart. Then through
the power of His love, we have the strength to overcome our old
sin nature and love Him back. Because He loves us first, we are
able to do our part and complete an exchange of love.
This exchange of love is similar
to human relationships, but it is so much more. We, the
branches, out of this union with Jesus, the Vine, can now
produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit—joy, peace, long suffering,
kindness, etc. It is these qualities that tie us together with
our Lord in eternal fellowship and friendship.
We can be a friend of God;
through this close personal relationship, we can have loving
companionship and that peace “that passes all understanding” now
and throughout eternity. That in itself is a giant blessing,
but there is more.
The communication that comes out
of this loving relationship brings us into the very presence of
the Lord and that produces the reverential awe that the Bible
calls the fear of God. It says in Psalms 33:8, “Let all the
earth fear the Lord—let all the inhabitants of the world stand
in awe of Him,” and in the 18th verse of the same
chapter: “Behold the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him,
on those who hope in His steadfast love.” A close relationship
with the Lord produces not only His presence, but reverential
awe and hope in His steadfast love. That is a channel for a
multitude of blessings from God as He keeps His eye on us.
Friendship of the
Lord Is For Those Who Fear Him
Fear of God has not been
emphasized very much because fear has a negative connotation in
the English language. English is not as expressive as the Greek
or Hebrew languages and sometimes inhibits our understanding of
the scripture. The Amplified Bible makes up for this as it
expands the meaning of fear to be “awesome reverence of the
Lord.”
Be that as it may, it is difficult
to overstate the importance of the fear of God. Without that
reverential awe, worship is not what it ought to be. With it,
even our everyday prayer life becomes more worshipful—it
transforms our prayer life to the extent that we experience a
deepening of the personal relationship that we have with the
Lord. In Psalms 25:14, it says “The friendship of the Lord is
for those who fear Him.” This verse says that we can all be
a friend of God if we fear Him. Most Christians love and
respect David because he was a “friend of God”—just read the
Psalms he wrote and you will see why. It is because in
humility, he had the fear of God.
As we
look upon our Lord with reverential awe, you and I, with a full
measure of his forgiveness, can have the fantastic privilege of
being a friend of the God of the universe—the very one who
created us.
How
did David come to fear the Lord? He prayed for it—you can read
his prayer in Psalm 86:11, “Teach me your way O Lord that I may
walk and live in your truth; direct and unite my heart to fear
and honor your name.” (Fear and honor is humility with
reverential awe.) If you want to be a friend of God, you can
pray a prayer like that with your whole heart and it will
happen—maybe not in a minute, but over time it will happen
because God loves you and wants to be your friend. Because the
fear or reverential awe of the Lord leads to friendship, it
becomes a channel of many blessings. Here are just a few verses
out of the Bible that promise blessings to those who fear God.
Physical Blessings
Satisfaction and Safety
“The fear of the Lord leads to
life; and he who has it rests satisfied; he will not be visited
by harm” (Proverbs 19:23)
Provision for all needs
“O fear the Lord, you His saints,
for those who fear Him have no want” (Psalm 34:9)
Riches, Honor and Life
“The reward for humility and fear
of the Lord is riches and honor and life” (Proverbs 22:4)
Abundant Goodness
“O how abundant is thy goodness,
which thou hast laid up for those who fear thee” (Psalm
31:19)
Taught of the Lord
“Who is the man that fears the
Lord? Him will He instruct in the way that he should
choose” (Psalm 25:12)
Emotional Blessings
Fellowship
“I am a companion of all who fear
thee, of those who keep thy precepts” (Psalm 119:63)
Family Life
“Blessed is every one who fears
the Lord, who walks in His ways! You shall eat the fruit of the
labor of your hands; you shall be happy, and it shall be well
with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your
house; your children will be like olive shoots around your
table. Lo, thus shall the man be blessed who fears
the Lord.” (Psalm 128)
Peaceful Living
“The fear of the Lord leads to
life; and he who has it rests satisfied” (Proverbs 19:23)
Spiritual Blessings
Steadfastness
“I will make with them an
everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good
to them; and I will put the fear of Me in their hearts, that
they may not turn from Me” (Jeremiah 32:40)
Friendship with God
“The friendship of the Lord is for
those who fear Him” (Psalm 25:14)
Wisdom
“The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom; a good understanding have all those who
practice it” (Psalm 111:10)
Obedience
“Praise the Lord, Blessed is the
man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in His
commandments” (Psalm 112:1)
Blessings like these surely encourage God’s children to desire
the fear of the Lord in their lives. But, to relate to the Lord
as a friend and fear Him at the same time appears to be
something of a dilemma—but it does not have to be that way. In
a personal loving relationship with someone greater and higher,
there has to be recognition of who is greater and higher right
up front and that is exactly what the fear of the Lord does. If
we humbly relate to Him with reverential awe, a balance
appears—each one relates to the other exactly as they are.
