A Journey to Discover the Heart of God
Part 3 Walking in the Fellowship of Love
22) The Goal of God’s Instructions is Love I
In this chapter we will think about how certain cultures have
characteristics that mark who they are. Christians wear the marks of Love. A “True
Disciple of Jesus Christ” takes on God’s characteristics of Love, which is the unavoidable
outcome of companionship with Him. The goal of His instruction is Love; issued from
a clean heart and a clear conscience and a determined faith. The cross of Jesus
Christ defines Love in a powerful way. While we were His enemies Christ died for
us; so we to ought to love one another as He loved us.
We look at how we become Love. A mind set on the things of the
flesh is in opposition to God. A mind set on Jesus Christ changes to the extent
the soul’s nature becomes Love. This is true because it is Jesus Christ’ nature
to Love. Since God predestined all to work out for our good, He looks for us to
face “certain situations” that occur in our lives, as if they come from Him. The
skill needed to love as He loves is not a skill acquired by learning a few facts
from a book; it comes from the power of His Life shaping our beings into the “Image
of His Love”.
A body does not do its own thing, where the head goes so goes
the rest of the body. If the Head of the Church is thinking Love and exists as Love,
than His Body must also think and exist as Love. We transformed into a new nature
by the Holy Spirit; a new nature constructed with the materials of Love and we act
according to our new nature.
23) The Goal of God’s Instructions is Love II
In this chapter we talk about fellowship with the Light
of Love. Our companionship with God reveals our hateful selfish natures. We come
to the Light as one would come to a doctor. We come so we may not continue to sin.
As we fellowship with Jesus Christ by abiding in His love, He increases as we decrease.
If we begin to be Light as He is Light, is not to our merit. It does not increase
our worth in the Kingdom of Heaven. Our worth was established on the Cross of Calvary
when Jesus Christ forever set the exchange rate; His Life for ours. If we say we
are in the Light, having confessed our sins, and still have hate flowing from our
hearts towards another, we are in the darkness still.
We think about abiding in Christ, a “living-in-with” type of
partnership; a sharing of our souls with the One who made us. We focus on the wonder
and the power of the Love of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ. Our transformation
takes time and is more like growing wheat for the harvest. We must accept that He
accepts others into His friendship while they were impure in heart and that their
acceptance is from on His good grace alone also. Remember it is not the amount of
knowledge that one has that makes them mature in the faith, it is how well they
live according to the knowledge that they have that makes them mature in the faith.
We need to spend time with people who give credit to God for changing them.
24) Relationship between Yahweh and His People
In this chapter we take a look at Yahweh’s relationship with
His people. We see that it was a rocky relationship from Adam and Eve to the days
of Jesus Christ. Mankind’s thinking was full of sin and focused on the agenda of
men. We look at Israel and the agreement her founding fathers entered with
Yahweh. Israel treated her God as if He was one of the many idols of that day. They did
not believe in the idols they prayed to and they did not really believe in Yahweh
their God. The Babylonian Exile cleansed the nation from idol worship, but they
treated Him as if He were a system of religious beliefs born from the heart of men.
They began to worship their Laws instead of idols. Jesus Christ renewed the agreement
He made, with His blood. We look at how men still see God as system of religion.
They teach that if you approach God the right way, He will do what you ask. They
make it sound as if God is holding back the good and only give them when people
ask the correct way.
We think about how God wants us to have a relationship with Him
based on who He is. We see the story of God and His people as a love story. The
one He loves is stubborn and rebellious towards Him; yet He continues, faithfully
to love her. It is a story that talks of Love so powerful and so true that it remained
unhindered no matter what His people did. He is looking for a love freely given;
that is not affected by how well our life goes. He is looking for a love that is
responding to the character of the person we see in Him. We look at the symbolism
Yahweh put into the marriage relationship. There is a message that He intended to
communicate through the institution of marriage. Man is to portray the image of
God and woman the image of man. We look at how Satan attacks the institution of
marriage to discredit the message Yahweh has embedded into it. Churches avoid the
topic because it is too controversial. While both sides ignore their God-given role
by adlibbing, the spiritual oneness between the man and the woman dies.
