The Heart of God...

God Loves You!

Love in terms of what?
What are the standards of Love?
What are we to love in our fellow Christians?
How are we to act toward them?

Love is Lawful! It takes note of God's standard of righteousness. It seeks to apply those standards in every human situation. Love is visible. Love is the visible Man of the Law (Jesus Christ) in action. It is systematic commitment to the welfare of others in terms of God's Law.

1 John 4:19-21 AMP

19 We love Him, because He first loved us.

20 If anyone says, I love God, and hates (detests, abominates) his brother [in Christ], he is a liar;
for he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, Whom he has not seen.

21 And this command (charge, order, injunction) we have from Him: that he who loves God shall love his brother [believer] also.

By linking the Love of God and the Law of God, we can better understand the Cross.

John 3:16 AMP

16 For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten ( unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life.

Deut 10:17-19 AMP

17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, the terrible God, Who is not partial and takes no bribe.
18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger or temporary resident and gives him food and clothing.
19 Therefore love the stranger and sojourner, for you were strangers and sojourners in the land of Egypt.

John 15:12 AMP

This is My commandment: that you love one another [just] as I have loved you.

God, Who is the universal sovereign, requires all men to heed His commands.
The Biblical doctrine of Love:
● to render honest judgment
● to bring the rule of God 's Law over all men...including the stranger.

Love is the fulfilling of the Law. The Cross is the supreme symbol both of God's Love and God's absolute justice. Christ died on the Cross to satisfy God's justice and His sacrifice reveals God's incomprehensible love for His adopted sons.

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The following Article is the work of Andre Lefebvre

artist, musician, writer, graphics designer.

In the wake of the Renewal, came a fresh revelation of the Father's Heart of God and the 20th century Church has been impacted forever.
And so we have learned to just stay put, open our hands, close our eyes, and receive prayer, experiencing the most amazing and deepest of changes: forgiveness, healing, renewed strength, visions, commissions, confirmations, affirmation from the Father...

Please read the following Scriptures. they are part of the article.
They release the working power of the Holy Spirit abiding in you.

The Soul of God - ‘ponderingment’

Psalm 42:1
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.

Psalm 42:2
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

Psalm 42:4
These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.

Psalm 42:11
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

Psalm 57:1
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, for in you my soul takes refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.

Psalm 62:1
My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him.

Psalm 62:5
Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.

Psalm 63:1
O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Psalm 84:2
My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

Psalm 104:1
Praise the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great;
you are clothed with splendor and majesty.

Psalm 108:1
My heart is steadfast, O God; I will sing and make music with all my soul.

Isaiah 61:10
I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Luke 10:27
He answered: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ “

Our soul thirsts, hungers, longs, wants, reaches out, needs fullness, peace, steadfastness, and
the Scriptures tell us our soul finds its fullness in God alone. Created by God, with the majestic gift of freedom and relationship. We speak often of God’s Spirit, in fact that’s basically all we hear about when we speak of God, and very seldom do we hear about the Soul of God.

Yes, God has a soul… I love the reality of it! Because I am then free to relate to Him, finding anchor for my experience in the Word, yet exploring my friendship with God considering He is a person,
just like me.

The veil has been torn, the way has been opened, the path leveled for the Lord and us to move toward one another and meet. And as I live this gift of a new birth, adopted in God’s household,
I stand amazed at how sobering it is to be able to relate to God as a person. No familiarity, yet plenty of freedom to be real and know that God will not be phased by my clumsiness and immaturity.

God’s soul shows through the amazing details of Creation, brilliant choice of colors, shapes, life forms, tissue textures, animal and insects sounds, the purity of newborns, in all wind and water,
the mad and frightful beauty of volcanoes, storms, the pageantry of earth and sky, colors, light and shadows…

Lord God, I want to know You as You know me…
All kindness I can give others, I have learned from Your kindness toward me,
as well as toward those I hated…
I will dance, free, in my soul and in my life…
I will sing, my voice out of tune, maybe, but not my soul…
Your Soul, O God, can be met in the embrace of Your eternal compassion and mercy…

Why have I let fearful ones decide for me the boundaries of my experience of God?
Was God offended by David’s extravagant dancing?
By David’s reckless abandonment to God’s mercy and righteousness?
Many seem to fear that if I pursue God and engage Him with all my soul,
it could be selfish, or worse, I could fall prey to mysticism and heresy, doctrines of demons, etc.
Yet, the Psalmist and prophets often point their soul to find a nest, an anchor in God Himself.
Not just His words and promises, but in Him, as a child finding refuge in a parent’s safe and engulfing embrace.

