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God does not love you for what you do. God does not love you for your
service. God loves you because that is what He does; He is a God of love.
.
God is no comparison to your earthly father. Your own father may have rejected you, but your heavenly Father accepts and loves you perfectly. The Son of God, who loves you, gave Himself for you as if you were the only person who ever lived.
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When you live from the foundation of how much you are loved and accepted, and that God is your loving Father, you will find yourself loving God back with all your heart, soul, and mind. The beginnings of the foundations will be set correctly where miracles will flow because of your identity of Him in you and you in Him.
Written By Destiny Image
”In this is
love, not that we loved God but that He loved us.... We love Him because He
first loved us” (1 John 4:10,19).
In the late ‘90s I went to my
senior pastor one day and declared to him that I was going to commence a
lifetime fast until I saw breakthrough.
I was really hoping that he
would talk me out of it, but his only words of comfort were to be careful.
So now that I had committed
to this, I had to carry it through.
The first day was easy and
the second day I was getting hungry, but by the third day I really thought I
was going to die.
I came home from work one night and fell on the couch
and called my wife and said, “I feel so
hungry and so sick that I really feel like I could die.”
My wife gave me two options:
break the fast and eat, or die, but if I chose the latter option, then to do it
quietly.
She left the room laughing,
and I had to make a decision, as I was miserable.
I chose to break the fast and
went to the fridge and ate an entire packet of sausages and a whole loaf of
bread.
I really thought I was going
to die after that; I felt so much worse.
No matter how much we do in
works, I have found that it is never enough.
You read three chapters of the Bible and the enemy
comes along and says, “If you had read
six chapters, you would have gotten a breakthrough.”
You pray for 60 minutes and that same voice says, “Maybe you should have prayed for two hours
and you might have had your breakthrough.”
You fast for 21 days, and that condemning voice of the
accuser whispers in your ear, “Maybe a
back-to-back, 21-day fast would have gotten you what you need.”
Often we do works-oriented
things out of a place of desperation to see God move or to please Him.
We believe that the things
that we do will cause God to love us more, and the supernatural will flow.
This mentality leaves us in a
position of working for God’s love as opposed to working from God’s love.
I spent many years working
hard for His love because of the lack of revelation on just how much He already
loved me and liked me.
Many Christians may know that
God loves them, but when you question them, they really have no revelation on
just how much God also likes them.
Though they know in their
heads that God loves them, they may also believe the lie that God just
tolerates them.
God likes to hang out with us
and to do the things that we like to do.
When we have the revelation
of His love, grace, and goodness, then we really begin to understand that He
can’t love us any more than He already does.
The apostles Peter and John
are two of my favorite people in the Bible. It appears that they were wired
totally differently.
Now there was leaning on
Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved (John 13:23).
The Bible calls John in this
passage “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” so
we could take from that that Jesus loved John the most.
It’s interesting that this
phrase only appears in the Gospel of John, of which John is the author.
So what exactly was John
doing?
We know without question that
Jesus loved all the disciples intensely, but I believe that John had a
revelation that maybe the other disciples did not have.
John knew that he was loved.
Could it be that John was the disciple who most knew how to practice enjoying
the presence of Jesus and His love?
On the night of the Last
Supper, Jesus made a statement that must have been hard for the disciples to
take.
He told them they would all
fail Him and they would all fall away from Him.
I am sure they were all
shocked because without question, they all loved Jesus so much.
When Jesus said this, Peter
took Jesus aside and essentially agreed with Jesus that the rest of the
disciples would probably fail Him, but “not me,” he said to Jesus.
Peter said to Him, “Even
if all are made to stumble, yet I will not be.”
Jesus said to him, “Assuredly,
I say to you that today, even this night, before the rooster crows twice, you
will deny Me three times.”
But he spoke more vehemently, “If I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” And they all said
likewise (Mark 14:29-31).
The setting in John 13:23 was
during the Last Supper.
We see the disciples at the
table with the Lord, including the two I have mentioned, Peter and John.
At the table we could say
that there were two kinds of Christians represented.
One was represented by Peter,
whose name means “stone” or “rock,” and if we break that down further, means
“law.”
Peter represents the
believers who declare their love for the Lord, just as we all do.
John’s name means “beloved,”
“loved one,” or broken down further, means “grace.”
Now John leaning on the
breast of Jesus is a picture of depending on the Lord’s love for him; he
represents every believer who declares the Lord’s love for them.
We could say that one
represents Christians under the law, and the other represents Christians under
grace.
But the one who was always
declaring how much he loved Jesus, before the night was out, was found denying
Him three times, while the one who was dependent on the Lord’s love for him was
there to minister to Jesus at the time of His greatest need.
Jesus knew that each of the
disciples would fail Him.
But Peter’s dependence on his
love for Jesus instead of a solid foundation of Jesus’ love for him actually
caused him to fail Jesus in His time of need.
Jesus said that each of them
would fail Him. John also failed Jesus that night, but because his foundation
of their relationship was first on how much Jesus loved him, even when he
failed Him in the garden, he was able to step over the failure to be at the
feet of Jesus at the time of His need.
John was the only disciple of
the twelve who was at the cross with Jesus. The others were alone, feeling bad,
and probably drowning in condemnation.
While Peter was feeling unworthy and drowning in
condemnation, John was at the foot of the cross because he clearly understood
that his relationship with Jesus was not based on how much he loved Jesus but
how much Jesus loved him.In my years of ministry, I have met many people who
have asked me, “Chris, I love God so
much, yet why do I fail to see the power of God displayed through my life?”
I love to look into their
eyes and ask if they know how much they are loved.
Very few look me back in my
eyes and tell me how much they are loved. Many look away or look down or divert
the subject.
We need a greater revelation
of the Father’s love toward us.
I so believe in loving God
with all my heart, soul, and mind, but I can’t help but fall in love when I see
just how much I am first loved.
My love is the byproduct of
knowing how much I am loved.
”In this is
love, not that we loved God but that He loved us.... We love Him because He
first loved us” (1 John 4:10,19).
God is no comparison to your
earthly father.
Your own father may have
rejected you, but your heavenly Father accepts and loves you perfectly.
The Son of God, who loves
you, gave Himself for you as if you were the only person who ever lived.
God does not love you for
what you do. God does not love you for your service.
God loves you because that is
what He does; He is a God of love.
When you live from the
foundation of how much you are loved and accepted, and that God is your loving
Father, you will find yourself loving God back with all your heart, soul, and
mind.
The beginnings of the foundations will be set correctly where miracles will flow because of your identity of Him in you and you in Him.
Destiny Image
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https://www.destinyimage.com/2016/08/15/chris-gore-the-foundation-for-miracles/
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