GOD’S LOVE: SERVING GOD IN SPIRIT AND TRUTH

We are looking at the letter ‘S’ in our theme, “God’s Love”, which is, “Serving God in spirit and truth.” God is our Father, and we are overflowing in His fullness. We are doers of His Word, which is His love that He has poured out in our hearts. We live life in obedience to Him, to the Word, by living in love. He who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him. ‘Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.’ (1st John 4:7-8). God is the Word, is love, and is Spirit. You cannot connect with Him outside of the Word; you connect Him through the Word, and the Word is Spirit. Attempting to connect Him, that is to serve Him, outside of the Word, of the Spirit, is like trying to enter a house when the door is locked. You will be frustrated because you will keeping trying, and you will not be able to enter. When the house is locked, you need the key to open it to have access and gain entrance. Trying to connect God, trying to reach Him outside of the Word, is frustrating and painful when you are not doing it in the spirit; you will keep failing to enter, connect, reach, and serve Him. You will be frustrated and defeated. That is why you find many people, they say they are Christians but they live frustrated and defeated. They are even tired; many are tired and they stop coming to church, and loving. They are bitter and angry because they want love and they are not receiving and getting it. “Today, I choose love instead of fear; I choose peace instead of conflicts; I choose to be a love finder instead of a fault finder; I choose to be a love giver instead of a love seeker. They keep seeking for love without finding it, because they are attempting to do it outside of the Word and the Spirit. Love comes from the spirit; it is a product of the spirit. So trying to do it in the flesh where there is no love will amount to a false love. A false love is frustrating, self-defeating, and tiring. So God is a Spirit; He is the Word; He is love. You can only contact Him in the Spirit, meaning you must be in the spirit. When we are born again, that is we are born of the Spirit. When you are born of the Spirit, you can now connect and relate with God who is a Spirit. When you are born of the Spirit, you already have a relationship with Him: He has become your Father, and you have become His own very child. After the relationship, the next thing is communion, which is fellowship. When there is a relationship, there must be a fellowship. It is in the aspect of fellowship that many get frustrated, because they are not doing it in the spirit. When you have that relationship, fellowship and communion must come in. There must be interaction or you will die. When the baby is born, the baby must interact with the mother. Love must flow between the mother and the baby. Anytime the baby wants the attention of the mother, it must be given, for the baby to grow and have well-being: emotional, physical, spiritual well-being. Otherwise, the baby will become malnourished. So it is when we are born again, we must establish that fellowship, communion, that comes through meditation. Then you are holding the key to open the door and get in to reach, fellowship, and interact with God. Anything you want to do, you can now do it, because you are holding the key. Meditation is the key with which you can open the door to get in and meet God. You enjoy the fellowship, then you call it sweet fellowship. You enjoy the sweet fellowship. 1st John 1:3, “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.” 1st Corinthians 1:9, “God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” The fellowship is sweet, and we must crave for and desire that fellowship. We can let go of any other thing that is begging and struggling for our attention, and give it all to that fellowship with the Father. What matters most in life is God, therefore, you can let go of anything that comes in between you and your God. We must sacrifice it; we must never sacrifice our fellowship with God for any other thing. The first thing in our lives must be God, and the way you can secure and guarantee that in our life is through the fellowship and communion. “Serving God in spirit and in truth.” You have to be in spirit – that is you must be born again to be able to serve God in spirit. If you are in the flesh and you want to serve God in spirit, you will be tired and frustrated. So many Christians you know are living frustrated lives because they are living in the flesh and they want to achieve spiritual results. They want to achieve results that are spiritually discerned. “The man without the Spirit of God does not accept the things that comes from the Spirit of God, because they are foolishness to him. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” (1ST Corinthians 2:14) They are spiritually given, so you can only receive them in the Spirit. So when you don’t have the Spirit of God in you, and you are trying to have those things that are of the Spirit, It will be a life of frustration. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:3). For you to be able to access these spiritual blessings, you must be in the spirit. And the only way you can be in the spirit is when you are born of the Spirit. As you are born of the Spirit, then you can now understand those things that are spiritually discerned. You begin to pray for and desire them. You can spend your time, your talents, your money, and your love to have those things because they are things of eternal value. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17). These things are spiritual, and they are in the heavenly places waiting for you. Your blessings are there, more than enough for this life. So long as you are alive, those blessings are sufficient for you; they will never finish. He has lavished them on us; He poured them out and gave them all to us. “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived –  the things God has prepared for those who love Him” (1st Corinthians 2:9). 