I love the Heart of God, the Spirit of God,
the Son of God, and I love the Soul of God.

As an artist who belongs to Him, there are no sounds I should fear painting, no colors out of His spectrum, no pain out of reach of His healing, and I will be free to shine in His shadow as I go about my life, seeking and welcoming His Potter’s Hands shaping my soul to the plumbline of the character of Christ.

To reflect His glory, to glorify Him, His name, His person, His perfections, His love…
that is why I was created, was brought into this world, given grace and called to experience the Light of His revelation hammering the emptiness of my own existential aspirations…
aspirations fueled by pride and resentment, revenge and vanity…

The Soul of God is revealing His true Self, in spiritual intimacy, in divine perfections, accessible
to our experience, real, as much as we are…
Let’s not be afraid of knowing Him as He knows us. In my opinion, this is much closer to worshipping in spirit and in truth, than any contrivances we may create to surround us with a sense of devotional dignity.
I pray that He will carry me to freedom, enough so that I won’t fear to love without restrictions, knowing He is with me, and knowing how He has pursued me in the darkest of places.

God’s sadness became apparent one day, as I meditated on His genuine experiential suffering
as He has to contemplate the task of having to send human souls to eternal damnation at the end
of times…

Father, Papa, Abba, my Creator, Judge and Savior, my Home and Destiny, blessed are You for revealing to us not only Your Will, Your Love, Your Power, but also Your Soul.
And here I rest today, writing these words out of conviction that You are much more than I could ever understand, but You are the Incarnation of humility coming to us and speaking our name like only someone who truly loves us could… and how we respond!
What life rushes through our beings, short-circuiting the exponential waves of our multi-faceted resistance, threatening to drown our wildest hopes…

You are worthy, O Lord, to receive the expression of our worship with and without words, beyond the unsettling movements of our runaway emotions, or sense of worth, stepping over the gulf of our lack of originality and fear of “going too far” from the models of the past…

My heart is set on the True North of heaven, of your Kingdom, of Your embrace,
and my soul rejoices in You, God my Savior!

Andre

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LOVE

To speak and act in agape love is spiritual language.

Eros love is physical, tactile love.
Eros love was given to be shared between a man and a woman under the cover of the marriage covenant.

To honor God is "to become married;" to become one in unity!
Divine Covenant does not exist outside of marriage!

Jesus is the Husband of the Church, His bride.

Matt 25:10 KJV

... the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him
to the marriage: and the door was shut.

Eph 5:25-30 AMP

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave
Himself up for her,
26 So that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing
of water with the Word,
27 That He might present the church to Himself in glorious splendor,
without spot or wrinkle or any such things [that she might be holy and
faultless].
28 Even so husbands should love their wives as [being in a sense] their
own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.
29 For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and carefully
protects and cherishes it, as Christ does the church,
30 Because we are members (parts) of His body.

God loves mankind. He does not love acts violating His Laws of Light.
Repentance is the repudiation of actions of a self-centered life.
Through repentance, we invite Christ to establish his will at the center of our lives. When we marry, we must think of another person in all our decisions. When we receive Christ, we enter into a consultative relationship with Him about every area of our lives.
It is not a master-slave relationship. It is one founded in lovingkindness.
He cares, tends and protects us as we seek His guidance through the Holy Spirit.

Agape love is that spiritual reasoning, intentional, devotion as is inspired by God's love for and in us.