God
does not become lower and we do not become higher, but there is
a mutual recognition of the difference. Then the power of God’s
love takes over and friends begin to fellowship.
If
you think about it, I think you will agree that this is the kind
of relationship that God wants between parents, and between
parents and their children. They should be friends that
fellowship together in the recognition of who is higher and who
has authority.
Most
of the many blessings of our heavenly Father come through a
personal loving relationship—a relationship that is encouraged
and maintained by the fear of the Lord. From the beginning, our
heavenly Father has blessed His children with guidance called
commands. The scripture says: “Fear God and keep His
commandments for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes
12:13). That reverential awe leads to love and love leads to
keeping His commandments.
Keeping His Commands
We
all know that we, of ourselves, cannot keep the commandments of
our Lord. This old sin nature that we all have tends to resist
commands from anyone—even God. We need to stop and realize that
the commands of the God of the universe are not given to prove
who is boss—they are given to show us the way to go and the way
not to go—the way to lead successful Christian lives. If our
heavenly Father did not care, He would surely let us go our own
way without any direction or guidance. But He does care—through
His commands in scripture and direction He gives for our
individual lives, we can be joyful and successful in life.
However, just knowing about God and His commands does not give
us the incentive to overcome our old sin nature and obey the
commands of our Lord. We need a heartfelt desire to obey and
that is exactly what is happening if you are receiving God’s
love. When we receive His love, we receive Him because “He is
love” and the presence of Jesus becomes very real and we want to
love Him back. The communication made possible by His very real
presence and our reverential awe of Him, makes it possible to
return His love. By understanding that it pleases Him for us to
obey the commands that He has given so lovingly, we want to obey
just to please Him even if we don’t fully understand our need to
obey. In this way, love is completed or perfected because there
is an exchange of love—a giving and receiving of love with our
Lord.
When Jesus talked about obedience,
He assumed he was being loved—that His love was being received
and returned—that His love was really complete. He knew that
His disciples needed that completed or perfected love before
they would be willing and able to obey the various commands He
had given them. He said: “if a person really loves me, he will
keep my word” (John 14:23 AMP).
It is
necessary to obey the Lord to be successful in life and to be
prepared to live with Him forever. But, it is also necessary to
love Him if we are to “really” obey Him. Without love,
obedience is only a duty—with love, obedience brings “joy and
gladness in full measure—complete and overflowing” (John 15:11
AMP).
Keeping the commands of our Lord is a precious thing in the life
of any child of God. But to be more and more obedient, we must
learn to hear what He is saying to us.
Hearing God
All
of us have a great need to hear that “still small voice” of God
so that we can receive His guidance and know more about the plan
He has for our lives. We need communication with Him all
through the day—allowing Him to speak to us by placing His
thoughts in our minds. We need to hear Him teach us as we read
the Scriptures. We need to seek to hear Him much as a child
seeks the guidance of a parent.
