GOD’S LOVE: DOER OF THE WORD

1st 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!” James 1:22, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” John 1:1&14, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” God is the Word, and God is love. When you hear the Word, He is at the scene. When the Word is made, pronounced, and released, He is at the scene. You can’t separate Him from the Word. God is life, and the first manifestation of that life is love. We are looking at God’s love; and life is His nature. We have come to the Word; we have come to God. And God wants you to do the Word. The word and love are one. If you are to do the Word, it means you are to do love. You are to love. And that is the season we are in, the season of love. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever that believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” That is why we are in the season of love. You are to show love to people around you. If at this season you cannot love, meaning throughout the year you can’t love, because this is the season of love. And those things that are given by love will come to you. “Every good gift, every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, in whom there is no change, no shadow of turning.” (James 1:17). He doesn’t shift His position; He is constant and immutable, so you can only trust Him. He’s faithful, dependable, and trustworthy in everything. We must meditate on this Word. When you meditate on the Word, it tells you to go all out with all the energy you can have and live in love. Living in love means you allow love to rule and process all your decisions. Throw away whatever that fails the test of love. Repent from any decision that fails the test of love. It may end up separating you from God, because God is love. Any decision that will make you to fail the test of love, don’t go ahead on it. You are going to break love that is, breaking away from God. “I will let love loose in me, He has been imprisoned. I have made it a little love: a love that is conditional, temporary, and that fails. Love is eternal; it has life in it. It is spiritual; it’s from above. Love came down, and we are beneficiaries of it. We experience the joy of this love that has come down to us. Praise be the name of the Lord! We must meditate on this: think of those things that are true, just, honest, pure, lovely, and of good reports. If there be any virtue, or anything that is praiseworthy, think about these things. They are the things that love is offering and giving, the eternal things. They are the things that are holy, pure, and from the presence of the living God. “Do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth. You must meditate on it day and night so that you will be careful to do all that is written in it. Do not be a mere listener of the Word and therefore deceive yourself. Do what it says! Be careful to do everything that is written in it. Then what? You will be prosperous, and you will have good success. The Word is offering you prosperity and success. If only you can obey the Word, If only you can live in love, If only you can allow love to rule and to dominate you, you will have what the Word offers. Praise be to God! John 13: 34-35, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” We must love one another to do the Word. What is coming out of the Word this morning? The Word is saying that we must love one another, and love is from God. 1 John 4:7-8, “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.” If you don’t love, it means you don’t even know God, it means you are not born again, meaning you are still in spiritual death, still being overcome by the Adamic nature which separated us from God. We were without God, without hope in the world, and we could not save and help ourselves. We were in sin and death, operating under that dangerous law, the law of sin and death. The command now is to love one another. Jesus asked the disciples this question: ‘Do you love me?’ It’s in doing the Word with love. This is the season of love and we must not fail the test of love. 1 John 3:11, “This is the message that we have heard from the beginning: we should love one another.” This is the message you’ve been hearing day in day out: we should love one another. This is the command! If you can do this, you are in God. In chapter 4:16b, it says, “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” You see the union; we have been brought into union with God. He who loves lives in God and God lives in him. If you live in love, it means God is living in you, and you are in God; that oneness is established. Ephesians 3:16-19, “ I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” We are not only commanded to love one another, the Word is bringing love into our lives: that we may understand the depth, beauty, and power of this love that has been poured out into our hearts by His Spirit which He has given us. This is the season of love, and we must understand this love. We must be in it, rooted, established, and strengthened in this love. This is the message we have. And in the book of Philippians chapter 1 verse 9-10, “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” With the eye of love you can decide things, and you will live a pure and blameless life. That is what love is doing in our lives. The two prayers we read in Ephesians and Philippians dwell on love, they are all centered on love. The Word is praying for you, that your love may abound, and you may grow and be rooted, strengthened and built up in love. The first manifestation of God is love. When God meets you, the first thing He does is to show you love, not to kill you or destroy you. If you have a problem, the first thing that will come to the mind of God is how to rescue and save you. Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” He gave us the upper hand. Despite the fact that man was deceived by Satan, and robbed of his dominion, God still reached out with love and gave man the upper hand to crush the head of Satan and break his spirit. And how do you do that? It is when we live in love. When we live in love, we overcome hatred, bitterness, anger, unforgiveness, malice, and all kinds of evils. When we live in love, you will never think of doing evil to anyone. God reached out to us when we sin, He planned a way out, knowing that we can’t help ourselves. He sent Jesus to come and die to save us from our sins. That is what He did! He did not condemn us. When you meet people in problems and situations, your first actions should be to save and help them out, and not to make them feel sorrowful, guilty, condemned, and rejected. We must act like God, because we are created in His likeness. We are to imitate Him if truly we have love inside of us. If you don’t have love, it will be impossible for you to reach out with love. There is one love that is fake and worldly. 2 Corinthians 5:14-15. “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.” We must live for him. This is love: that God sent His only begotten Son as an atonement for our sins; He who knew no sin was made to be sin that we may become the righteousness. He who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him. 1 John chapter 3 verse 14-15, “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.” This is how love is: that Jesus Christ laid down His life to save us. And we also have to lay our lives for our brothers. Praise be to God! Jesus saved us with His own life. Why is it difficult for us to show love and give good gifts? Not giving out the useless one that you don’t need. Why is it difficult? Jesus gave His own life, His only life to save us, and we ought to do the same: to lay our lives for our brothers. In the book of 1 Timothy 1:5, “The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” He has told us to love one another, and we must love unconditionally. Love not because the person merits it. He saved us while we were still sinners, so don’t wait until somebody is good before you love the person. We are to love even when the person is bad. We were very bad when God showed and demonstrated His love to us. The love we have must be pure, stainless, unconditional, from a good conscience, and from the voice of your heart. It must agree with the Word, meaning that your action must be love ruled and dominated. It must be from a sincere faith; faith in the Word. The Word is the Word of faith, and it must spring from faith in you. James 1:25, “But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.” When the Word looks at you, that is born again, that is the child of God, the Word is looking into your spirit. The Word will not see your weaknesses and your limitations, because it has already given you righteousness. “He who knew no sin was made to sin, that we may become the righteousness of God.” The Word knows that we are holy and redeemed. When the Word is looking at you, it’s not looking at you from the perspective of the old man, the man of sin and death, but it’s seeing righteousness. It looks into you and sees your freedom; the freedom that the Word has given to you. You will look into the perfect law that gives freedom and continue to do so – not forgetting what you have heard, but doing it, you will be blessed. We must see beyond the letter, and see the Spirit of the Word, then you will be able to love. You will not be walking by reason or by sight. You are not being bitten by circumstances and situations, you are doing it by faith. Joseph did it by faith when he was sold into slavery. He did not react in the flesh, no! He said, “look, don’t be annoyed that you sold me. Don’t be depressed and discouraged that you sold me into slavery, God was planning something better to save lives.” We must see beyond the ordinary and see into the Spirit where the reality is. The man of the flesh will see you and say, you don’t even have a car, or a house, or a wife, or children, and call you barren. But when God sees you, you that is born again, He sees the reality; something better than all of those temporary things. Those things that we see are temporary, while the things we cannot see are eternal. He who looks into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues to do so – not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it, will be blessed. When we see things with the eye of the Word, the blessing, prosperity, success, and breakthrough comes. And when you are loving with the eye of the Word, you are doing it with all the energy and your emotions. You know we are born of the Spirit, but our mind has to be renewed. And when your mind is renewed, the energy, the passion, the love with which we do things will change. We need to refine our emotions with the Word. So when you are singing, people will be seeing the glory in you. When you appear, they will see the glory in you. Everything you do will be blessed. And I speak to you, whatever good thing you are doing, your blessing has come. As you are about crossing into the New Year, all the good things that you are doing, you are receiving the reward of those good things in the name of Jesus. Do good and you will be blessed; you can’t run away from it. As a man sows, he reaps. If you do evil, be careful, it will come back. That is why love is good; do love and you will discover that good things are waiting for you to harvest. “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (Matthew 7:24-27). If we keep doing love, if we keep living in love and allow love to live in us, God is living in us. God cannot be living in you and He will not bless you. If you allow satan to live with you, he will destroy you. If you allow hatred, bitterness, anger, malice, and unforgiveness to live with you, it is dangerous. I will let love loose in me; I will not imprison him; I will not make him a little one; I will not rob him. We can be foolish by thinking that there is a good reward in hatred, unforgiveness, malice, and bitterness, but there is not a good in them. The only good reward comes from a loving heart, a caring heart, a heart after God, a heart that is selfless and from a pure love, good conscience, and sincere faith. Then your reward comes abundantly.

I leave you with the word.