The Father's LOVE

(luv) ('ahebh, 'ahabhah, noun; phileo, agapao, verb; agape, noun):
Love to both God and man is fundamental to true religion, whether as expressed in the Old Testament or the New Testament. Jesus Himself declared that all the law and the prophets hang upon love (Matt 22:40; Mark 12:28-34). Paul, in his matchless ode on love (1 Cor 13), makes it the greatest of the graces of the Christian life-greater than speaking with tongues, or the gift of prophecy, or the possession of a faith of superior excellence; for without love all these gifts and graces, desirable and useful as they are in themselves, are as nothing, certainly of no permanent valuein the sight of God.
Not that either Jesus or Paul underestimates the faith from which all the graces proceed, for this grace is recognized as fundamental in all God's dealings with man and man's dealings with God
(John 6:28 f; Heb 11:6); but both alike count that faith as but idle and worthless belief that does not manifest itself in love to both God and man. As love is the highest expression of God and His relation to mankind, so it must be the highest expression of man's relation to his Maker and
to his fellow-man.

I. Definition.
While the Hebrew and Greek words for "love" have various shades and intensities of meaning, they may be summed up in some such definition as this: Love, whether used of God or man, is an earnest and anxious desire for and an active and beneficent interest in the well-being
of the one loved.
Different degrees and manifestations of this affection are recognized in the Scriptures according to the circumstances and relations of life, e.g. the expression of love as between husband and wife, parent and child, brethren according to the flesh, and according to grace; between friend and enemy, and, finally, between God and man.

It must not be overlooked, however, that the fundamental idea of love as expressed in the definition of it is never absent in any one of these relations of life, even though the manifestation thereof may differ according to the circumstances and relations.
Christ's interview with the apostle Peter on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias (John 21:15-18) sets before us in a most beautiful way the different shades of meaning as found in the New Testament words phileo, and agapao.
In the question of Christ, "Lovest thou me more than these?"
the Greek verb agapas, denotes the highest, most perfect kind of love (Latin, diligere), implying a clear determination of will and judgment, and belonging particularly to the sphere of Divine revelation.

In his answer Peter substitutes the word philo, which means the natural human affection, with its strong feeling, or sentiment, and is never used in Scripture language to designate man's love to God. While the answer of Peter, then, claims only an inferior kind of love, as compared to the one contained in Christ's question, he nevertheless is confident of possessing at least such love for his Lord.

II. The Love of God.
First in the consideration of the subject of "love" comes the love of God-
He who is love, and from whom all love is derived.
The love of God is that part of His nature-indeed His whole nature,
for "God is love" - which leads Him to express Himself in terms of endearment toward His creatures, and actively to manifest that interest
and affection in acts of loving care and self-sacrifice in behalf of the objects of His love.
God is "love" (1 John 4:8,16) just as truly as He is "light" (1:5), "truth" (1:6), and "spirit" (John 4:24). Spirit and light are expressions of His essential nature; love is the expression of His personality corresponding to His nature. God not merely loves, but is love; it is His very nature,
and He imparts this nature to be the sphere in which His children dwell,
for "he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him"
(1 John 4:16).
Christianity is the only religion that sets forth the Supreme Being as Love.
In heathen religions He is set forth as an angry being and in constant need of appeasing.

1. Objects of God's Love:

The object of God's love is first and foremost His own Son, Jesus Christ (Matt 3:17; 17:5; Luke 20:13; John 17:24). The Son shares the love of the Father in a unique sense; He is "my chosen, in whom my soul delighteth" (Isa 42:1). There exists an eternal affection between the Son and the Father-the Son is the original and eternal object of the Father's love (John 17:24). If God's love is eternal it must have an eternal object, hence, Christ is an eternal being.

God loves the believer in His Son with a special love. Those who are united by faith and love to Jesus Christ are, in a different sense from those who are not thus united, the special objects of God's love. Said Jesus, thou "lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me" (John 17:23).

Christ is referring to the fact that, just as the disciples had received the same treatment from the world that He had received, so they had received of the Father the same love that He Himself had received. They were not on the outskirts of God's love, but in the very center of it.
"For the father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me" (John 16:27). Here phileo is used for love, indicating the fatherly affection of God for the believer in Christ, His Son. This is love in a more intense form than that spoken of for the world (John 3:16).