If we
are to hear God, we must humble ourselves as a little child. We
try so hard to be sophisticated adults not realizing that God
desires for us to be “as little children.” He does not look
upon His people as sophisticated adults—if we are Christians, we
are “children of God.”
Of
course, older children can become rebellious, but little
children are naturally trusting, teachable and submissive to
their parents. Is that the way you are with your heavenly
Father? Or, are you a sophisticated adult?
God
wants His people to be responsible for what they say and do, but
He wants them to be as little children in their hearts. Jesus
said, “Anyone who humbles himself as this little child is the
greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 18:4). The desire
to be sophisticated adults makes it difficult to humble
ourselves as a little child. But the way to hear God is through
an on-going Father-child relationship. We need that “Abba
Father” relationship that the Bible calls the spirit of adoption
or the spirit of sonship (Romans 8:15 AMP). We need to “work
out our salvation” with fear (reverential awe) and trembling as
we draw closer and closer to our heavenly Father. With a
trusting, teachable and submissive attitude, we can establish
that communication that comes out of a genuine fear of the Lord
as we receive His love; and with praise and thanksgiving, return
His love.
Praise and thanksgiving always proceeds from a heart that is
receiving God’s love. Then we can praise and thank Him in our
thinking all during the day. Then, with that kind of
communication with our heavenly Father, we can ask Him for
guidance concerning the issues of our lives. Then we can begin
to hear His voice, fellowship with Him and become more and more
a friend of God. That is the greatest blessing in the entire
universe.
What
we have been discussing is the most important thing in any
Christian’s life—it is the very reason God has placed us on this
planet. He is a loving person who has a need—He needs the love
of His children. His love is not complete until we love Him
back. And His love is not fulfilling until we enter a
continuing relationship that allows Him to bless us to the
extent that we are able to fellowship with Him.
It is
true that there is difficulty in overcoming our old sin nature
called “the flesh,” but I suggest to you that there is no other
alternative if our lives are to have meaning in this life and
the life to come. It may be that you are on this pathway of
loving God; if not, you can depend on Him to lead you as you
develop your relationship.
All of our personalities are
different, so there is no set way to relate to our Lord.
However, there are helps in the scriptures. Some of them are
listed below.
1. Ask the Lord for understanding and wisdom as you read
the Bible.
2. Forgive everyone who has offended you whether or not
they ask for it.
3. Get rid of all known sin. Pray for the conviction of
the Holy Spirit of unknown sin and receive God’s loving
forgiveness.
4. Monitor any wrong thinking and continue to receive His
loving forgiveness on a daily basis as the bedrock of your
relationship.
5.
Guard your mind, knowing that sin begins in the mind. Get
prompt forgiveness for sinful thoughts especially those produced
by anger or a critical attitude. Ask the Lord for His thoughts.
6.
Turn away from the world—be
“in the world, but not of the world.”
7.
Keep your mind “stayed on
Him” by thanking Him in every circumstance of the day. Listen
to hymns and spiritual songs when you can, and hum, whistle or
sing chorus songs when you can.
8.
Refuse to be moody or
depressed by asking Jesus to raise His standard (the blood of
the cross) against Satan and his demons and ask for His peace
and His joy.
9.
Pray that God will help you
to receive His love and the filling of the Holy Spirit
everyday. Knowing that leads to union with our Lord; pray the
prayer of Jesus—that you would be in union with Him as He is in
union with the Father (John 17:19-26).
10.
Commit the day into God’s
hands every morning. Be aware of any thoughts or scripture that
He may put in your mind. Spend time in meditation with the Lord
asking Him about the affairs of the day and the things that are
on your heart. Then clear your mind and listen for His “still
small voice.” That may take time because of the resistance of
the flesh. Our old sin nature is very persistent—we must be more
persistent. Be aware that there are 3 persons that have access
to our minds: God, the devil, and the flesh—we must sort it out
using the Bible as our guide.