25) Christ’s Relationship with His Bride
In this chapter we look at God creating man and woman. We
ask, “Why did Yahweh chose to create them separately, one at a time, and not at
the same time?” Why didn’t He breathe into Eve’s nostrils and give her life? Why
did He use a rib from Adam to create Eve? Why did God first look for a mate among
the animals, when He knew He would not find a suitable mate among them? What did
He expect to accomplish by creating man and woman with the series of events progressing
in the manner He choose to progress them? What is the message He is communicating?
When Yahweh planned the sequence of events, He purposely did not to create Eve at
the same time He created Adam. He wanted to establish Adam’s need for Eve as his
helpmate, his companion.
This was to illustrate the reason Yahweh has for creating His Bride. The Church
has been created through the life and death of the man Jesus Christ, to be a Companion
and Helpmate to the LORD God Almighty. We look at our roles in this illustration
and how both men and women are before God as His Helpmate. We look at how Jesus
modeled the proper relationship for both men and women. We look at how the head
covering is not about, women obeying her husband. We look at why the men’s head
is left uncovered while praying and the women’s is to be covered. We look at the
symbolism Yahweh placed on it. A man with his head covered says he does not want
to make Jesus Christ known. A woman with her head uncovered says that she wishes
that human beings be prominently known, therefore ignoring Jesus Christ. A man with
his head uncovered and a woman with her head covered are saying, “Don’t look at
us, but rather look at Jesus Christ our Lord.”
26) Jesus says, “My Sheep Hear My Voice.”
In this chapter we look at another expression Jesus used
to explain our relationship to Him. We will look at Jesus being the Good Shepherd.
He claims that if sheep do not know His voice they are not His sheep, and they will
not follow Him. We are not His, if He needs to compel us. This is how He knows we
are His sheep; when He puts forth His own, we follow Him. We contrast the thief
and the hireling to the Good Shepherd. The thief comes to kill and destroy and the
hireling will abandon the sheep as soon as a threat appears. The thief inflicts
a cost onto the sheep and the hireling will not suffer any cost to himself for the
sake of the sheep. The True Shepherd provides for the welfare of the sheep at no
cost to the sheep, while willingly lay down His life.
We talk about being a Christian and a follower of Jesus Christ;
that one has to stop going his own way and yield to the leadership of the Shepherd.
An agreement to follow Jesus Christ is a commitment to follow Him all the time;
not sometimes, here and there, when it is convenient. We talk about how it is His
responsibility to cause us to know Him. He did not suffer on the Cross of Calvary
to leave behind or abandon the souls that have put their destiny into His hands.
We must trust our Shepherd, which begins by trusting that “HE IS” the “I AM.” If
we do not truly believe that He exist we cannot trust Him. Next we need to believe
that He loves us always, even when we do not deserve to love, and that He wants
to show to us the length and breadth and height and depth of His love. Jesus Christ
did not seek out pleasures and comforts. We may have comfortable couches and warm
houses to live in, but He calls us to live a life that is not seeking after those
things. We are call to seek first the Kingdom of God and His goodness; the rest
He prepared beforehand.
27) Sharing the Yoke of His Fellowship
In this chapter we talk about the burden of life. That Jesus
wants us to exchange what burdens our life for a share in what burden His. He directs
us to take on His yoke, which is to learn from Him. We notice that Jesus talks about
revealing something to us. His yoke is about learning who God is. We will think
about the yoke we share with Jesus Christ and not something we do on our own. He
expects us to join Him while He carries His people’s load. His work is a benefit
to His people; we carry His work in us. We discuss why we cannot do our own work,
if we are to join to Jesus in the same yoke of work He is in. As we share His yoke,
the Light of the Savior shines into our souls and the darkness goes away. Jesus
Christ can only think righteously. Therefore He cannot teach us anything that belongs
to sin and He will not lead us into sin. He will allow us to face sin and overcome
sin by the power of His love. As we walk in the Light we see what we did not see
before and we see what we saw before differently. As our thinking change, our behavior
changes wit it. As our behavior change, what we present to others change also. We
cannot walk in the Light of His Being and not reflect the Light of His Love.
