Through Jesus' Love

Good plans are never as good as God plans.  It is better not to call on God to bless the grand feat that we have planned without Him, even if it was planned in order to please Him.  Instead, we should submit ourselves to His calling and join Him in His work.  We must recognize that even though His calling on our lives may seem small or insignificant in the eyes of man that it is glorious in God’s eyes.  The smallest deed done at the Lord’s request can move mountains.  The grandest feat done for the kingdom without God’s inspiration is likely to end up in drudgery, perhaps even failure.  We should join the Lord in His work and rejoice in our calling.  

Jesus tell us that there are two great commandments:  “Love God with your whole heart, soul, mind and strength” and “love your neighbor as yourself.”  All other commandments hang off of these two.  If we keep these two commandments, we will not be able to break any of the other commandments.

If we love God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength, then His Spirit will guide us.  His Spirit will fill us with His perfect love.  Filled with His perfect love, we will naturally and supernaturally pour out the love that He has given us to the world around us.  There is no way to hold God’s love to ourselves.  It would consume us.

Almost all of us can relate to a time in our childhoods when we did something wrong that hurt our parents.  Almost all of us can remember how much it hurt us to see our parents hurting over the wrong that we had done.  

Jesus bears all the hurtful deeds of all of His children.  In His mercy, He loves each child perfectly and unconditionally.  He died on the Cross so that the stain of each hurtful sin could be removed.  For those that accept Him as their Savior,  the memory of each hurtful deed is absolved in heaven.

When we confess our sins, we should be ever mindful of all that Jesus bore for us and all that He provided in His mercy.  Clothed in the freedom of His loving kindness, His mercy and His grace and refreshed by the memory of His sacrifice, we should love Him to the depths of our soul and let it reflect in our lives each day.

If we experience suffering when we think of what Jesus did for us, then we have truly learned to love Him.  We have come to a point where we really know Him.

If we can think of Jesus as Our Savior without feeling the pain of His sacrifice, we have accepted His gift without knowing Him intimately.  It is natural for us to be without pain when we first receive Jesus into our lives.  Over time, we are not maturing spiritually if we are not beginning to feel the pain of the Cross and have the pain affect our lives.  

“Lovest thou Me?”  John 21:17

The Lord is our wonderful counsel, available 24 hours a day.  Why then do we insist on moving forward without Him?  Why do we not include Him in every decision that we have to make – whether it be big or small.  Is it because we don’t have an intimate relationship with Him?  Are we not close enough to Him that we can feel comfortable in addressing all things with Him?  Draw close to Our Savior and move not one step without His wonderful counsel.  

We are so quick to limit Jesus.  Our faith is so shallow.  We think of ourselves as we used to be before we accepted Him as our Savior.  We try to limit Jesus to our known capabilities.  The truth is that Jesus dwells within us and the depth of His almighty power is ours to tap into.  How sorrowful it is to know that we limit our ability to serve the King because we limit the King Himself by our self-reliance.  If we would look to Jesus instead of ourselves, there would be no limits to what we could do for the kingdom of Our Lord.  Look to Jesus!

We seem to try to put limits on the power that Jesus has to offer us.  On one hand, we are skeptical to think that He would do something way outside the realm of the natural for us.  On the other hand, we think it foolish to bother Him with the small needs in our life.  All we seem to trust Jesus with are the things that we believe we could control, but currently we cannot.  If we would open our minds to understand and receive all that Jesus is willing and able to provide us, we would discover that His powers and His willingness to come to our aid are without limits – regardless of the scope, scale or timing of our needs.

Jesus Christ showed us the ultimate in service to mankind.  With His sacrifice, He poured out upon us His perfect love.  Now it is our duty to receive His perfect love and pour it out on to mankind in His name.  This outpouring need not be a magnificent display.  It can be as simple as doing something loving for our spouses, our friends or for a neighbor.  The Lord waits to see us pour out His Spirit freely as we shed the old man and become the new man that He has created us to be.

Once we have accepted Jesus and His calling on our lives, we are no longer able to choose what we would like to do.  We must lay down anything and everything that interferes with the things that He calls us to do.  The process is for us, not for Him.  He does not need us to accomplish His work.  We need Him and gain everything by setting aside those things in our lives that do not fit the purposes that He has for our lives.  Our gain is based in our sacrifices which purify us to do His work.

Not one of us deserves the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for us to prepare our way to heaven.  So how can we be offended by others who would dishonor us or not give us proper recognition for our good deeds.  It is not them that we serve.  It is the Lord and Master alone that we serve.  If it be otherwise, we will quickly lose our desire to serve anyone.  Only when our service is done for the Lord and pleases God does it have any value.  Whether it pleases man or not has no real value.