God loves the world (John 3:16; compare 1 Tim 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9). This is a wonderful truth when we realize what a world this is-a world of sin and corruption. This was a startling truth for Nicodemus to learn, who conceived of God as loving only the Jewish nation. To him, in his narrow exclusivism, the announcement of the fact that God loved the whole world of men was startling. God loves the world of sinners lost and ruined by the fall. Yet it is this world, "weak," "ungodly," "without strength," "sinners" (Rom 5:6-8), "dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph 2:1 King James Version), and unrighteous, that God so loved that He gave His only begotten Son in order to redeem it.

The genesis of man's salvation lies in the love and mercy of God (Eph 2:4 f). But love is more than mercy or compassion; it is active and identifies itself with its object. The love of the heavenly Father over the return of His wandering children is beautifully set forth in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15). Nor should the fact be overlooked that God loves not only the whole world, but each individual in it; it is a special as well as a general love (John 3:16, "whosoever"; Gal 2:20, "loved me, and gave himself up for me").

2. Manifestations of God's Love:

God's love is manifested by providing for the physical, mental, moral and spiritual needs of His people (Isa 48:14,20-21; 62:9-12; 63:3,12). In these Scriptures God is seen manifesting His power in behalf His people in the time of their wilderness journeying and their captivity. He led them, fed and clothed them, guided them and protected them from all their enemies. His love was again shown in feeling with His people, their sorrows and afflictions (Isa 63:9);
He suffered in their affliction, their interests were His; He was not their adversary but their friend, even though it might have seemed to them as if He either had brought on them their suffering or did not care about it. Nor did He ever forget them for a moment during all their trials.
They thought He did; they said, "God hath forgotten us," "He hath forgotten to be gracious"; but no; a mother might forget her child that she should not have compassion on it, but God would never forget His people.How could He? Had He not graven them upon the palms of His hands
(Isa 49:15 f)? Rather than His love being absent in the chastisement of His people, the chastisement itself was often a proof of the presence of the Divine love, "for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth" (Heb 12:6-11). Loving reproof and chastisement are necessary oftimes for growth in holiness and righteousness.

Our redemption from sin is to be attributed to God's wondrous love;
"Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption; for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back" (Isa 38:17; compare Ps 50:21; 90:8). Eph 2:4 f sets forth in a wonderful way how our entire salvation springs forth from the mercy and love of God; "But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ," etc. It is because of the love of the Father that we are granted a place in the heavenly kingdom (Eph 2:6-8).
But the supreme manifestation of the love of God, as set forth in the Scripture, is that expressed in the gift of His only-begotten Son to die for the sins of the world (John 3:16; Rom 5:6-8; 1 John 4:9 f),
and through whom the sinful and sinning but repentant sons of men are taken into the family of God, and receive the adoption of sons (1 John 3:1 f; Gal 4:4-6).
From this wonderful love of God in Christ Jesus nothing in heaven or earth or hell, created or uncreated or to be created, shall be able to separate us (Rom 8:37 f). (from International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, Electronic Database Copyright (c)1996 by Biblesoft)

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III. The Love of Man.

1. Source of Man's Love: -

Whatever love there is in man, whether it be toward God or toward his fellowman, has its source in God - "Love is of God; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love" (1 John 4:7 f); "We love, because he first loved us"
(1 John 4:19).

Trench, in speaking of agape, says it is a word born within the bosom of revealed religion. Heathen writers do not use it at all, their nearest approach to it being philanthropia or philadelphia - the love between those of the same blood.
Love in the heart of man is the offspring of the love of God.
Only the regenerated heart can truly love as God loves; to this higher form
of love the unregenerate can lay no claim (1 John 4:7,19,21; 2:7-11; 3:10; 4:11 f). The regenerate man is able to see his fellow-man as God sees him, value him as God values him, not so much because of what he is by reason of his sin and unloveliness, but because of what, through Christ, he may become; he sees man's intrinsic worth and possibility in Christ
(2 Cor 5:14-17).
This love is also created in the heart of man by the Holy Ghost (Rom 5:5), and is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22).
It is also stimulated by the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, who,
more than anyone else, manifested to the world the spirit and nature
of true love (John 13:34; 15:12; Gal 2:20; Eph 5:25-27; 1 John 4:9 f).

2. Objects of Man's Love:

God must be the first and supreme object of man's love; He must be loved with all the heart, mind, soul and strength
(Matt 22:37 f; Mark 12:29-34).
In this last passage the exhortation to supreme love to God is connected with the doctrine of the unity of God (Deut 6:4 f) - inasmuch as the Divine Being is one and indivisible, so must our love to Him be undivided.