We continue with a look a 1 John 1:1-2:11. We think about how
his letter can be divided into two parts and how that might affect our understanding
of what he wrote. Therefore you should not separate what he said in verse 2:1-13
from verses 1:1 -10. When John, lead by the Holy Spirit, says that his purpose is
that "we may not sin", he is connecting it to what he meant when he said, "If we
say that we have not sinned." He is also revealing what he meant when he talks about
our cleansing from sin and all unrighteousness.
28) The Yoke of His Fellowship is Love
We continue the thought from Chapter 27. The verses in 1
John 1:1-10 should not be separated from the verses in 2:1-13. We think about John’s
connection of Light to Righteousness, which is the same as Love. Darkness is connected
to unrighteousness, which is the same as Hate. We say the Holy Spirit is explaining
the Law of the Spirit of Live in Christ Jesus as found in Romans 8. We think about
how John uses the entire first chapter and half of the next to make his point, which
is “We cannot say we walk in the Light while hating those whom God loves.” Our God
loves the people He has arranged to be in our lives. We should remember that He
displayed Love for them in the same way He showed Love for us; by dying on the cross
while they were yet His enemies. He calls us to join Him on the Cross of His Love
by loving those who hate us and persecute us. This is what the Fellowship of Light
is all about.
We think about how Jesus is not telling us to love those who are hard to love. He
is telling us to love those who purposely oppose us and want evil to fall on us.
Remember that in His heart He grieves for those who head for an eternal Lake of
Fire. We should be sharing in His grief instead of self-ishly focusing on our own
issues. We cannot go out and begin loving the unloving and hateful people of this
world by our own strength. The first step is to admit that we are also full of hateful
actions and full of the same thinking that ends with expressing itself in such hateful
actions. When we walk as He walks we will fulfill His commandment without thinking
about it. Love will be our natural response to the situation we are in. He so ingrains
in us His love that we cannot help but show. We may not be aware of how much Love
has changed us. We only know that our lives have improved.
29) Following LOGOS is Not Easy
We continue our journey by looking at Jesus Christ as the
narrow road of self-sacrificial Love vs. the broad road of destruction. The world
hates those who walk the road of Love because of the Light of Love shines through
its followers. Those exposed by the Light will defend their own lifestyles attacking
the Light-bearers and using their weaknesses against them. The Lightbearers must
keep their eyes on the Light of their message and not on themselves.
We think about how the Fellowship of Love is about loving all
men all the time. That it is a difficult path to take and not a popular one. Jesus
taught that living in Love is being perfect as God is perfect, which is maturity
in the faith. Those who love as God loves do so because God loved them first. When
we truly love in God’s name, it is without hesitation, given to all. If we do not
give love unless someone earns it first, it is not God’s love. We look at the Greek
meanings of the words used for Love in the Bible. Agapao is Love that is true to
itself; that does not change when the circumstances around it changes. Love cannot
act in any other way because it would then stop being Love. This is why Jesus Christ
loves those who hate Him; if He did not He would cease to be Love. As we transform by
renewing our mind we take on His image of Love.
We will talk about being apart of the flock and needing fellowship
with other sheep. As a member of the assembly, we must guard against sin within
the flock. We must be careful of how we deal with sin for it must in Love. Love
cannot embrace sin because it would stop being Love. Love looks beyond the sin and
sees the sinner. For sin always has a victim. Most of the time it involves someone
else, but alwways sin has a victim in the person who committed the sin. We should
remember that all are sinners and none should raise themselves above another. We
finish by taking a look at 1 Cor. 13, the Love chapter. We look at it as a description
of God.
30) Jesus Says, “To Follow Me is Like Taking Up
a Cross”
We continue our contemplation about Love being a narrow road
and how it leads us back to the Garden of Eden through the Cross at Calvary. The
path is free to use, but traveling it will cost us everything we are. The path changes
people and therefore cost everything they are; not everything they have. We think
about how we cannot get to where Jesus is if we do not use the same path He used.
The path of the cross is like a seed planted in our hearts. When a farmer sows a
seed of corn he expects to see corn growing from it. God the Father sowed the imperishable
seed of Jesus Christ into the perishable lives of men. He is looking for His crop
of Love to come from the seed He has planted. To understand the Demonstration of
Love we must understand the thinking behind the demonstration.
