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Comparative Religion 101 – What They Won’t Tell You in That Class
Almost every four year liberal arts college has at least one comparative religions course. These courses are meant to touch the surface of each major religion and illustrate the basic differences or similarities. Are these courses effective, or...
Dating a Non-Christian
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? -2 Corinthians 6:14 Any way you look at it, dating can be tricky…especially when religion...
God First
God 1st, Others 2nd, Self last... Most believe that's how it should be, whether they practice it or not. Few have problems recognizing when "Me, Me, Me" gets in the way, whether they care to admit it or not. But, putting others 2nd can get...
Intelligent Design - Has God turned the tables on Evolution?
Intelligent Design For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now. Romans 8:22 According to Darwin's Theory of Evolution, the strong survive by a process of natural selection of the most fit. Yet many of his...
The Temple of Love Unites Every Religion and Every Country as One
The Temple of Love unites every Religion and every Country as
One by tying us all together with our common threads and
resolving all of our differences once and for all. We have now
reached the point where we are too technologically advanced...
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The Power of Love
There is no doubt in my mind that the quality of love is the #1 quality that God would like to get worked into our souls and personalities. Even nonbelievers, atheists and agnostics can see the power of love and how it has the ability to change people and change lives when it is properly walked out and handled.
Hollywood has made tons of movies just on the power of love - especially the special love that occurs between a man and woman in a romantic relationship. Even hard, tough grown men can be brought to tears when watching a real well made movie made about the power of love.
The quality of love is truly universal - as it literally transcends peoples, nations and religions. Love is truly the universal language of this world and people from all different walks of life recognize it for what it truly is and understand the power that is in it.
Then when you read and study the Bible - you see the major emphasis God the Father is placing on it when He tells all of us that He wants us to love Him, to love ourselves and to love one another.
So if the quality of love is recognized by all peoples and all nations - then why is it that throughout the course of our human history there has been so many wars, so much hatred, so much crime and so much inhumanity done to our fellow man? If everyone knows what love is - then how could so many people throughout the course of human history commit the evil and atrocious acts they have committed?
Even in our day and age people still have not learned from the past - as there is just as much hatred and evil operating in this world as there has ever been. The Bible even tells us that the love of many will grow cold in the latter days - which means things are going to actually go from bad to worse in the coming years.
If man really knows what love is - then why can't more people act, operate and walk in love so they we can all live in peace and harmony with one another? Why do people have to rob, rape, kill, plunder and steal from one another? No matter what one's religious beliefs and ideologies may be - there is simply no excuse for some of the horrible barbaric acts of murder, assaults, abductions, robberies and rapes that we see on an everyday basis.
As Christians, we all know that part of the answer as to why men can't love one another in the way and to the degree that God would like from us in this lifetime is due to our fallen natures - our sin natures that we have all been born with as a result of the curse of Adam and Eve. That is why Jesus had to come to die for all of us - because we have all sinned and have fallen way short of the glory of our God.
However, even saved and born again believers have problems in being able to walk in the quality of love to the degree that God would like in our everyday lives. We all know that God is expecting us to be able to walk in His love - but we still have problems in loving our God, our families, our friends and even ourselves to the degree and to the intensity that He would like from us.
We read in the Bible about all of the verses that God wants us to walk very strongly in this quality - but we still seem to fall short of being able to actually do it in our real lives. If we all have the Holy Spirit living and operating in us - then why is it that we cannot seem to draw more of His love up into our personalities so that we can all walk with more of this quality operating in our lives?
I believe that the answer lies in the last article I did under this section titled The 9 Fruits of the Holy Spirit. Too many Christians are trying to walk in the quality of love operating out of their own strength, out of their own emotions and out of their own flesh. Granted - God the Father wants us to do the best we can to put this quality on into the core of our personalities. But our best is not going to be good enough in this area to get the job done with the way God would like.
The reason for that is that we have all been born with these fallen, imperfect and sinful natures. This means that we are not capable of walking in perfect love - no matter how hard we try in our own natural strength. So what is the answer if we are not capable of walking in perfect love like God is?