11.
Whenever you need answers to
life’s many questions, ask the Lord to give you a word about
your need.
12.
Know that you never have to
be lonely—Jesus is right there at the door knocking—waiting to
fellowship with you and to lead you into fellowship with our
heavenly Father (Revelation 3:20).
You
may have discovered many other helpful ways to relate to the
Lord—these are just a few. But, if you think about it, you will
realize that the ways to relate to Him are in themselves,
blessings. It seems like there is no end. But there is one
more blessing that I simply must mention, and that is the
blessing of faith.
The
Blessing of Faith
All of us desire more faith, and
we can have it by developing a loving relationship with our
Lord. Is it not true that we trust and have faith in people we
know, and that we have even more faith in them when we have
developed a personal loving relationship with them? Surely the
answer to that question is yes! It is a personal connection
with someone of good character that causes us to have faith.
Well,
our heavenly Father has perfect character and He already loves
us. Does it not make sense to exercise the measure of faith
that we already have and let it grow? As faith increases, we
receive more and more of God’s love and give Him more and more
of our love. It becomes a wonderful cycle of love and faith.
All of this is expressed in one sentence in Galatians 5:6b—it
says: “faith works through love.” If we want more faith, we
must allow it to “work” through a loving relationship with our
heavenly Father. That is a blessing that leads to more
blessings as we exercise more and more faith, and more and more
of our prayers are answered.
The
subject of receiving the blessings of our heavenly Father
through a personal loving relationship with Him is so vast—I
feel we have barely scratched the surface. My goal for the
future is to increase in knowledge, experience and commitment
concerning this subject that is second to none in importance for
a born again child of God. My desire is to be and become all
that my Lord wants me to be in this life and the life to come.
In
the meantime, I leave you with the personal witness of Paul the
Apostle of our Lord Jesus: “Who shall separate us from the love
of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or
famine or nakedness or peril or sword? Nay, in all these things
we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor
principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to
come, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35, 37-39).
From the
Alliance for Christian Fellowship International
The
Alliance for Christian Fellowship International is a
Bible-centered, non-denominational ministry assisting Christian
leaders and ministries as they lead believers to seek a more
intimate relationship with the Lord.
What
does the Alliance believe?
We
believe that a true transformation of the heart begins when the
believer receives God’s love. For love to be complete, there
must be an exchange—a giving and receiving of His love. First
we receive God’s love and out of an overflowing heart, we love
Him in return. This is the fulfillment of what Jesus called the
greatest commandment. As we fellowship in this relationship of
love, we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to fulfill the second
greatest commandment, which is to love our neighbor as
ourselves. We believe this relationship of love is the key
to revival.
Why
is this emphasis important?
Emphasis of this foundational truth of the Bible is important
because its application brings victory out of defeat in the
Christian life. Next to the cross, which was an act of love, an
exchange of love with God is the most important teaching in the
Bible. Jesus said that to love God is the greatest of all the
commandments, and He also said, “Receive me.” All of us need to
be continually reminded of our need to personally receive Jesus
by receiving His love. When we receive his love, we receive Him
because He is love (1 John 4:7-21). Without this emphasis, all
of us fall away from the power of God’s love in our lives—the
power that begins when we begin to receive God’s love. Only
then can we return His love and experience true victory in the
Christian life—that is revival!
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the Alliance!
The Alliance For Christian Fellowship International
is offering you booklets for your ministry. They
have proven to be great tools for Bible Study,
Sunday School, and Home Groups. These booklets are
designed as tools to be distributed as a free
gift from your ministry.
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__25 __50 __100 __200 The Blessings of
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__25 __50 __100 __200 Four Steps to
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__25 __50 __100 __200 Are You Hearing God?
__25 __50 __100 __200 Which Commandment is
First?
__25 __50 __100 __200 From the Bible: How
to Know God Personally
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