1 John 3:1, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” God’s love has produced and invested so much in us that has enhanced our living; making life worth living. To you, life is not vanity upon vanity. For the one who is in the world, life in the flesh, is vanity upon vanity. The pursuit of life, all that they acquire, education, position, wealth, long-life etc. is still vanity. A day in the presence of God is worth more than a thousand years elsewhere. (Psalm 84:10). To be born of the Spirit is much more than anything material that anybody can acquire or crave for. We must stay in the Word to be able to serve God, who is a Spirit, in spirit and in truth. The starting point of serving God is through the Word. As you grow day by day by reason of the Word, we now can serve Him in His fullness. “…to understand this love that passes all understanding that we may be filled with the knowledge of God’s fullness.” John 4: 21-24, “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” Any attempt to worship God outside of the Word which is the starting point can only be frustrating, it’s like trying to enter a house that is locked up, and you will keep trying to no avail. But when you come in the spirit, when you are born of the Spirit (born again), born of the Word, born of faith, and born of heaven, it’s a very sweet fellowship. You already hold the key to the house that opens for you to enter, and without entering you can’t enjoy that sweet fellowship. We must believe; believing is receiving. What do you believe? Do you believe that Jesus is the Lord and confess Him as your personal Lord and Saviour? Are you born of the Spirit and of the Word? If you are, I congratulate you because you can now serve God in spirit and in truth. Otherwise you may end up serving yourself and other strange gods. It could be money, position, your parents, whether they are dead or alive, stones, the forest, your children, the sea, the god of productivity, the god of iron, the god of farming, the god of fertility, etc. All of these are strange gods. Do you believe God loves us so much? He demonstrated this love to us by restoring our relationship with Him, and that is the reason for the Saviour who is born. Fear not, I bring you this day a good news of great joy, which shall come to all the people. Today in the town of David is born to you a Saviour, He is Christ the Lord. When the fullness of time came, He became flesh and dwelt among us. He is the incarnate God; He came down Himself because we could not save ourselves. No man born of a woman could save us; we would have remained in our sin, in bondage to the vadversary forever and ever. We needed somebody who has not passed through a man and was not subject to Satan – somebody who knew no sin. Jesus knew no sin until He was hanged on the cross. He knew no sin until they crucified Him and then, He took the sin of the whole world. Before that time, He was without sin. He now shared with us; He shared in our humanity. He was all God, yet He was all man. He was all man because He fully identified with us: spirit, soul, and body, but without sin. But when He was hung on the cross, your sin and my sin made Him to be sin, He who knew no sin, so that we may become the righteousness of God in Him. The reason why we are celebrating Christmas is in remembrance of what Christ has done for us. He saved us from sin and death, translated us from the dominion of darkness, from being subject to Satan, to have our dominion as it was in the beginning. “In the image of God, He created in him, male and female, He created them”. And God said, “Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the face of the earth.” He was to have dominion, and in Christ, that dominion is restored. And your own dominion is restored in the name of Jesus. And this means that you will not be subject to Satan and the works of Satan; you are moved out of darkness, you are now in the light, and evil cannot penetrate that light. No matter how sharp that evil is, it cannot penetrate the light. It will fail because God is light. Do you believe? Believing is receiving; it is possessing. If you believe in the Lord Jesus, you will be saved. He says the time is coming, but I want to tell you that the time is here now. This is the time; this is the day of salvation. In God’s divine calendar and in His progressive plan of redemption, He must remain in heaven until the time comes when God will restore all things as He has promised long ago through His holy prophets, as it is recorded in the book of Acts 3:21. Now Jesus came, He died for us, and He ascended into the heavens. What we are expecting is advent of His return. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14:1-3). As we celebrate His birth, remember that the advent of His second coming is at hand. But He has to remain in heaven according to Acts chapter 3 verse 21. He must remain in heaven until the time comes when God will restore all things, everything as He has promised long ago through His holy prophets. Hallelujah! The time is at hand; be watchful, prayerful, and study to show yourself approved to God as men who need not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth. Behold, He will appear. We need faith to walk with Him and to relate with Him. “For without faith, it is impossible to please God. Whoever must come to God, must believe that He exists and is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Seek the Lord; believe that He exists and that He is rewarding you because you are sincere in your worship. For we worship God in spirit and in truth. You are sincere in your worship and your reward comes to you bountifully. It is unbroken and can’t be stopped, because it is coming from the Father of the heavenly lights. “…you worship what you do not know.” Many are worshipping what they don’t know. Even the Christmas celebration is a disguise. Christmas is from the tradition of the Europeans. Father Christmas is about St. Nicholas who comes with gifts for children. It was a tradition. That’s the reason why in Nigeria, many denominations choose to have their Christian retreats and camps to take people out of the world. Then when the Christmas is over, they release them so that they will not end up worshipping Father Christmas indirectly. Father Christmas will never make you better, it may even end up corrupting your understanding and knowledge about God. Christmas should be for Christians to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but they have introduced Father Christmas into the birth of Jesus. It has become a business festival, businessmen are making their money. They look forward to this time when Father Christmas must dress in red and they make their money. And the Bible has warned us, in book of Mark 7: 6-9, and it says, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: ‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. They worship Me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.’ And He continued, ‘You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!’ In a clever way, they have set aside the commands of God and are now observing the traditions that are of man. They worship merely in appearance; in their clothes and style. These people are the best of Christians, but it is only in appearance and by reasoning. Their hearts are far. Your heart is your spirit. They worship God in appearance, but in the spirit, they are far from the Father and cannot reach Him, because they contradict and imprison Him. When it is time to show love, they will say, no, I don’t have enough. They give excuses. And Christmas is about love; Love came down from heaven to help those who could not help themselves and to save those who could not save themselves. “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again.” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15). What compelling experience do you have in the death of Christ? The love that He has poured out on us. Don’t you think you need to live for Jesus? I live for Jesus every day; doing what I see Him doing; saying what I hear Him say. I am never against Him, for I have let love loose where He has been imprisoned. Where is your love? Christmas is about unconditional and selfless love. Many worship in ignorance. Paul, in the book of Acts 17:23, He says, “For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.” Many are worshipping a God they do not know, but we worship the God we know in spirit and in truth: In revelation. We must have a revelation and an insight of the God we serve. We must have that understanding. Whom do you worship? Whom do you serve? Serving God in spirit and in truth. Do we serve the unknown god? Many are serving the unknown god, the god of their forefathers, the god they served in the land of Egypt and across the Jordan. And in the book of Joshua 24:14-15, “Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” We must throw away the strange and false gods that people worship around. Let’s serve this God faithfully, and He will reveal and show Himself to you. You can’t serve Him without a revelation that is why Jesus introduced Him to us. As you have seen Me, you have seen the Father. You are not serving the God that will put you in bondage, but the One that sets us free. He is not the one that will puts us in darkness, but the One that brings light to us. Not the one that causes us sickness and diseases, but the One that heals us and saves us. Serve this God faithfully, and if you are not ready to serve Him, I tell you, there are thousands and thousands of people who are serving this God all over the world. He is the God that made the whole world and everything in it, the heaven and the earth. This God does not live in temples built by hands and He is not served by human hands as though He needs anything. Rather He is the One that gives life and breath to all men. Without him, we are nothing. We are what we are by His grace. Serve this God; He is the God of kings. He is a Spirit; you are a spirit; you are in the same class with Him. He loves us, and wants to keep this relationship with us forever. We are not the one that chose Him, He chose us and commissioned us to bear fruits that are perfect, good, and lovely fruits. If He comes looking for His fruits, will He find fruit in you? Any branch that does not bear fruit, He will cut it off, and it will be met with fire. Titus 2:1-10, “You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine. 2 Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us. Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.” Firstly for the men, it is expected of us to be temperate, not the one that is shouting everywhere; on the wife, on the children, on the neighbors, and on those in the place of work. We should be temperate and command respect from those who meet us in the journey of life. We must have self-control and discipline. Put your body in order. Control this body before it drives you into problems. And we must show love; to your wife, your children, and everybody that comes your way. That is what this season is for. Be enduring and patient with people. Don’t write them off. Likewise, the older women must be reverent. They must not be slanderous, bringing shame, disgrace, and embarrassment. They should not be addicted to much wine; don’t be a drunk woman, but teach what is good. The elderly woman is to teach what is good. That tells you that a woman can be anything in the house of God, and they submit themselves to teach what is good. Then you will be able to train the young women to love their husbands and their children, to have self-control and be pure, and to be busy in the home as homemakers. The homemaker puts everything in the home in order, not disorganized or chaotic. The home must not be a hot place where the man is running away from. The woman must be a homemaker; she must be there for the husband and for the children. She must be kind and submissive to her husband. She must not be too hot, burning everybody in the house with her hot temper, putting everything on fire, turning the whole place upside down. She must be submissive, and with that, people will not speak evil of the Word of God. They will not malign the Word of God in you. When your life is a reflection and mirror of the Word, you will shut many mouths down. They will not malign and speak evil against the Word. And of course, similarly, we must encourage the young men to have self-control. Young men and ladies should have self-control. In everything, they should live life that is worthy of being a good example and of integrity. Have integrity in teaching; say what is true and live by it. Don’t break or clash what you say. What you say must stand the test of time. What you teach must have integrity, in word and seriousness. You must be serious; apply all your energy and passion. That is why your emotion must be refined by the Word. When your emotion is refined, when you come out, people will see the seriousness revealed in you. Be steadfast and faithful. Are you serious about the truth of God? So that what you say will not be condemned. There must be soundness of speech that can never be condemned and faulted. Then those who oppose you will be ashamed because they will not find anything that is worthy of being spoken against. And for those who are slaves, be subject to your master. When we say slaves, we mean all workers. All workers should be subject to their master in everything. Please them in everything and not to talk back to them or to steal from them. There must be no corruption; we must not steal from them. The slave must be trusted and he must live a life that is fully true. They can put all their trust in you like Joseph in the land of Egypt. Joseph’s master trusted him with everything; his wife, his property, his money, and with the entire house. You should be trusted, then whatever we are teaching will be attractive to the people. When you live by what you say, what you say will be attractive to the people; it will be acceptable and proved. “For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.” Use your resources for God; spend your resources for God, using it to promote the kingdom of God, and the work of mission and evangelism. To bring more people into the fold into the kingdom. The grace of God that brought salvation has appeared to all men. Teaching us to shun ungodliness and worthless passion, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives. “Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (2nd Corinthians: 3:1-6). As we go in this season, because you are letters written by the Spirit of God, you are to live forever. You can never be overcome by circumstances and situation; you are more than them. You are letters written by God, by the Spirit of God. 

I leave you with the Word.