Our love to God is shown in the keeping of His commandments
(Ex 20:6; 1 John 5:3; 2 John 6). Love is here set forth as more than a mere affection or sentiment; it is something that manifests itself, not only in obedience to known Divine commands, but also in a protecting and defense of them, and a seeking to know more and more of the will of God in order to express love for God in further obedience (compare Deut 10:12).

Those who love God will hate evil and all forms of worldliness,
as expressed in the avoidance of the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh
and the pride of life (Ps 97:10; 1 John 2:15-17).
Whatever there may be in his surroundings that would draw the soul away from God and righteousness, that the child of God will avoid.
Christ, being God, also claims the first place in our affections.
He is to be chosen before father or mother, parent, or child, brother or sister, or friend (Matt 10:35-38; Luke 14:26).

The word "hate" in these passages does not mean to hate in the sense in which we use the word today. It is used in the sense in which Jacob is said to have "hated" Leah (Gen 29:31), that is, he loved her less than Rachel;
"He loved also Rachel more than Leah" (verse 30).
To love Christ supremely is the test of true discipleship (Luke 14:26),
and is an unfailing mark of the elect (1 Peter 1:8).
We prove that we are really God's children by thus loving His Son (John 8:42). Absence of such love means, finally, eternal separation (1 Cor 16:22).

Man must love his fellow-man also.
Love for the brotherhood is a natural consequence of the love of the fatherhood; for "In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother" (1 John 3:10).
For a man to say "I love God" and yet hate his fellowman
is to brand himself as "a liar" (4:20); "He that loveth not his brother whom
he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen" (verse 20);
he that loveth God will love his brother also (verse 21).
The degree in which we are to love our fellow-man is "as thyself"
(Matt 22:39), according to the strict observance of law.

Christ set before His followers a much higher example than that, however. According to the teaching of Jesus we are to supersede this standard: "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another" (John 13:34).
The exhibition of love of this character toward our fellow-man is the badge of true discipleship.
It may be called the sum total of our duty toward our fellow-man, for "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: love therefore is the fulfillment of the law"; "for he that loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law" (Rom 13:8,10).
The qualities which should characterize the love which we are to manifest toward our fellow-men are beautifully set forth in 1 Cor 13. It is patient and without envy; it is not proud or self-elated, neither does it behave discourteously; it does not cherish evil, but keeps good account of the good; it rejoices not at the downfall of an enemy or competitor, but gladly hails his success; it is hopeful, trustful and forbearing-for such there is no law, for they need none; they have fulfilled the law.

Nor should it be overlooked that Our Lord commanded His children to love their enemies, those who spoke evil of them, and despitefully used them (Matt 5:43-48). They were not to render evil for evil, but contrariwise, blessing. The love of the disciple of Christ must manifest itself in supplying the necessities, not of our friends only (1 John 3:16-18), but also of our enemies (Rom 12:20 f).

Our love should be "without hypocrisy" (Rom 12:9); there should be no pretence about it; it should not be a thing of mere word or tongue, but a real experience manifesting itself in deed and truth
(1 John 3:18).

True love will find its expression in service to man: "Through love be servants one to another" (Gal 5:13). What more wonderful illustration can be found of ministering love than that set forth by Our Lord in the ministry of footwashing as found in John 13?

Love bears the infirmities of the weak, does not please itself, but seeks the welfare of others (Rom 15:1-3; Phil 2:21; Gal 6:2; 1 Cor 10:24); it surrenders things which may be innocent in themselves but which nevertheless may become a stumbling-block to others (Rom 14:15,21); it gladly forgives injuries (Eph 4:32), and gives the place of honor to another (Rom 12:10).

What, then, is more vital than to possess such love?
It is the fulfillment of the royal law (James 2:8), and is to be put above everything else (Col 3:14); It is the binder that holds all the other graces of the Christian life in place (Col 3:14); by the possession of such love we know that we have passed from death unto life (1 John 3:14),
and it is the supreme test of our abiding in God and God in us (1 John 4:12,16).

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