In Love With God - lesson 5

In Love With God - lesson 5

The only thing that I want for this semester 

is for us to be in love with and on fire for God

     Only a church in love with Jesus, will stand.

_  A loose church full of compromise with the world, will not stand.

     This body is carried away with the love of the world and cannot bear fruit because the seed will always be choked out in the end. It may have a good start on a lot of seemingly good ideas, but just as many conversations with a skeptical person on the street just go in circles with a true point for the Lord always being avoided (Anyone who has been out street witnessing has experienced this) so also will the work of a compromised church, come to little or nothing at all.

_  A church set on ridged outward control and full of  rules with no passion for Jesus, will not stand.

     This body is consumed with outward appearance and conformity with set rules and laws but always gets bound up in the technical side of every issue or gets burnt out trying to keep up their good works. Eventually men wear out and turn away and fall back into the world because they have found that works in themselves are unfulfilling. 

     However, a church full of the passion of loving their Savior, will never tire of the good works He has called them to! They might have moments of being discouraged and weary but they are continually going back to Jesus for strength and encouragement to press on with whatever the difficulty is. A church full of love for Jesus will not want the passing pleasures of the world that bring compromise and choke out fruit and nor will they burn out or become weary in well doing. For them the Hymn is fulfilled “It is well with my soul.”  Jesus says, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My load is light.” Matt. 11:28-30

     This is why we must seek a closer fellowship with Jesus than we have had. We must not be content with where we are in Christ right now because if we are it means that we are not fully in love with Jesus or we could never say that. A person in love actually can’t live without that close personal connection to the one they love. If we were fully in love with Jesus everyone around us would know it because our faces would show it and our actions would tell it and our words would speak it. This is the first love that our Heavenly Father admonishes the churches about in the book of revelation. If we do not have this first love continually burning in our hearts, we will fall away when the persecution hits or be choked out when the enticements of the world lure us in.

               The Lord tests our hearts so He can build upon them

     If we are failing by loving the things of this world more than Him, we will not grow or be affective in His service and He will not be able to give us a place of responsibility in His work.

     “I, the Lord. search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of His deeds.” - Jeremiah 17:10


-Seth