To those believers who are really wanting to learn how to truly walk in the real love of God in their lives - there is only one way to be able to do this - and that is learning how to draw that love from the Holy Spirit. And the only way that you can get the Holy Spirit to release His love to you as one of His 9 fruits is that you have to be willing to enter into a true sanctification process with the Lord where God can start the process of making you to become more holy like He and His Son Jesus are.
There is no other way! There are no other shortcuts that you can take to get this accomplished. It is only when the love of God Himself starts to flow into your personality can you even begin to love God, love yourself and love other people to the degree and to the intensity that He would really like from you.
Once the Holy Spirit begins this sanctification process in your life - your job will be
to learn how to walk, live and operate in the qualities and attributes He will start to transmit into your personality. Once the Holy Spirit starts to transmit His quality of love up into you - your job will then be to learn how to walk in that love in your words and actions with others.
Actually, once the Holy Spirit starts to transmit His love into you - it will become much easier for you to really love others in the way God wants you to be able to love them. Once you start to feel God's love for His people - you won't be able to help yourself in feeling that same love for them since God's love will start to mesh with your own love. Once God's love starts to flow and mesh into what limited love you already have - then you will be able to start to really love other people in the way that God had initially intended for all of us to be able to.
The missing ingredient in all of this is obviously the love of the Holy Spirit. It is only when the Holy Spirit starts to release His love into your personality as one of His 9 fruits can you truly begin to love your God, love yourself and love other people in the way God intended. Trying to love others with what limited, imperfect love you may already have operating in you will never get the job done - either to your own satisfaction or to the satisfaction of God Himself. That is why Jesus has told us that without Him we can do nothing - especially in the area of being able to get properly sanctified in Him.
I will give you some of the best verses from Scripture on the quality of love, and why God the Father is placing such a strong emphasis that we learn how to walk in it in our relation to Him, ourselves and to other people. God the Father is really raising the bar on this one specific quality as you will be able to see with the way that He has some of these verses worded out. He is making some extreme and radical statements with what He is expecting from us with just this one quality.
When you first read what these verses are telling us to do in reference to this particular quality - you will really be able to feel and sense your own shortcomings in this area. But again - realize that this is where the Holy Spirit will be coming in big time. Just realize that God knows that you cannot reach the level that He is looking for from you in this area - and that it will only be possible for you to reach this level only if the love of the Holy Spirit Himself is operating through you.
When you really study and meditate on the verses I will list below - you can sum all of them up in one simple statement. God is looking for you to be able to love in 6 different areas - all with the love of the Holy Spirit being available to you to help you out in each of these areas. God wants you to be able to fully love in all 6 of these realms. You are to learn to:
Love God Love yourself Love your family Love your friends Love your neighbors Love your enemies
You will notice that there are 6 specific areas that God will want you to be able to love in. Bottom line - God will want you to love right across the board - from loving Him down to being able to love the worst of your enemies. The first 4 areas are much more easier to learn how to do than the last two - especially the last one in being able to love your enemies and love those who will try and hurt you in this life.
Loving your family and friends is easy and comes very natural for many of us because of the strong bonds that we have already established with them. But learning to love some of your other neighbors who you have no real special bond with or complete total strangers will be much harder for you to do - especially with the way that our world has become with so many more people keeping to themselves and being afraid to trust anyone anymore.
However - this can be done with the help of the Holy Spirit. Once you start to feel the love of God Himself for some of these people - it will become much easier for you to befriend some of these people and help them when the need may arise. Again - Jesus is the perfect example of someone who was always helping out total strangers. When you study what He did as He was walking on our earth, He was always stopping and talking to people, along with helping, teaching, saving, healing and delivering some of these people when the need would arise. He was always there to meet their needs - especially their spiritual needs.
Just as Jesus was able to walk in perfect love in His words and actions with other people - so to can we learn how to walk in that same Godly love if we allow the Holy Spirit to enter us into this sanctification process where God the Father can then begin to work all 9 fruits of His Holy Spirit up into the very cores of our personalities.
Though we can never become as perfect as Jesus is in His walk with all of us - we can all still try to do and be the best we can be in God in our dealings and relationships with others.
About the Author
Article written by Michael Bradley of Bible Knowledge Ministries. Their website is a resource of Bible knowledge . They currently have over 100 in depth Bible articles. All free of charge.
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