How is your Love Factor?

Are you Loved? Does your church love? Do you love? God loves us!

Love confirms the legitimacy of Jesus! Love confirms the faithfulness of Jesus' followers! Our love sheds the spotlight upon God as we are His visible, living light. Whoever loves much, does much! How much God so loved you… your spouse…your co-workers…your family…how much He so loves your church family! When you love much, you will do so much more in your life and in others' lives as well. Real, true Love will verify the authenticity of Jesus' followers. This is also a template for the importance and value of friendships. This is the model we are to use to show God’s love to the world! True love desires to seek and apply what God has to say with satisfaction back to Him, and gives us real meaning in life. It will enable us to trust in our Lord and receive His call and principles and in so doing, appreciate our fellow Christians and of course, our family and others around us. Love is taking the initiative to build up and meet the needs of others without expecting anything in return. And, when we have the wrong idea and definition of love, it will adversely impose on all areas in our life. This is also a template on the importance and value of friendships (Mark 12:30-31; Luke 10:27; John 13:31-35; 15:12-13, 17; 1 Cor. 13:3; Rom. 12:10; 13:8; 14:13; 1 Thess. 3:12; 4:9; 2 Thess. 1:3; James 2:14-26; 1 Peter 1:22; 1 John 3:11, 3:22; 4:8; 23; 4:7, 11-12; 2 John 1: 5)!

God knows you! We are to have a faith that is not just academic or intellectual knowledge of God, but our appreciation, trust, affection, obedience, and commitment in, for, and to Him. In addition, this is referring to our fellowship with God who created us for Himself, instruments of praise and worship to know and model His love. We are content and our souls in “rest “when we honor our Lord and live for Him. The great claim of Christianity is our ability to not just know God who first seeks to know us, but have a personal relationship with Him. This is what only the great Prophets of old had, but not all of the time—only on occasion; because of Christ, we have permanence with Him! God's purpose is to get us into His kingdom, to be identified in Him and not in ourselves or the world. Because of Christ, we have joyful abundance now, personal favor of God with real fellowship with Him, a purpose and meaning for our daily lives, and eternal life to come (Jer. 9:24; John 3:1-16; 15:5; Gal. 6:14).

Our greatest blessing; we are made and destined to eternity in heaven, but while we are here on this earth, we must do all we can to serve Him with joy and gratitude (Mark 14:36; Eph 2:7; 1 John 3:2)!

Thus, We must never misrepresent God’s Truth or lead people to another truth, because our intimate relationship with Him must point to a way of faith and faithfulness to His sovereign, loving rule (Psalm 25:5; 43:3; John 5:8; 14:6; 15:15; Eph. 1:13; Col. 1:1-8; 2 Tim. 2:15; James 1:18)

Oh the things we can do if only we acknowledge that God’s love is real and we can be real too!

However, the very notion that our product (Biblical Christianity) needs an overhaul is ludicrous. We do not have to make the gospel more relevant to modern ears; we just need to be more loving. There is nothing more relevant than how to be cleansed from sin and how to find life beyond the grave, but we have to be in unity. We must be careful that as we seek to promote the church, we promote the true church and not a watered down, cheap imitation or just show our infighting and hate to outsiders, instead of love and unity. Many today are removing offensive doctrines in order to make the Gospel more attractive, while others insist on being unloving, thinking this will attract people. Not! This will lead people into idolatry! We have to know and proclaim that God’s love is amazing! When we consider how we are and who He is, we see that we do not deserve His love, yet we receive it anyway. We do not earn it or achieve it in any way or merit it whatsoever, yet it is there for our taking because of what Christ has done in our behalf.

Remember, love confirms the authenticity of Jesus and us as His followers!