To understand the thinking behind the demonstration we must spend
time with the one who purposed and performed the demonstration. To spend enough
time with the one who performed the demonstration, we must continuously fellowship
with Him. We cannot be in continuous companionship with the one who performed the
demonstration unless we follow Him where He is going. To follow Jesus Christ is
to take part in the Demonstration of Love by loving others. He may asks one of us
to love to the point of feeling like we died. The attitude we have is the same attitude
the Master has. We are not asked to do anything that God Himself is not willing
to do. The character of the Trinity is the source of Life; it is not a religion,
but a way of Life. Only those who have been incorporated into the Person of Jesus
Christ, has the source of Life in them.
31) O’ Death, Where is Thy Sting?
In this chapter we think about our outlook on death. If we knew
our lives would end before the end of the year, what would our actions be like for
those watching? What would they think we value most? What would our thought life
be like before God? The way we walk in faith before our God and our family when
death is near is the attitude we should have right now. Death makes known the treasures
of our heart. Death reveals the truth about the value of those processions we store
in our heart. Death is not about dying; it is about living and it is about how we
lived. How we feel about death, when we face it, has a lot to do with how we faced
life.
We explore
the idea that we have a “once-in-an-eternity experience.”
After we die, everything will be different and the chance to stand firmly in the
face of opposition will be gone, for the opponents will be gone. Mankind is the
only created being which has the privilege to die because of faith in a God we cannot
prove. The privilege we treasure is not in the suffering but rather is in trusting
and resting while going through the suffering. The privilege is in our believing
the trustworthiness of our God, even when all earthly reasoning point elsewhere.
The privilege is not in witnessing, but in a relationship so powerful that we cannot
keep it to ourselves, so we witness.
32) The Modern Day Martyrs
In this chapter we think about being a martyr. It may
be a physical life that we give up, but will also be our daily spiritual lives.
Conflict brings out, for all to see, what we have stored in the inner reaches of
our hearts. They may be good or they may be bad. It is hard to uphold appearances
in the mist of a heated debate. The fortitude by which we defend what we defend
is in us long before the conflict started. In the mist of battle it is too late
to train or build up our spiritual stamina to act properly. The Holy Spirit is now
training His disciples in the art of love for one another and love for our adversary.
The motive, by which we share the Message, is in accordance to the walk we have
with the Message. Jesus Christ did not consider Himself important but acted in our
behalf out of Love.
We are not to seek conflict but conflict will come. If we live according to the
Light, darkness will oppose us. We combat the wrong teachings indirectly by teaching
the merits of Yahweh’s thinking and not by debating the merits of men’s thinking.
We will think about how Jesus handled conflict with religious leaders of His day.
We learn that we need to see from God’s point of view and not debate on the terms
of the world. On the day of conflict the Holy Spirit shall use what is in us, to
defend the faith through us. Our job then is to discover the mind of God and to
trust the outcome is predetermined according to His plan. The followers of the Light
do not fear the teachings of darkness. It is darkness that fears the Light. The
false teachers also fear each other and compete against one another. The followers
of the Light compete against no one. They know that those who have spiritual ears
will hear what the Holy Spirit is saying.
33) Treasure the Right Things in Your Heart
We finish the book thinking of Paul. If anyone had a
reason to boast it was Paul. But Paul considers his own life an embarrassment to
Jesus Christ, which he will never live down as long as he lives. He only wants to
boast of his knowledge of Jesus Christ. We ask,” In the end, what will Jesus Christ
claim that we treasured most during our walk on earth?” Will our God consider our
treasure spiritual or earthly?
We will think about abiding in the Vine. The Vine Dresser, the
Holy Spirit, is the one who decides what we needed and His purpose is for more fruit
produced. Weak branches need strengthening before they can bear much fruit, which
can only happen when we companion with the one doing the feeding and pruning. When
the Vine Dresser finishes, it may look like He took everything and left nothing.
But what grows back is far more able to bear the fruit than it was before the pruning.
We must treasure what He allows in our lives, as good for the Body of Christ and
for production of the Fruit of the Spirit. We ask, “What is it that you treasure
right now?” What do you spend most of you time and effort on? How much time does
Yahweh and His people get?