The Love of the Father in Us        by David Nelson       1-29-10

 

What could be greater than seeking the Lord and finding Him. It is so good that we can draw near to God and for Him to draw near to us. We may pray and pray and pray and go deeper and deeper into this good relationship with the Lord. We may delight in how close we get to the Lord, where He shares His heart with us, all that He feels, and we love walking close to Him. But one of these days, with all our delight with Him and all His delight with us, He's going to turn us around and point us toward people and say, Now you must go to them, my hurting church, those who think they are so close to Me but aren't, and this hurting world. You must go to them with My love in your heart and with the things I have shown you to help them get close to Me too.

 

And so we go to them with such an enlarged heart of love (created by God in us), a heart so big that it has the capacity to love every person we see, even the least of the brethren, even mean, stubborn, or even ugly people who aren't close to God at all. And as we go we find out some of how God feels, when every person we meet we see their potential, we feel compassion, we say, you are so precious and I welcome you into my heart completely because God has made it easy with our big hearts to take you all in. Just like the apostle Paul did in the Bible, wherever he went he loved everyone, all the churches, and he said to the Corinthian church, you are all in my heart but your hearts are small, constricted, kind of shriveled up, and you do not have the capacity to welcome me into your heart as I have welcomed you into mine. He loved them so but they were not able to give back to him the same love or reciprocate his love. It is the same with God, He loves us so much and has a huge heart that welcomes us in lavishly but we love Him so little in return and can't give back to Him or reciprocate His love. Our hearts are smaller and more shriveled than His. Open our hearts Lord more to you and to receive everyone with your love. Paul said in I Thess. 2:7,8 as a mother cherishes her little children, we were so affectionately longing for you, and we gave you not just the gospel but even our own lives, for you had become so dear to us.

 

This is not a simple word but a deep word. To love the brethren and to love people with such a high love, a love that has rarely been seen before, the same type of love that Jesus has for us. Love one another as I (Jesus) have loved you, love one another with the same type of love that the Father has for the Son and the Son has for the Father. We must love one another and be one with the kind of love Jesus prayed for in John 17. Until this happens the world will not be touched, the world will not sit up and notice us, the world must see this kind of love to know that Jesus is for real and that He really came from the Father. By this they will know that I (Jesus) have come from the Father.

 

It must be such a deep love, deeper even than the love of blood relations. Remember when Jesus was in a crowded home teaching and His mother and brothers were outside trying to get to Him through the crowd? Then He asked what may have seemed a perplexing and odd question, Who are my mother and my brothers? I'm sure they were stunned, is it not your blood relations outside? But no, Jesus said, he who does the will of God is my mother and my brothers. We are to have such an intimate relationship with each other that it will go beyond just the dedication we would have to a blood mother or a blood brother. We have koinonia fellowship with the Father that is so rich and so deep and therefore we will have a rich and deep koinonia fellowship with each other. This is a deep and eternal communion that surpasses blood ties.

 

This is what we must have, it is necessary. But as we get this new kind of love from God and we are so excited to give it out to others, we will meet so many people and love them and receive them into our hearts but they may not as yet have the capacity to love us as we love them. And so we may feel wounded at their inability to love us in return, but all that we will feel is really entering in to the fellowship of His sufferings talked about in the book of Philippians. We will feel some of what God feels, as He gives, and loves, but people are not able to return God's love fully back to Him. And so, God is creating the Father's heart in us. This idea is in the very last verse of the Old Testament, when Elijah comes (he came once, and then he came again in John the Baptist, and now the cycle is coming around again, he is preparing the way for the second coming of Christ as he prepared the way fro the first coming of Jesus), he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers. We are being made like the Lord with His great love to encourage and draw the children, all those we must help, to get close to the Lord and know Him too. That is our job. Our closeness to God will lead to our having His heart and will lead to drawing many others into this love that the world must see.