Redeemed To Live A New Way

God's children obey their father's commands for their good and his glory.

Exodus 20:1 Then God gave the people all these instructions.

Exodus 20:20 “Don’t be afraid,” Moses answered them, “for God has come in this way to test you, and so that your fear of him will keep you from sinning!”

 

Deuteronomy 8:5-6 Think about it: Just as a parent disciplines a child, the LORD your God disciplines you for your own good. 6 “So obey the commands of the LORD your God by walking in his ways and fearing him.

1 Peter 1:15 But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy.

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In the previous post God's people learned about his holiness which affects everything about him. It is the supreme quality that affects how that he does but it also affects us as well. And since God is holy he cannot have a personal relationship with people that are unholy. the people that want to have a peaceful relationship with him must be holy as well.

Our world doesn't like to hear about a God that makes demands, the gods that are popular today allow you to make your own rules, you get to be the "truth" police. That may work for you before you die but the real God and his version are truth will ultimately take over.

God is holy and he tells us to strive to live up to a higher standard, the "you be you" generation sounds kind and loving but you don't get the final say, we have been told to imitate our father in our attitudes and our lifestyle. Like it or not, we will submit to his rules and authority, it is your choice to do it now or later on after it is too late.

God's rules are for our benefit, he is just like any loving parent that sets boundaries, God wants the best for his children and he wants them to obey some basic instructions to keep them from trouble, he saves us from evil and doesn't want us to continue our lives in it. 

God gave us 10 basic commands:

How to love God:

1. Worship no god but the Lord.

2. Make no images to worship.

3. Do not use God’s name for evil purposes.

4. Observe God’s day of rest.

How to love your neighbor:

5. Respect your father and mother.

6. Do not commit murder.

7. Do not commit adultery.

8. Do not steal.

9. Do not accuse anyone falsely.

10. Do not desire another man’s wife or what he owns.

We should love God and others extravagantly 

Looking at the theme of the Ten Commandments, it is clear that we were made for love, both giving love and receiving love to God and to the people we interact with. The first four commands tell us to relate to God and the other six tells us how to live with our neighbors.

1 John 4:9  God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 

1 John 4:11  Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.

God didn't just demand love as a way of life for his children, he also gave us the ultimate example of how extreme we are too love. I was his enemy and with just cause, I was rotten to the core, the most unholy and undeserving of his affection but that didn't stop him from loving me extravagantly.

If I love God then it should show in how I live, Jesus told us that one of the ways to prove that we have experienced God's love is that we will love our neighbors, that's how the world will know who God's children really are and that's how he will get the glory he deserves.

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Christ Died for Our Sins That We Might Die to Sin (desiringgod.org)

Perfect Gifts: Love

Love is the best gift of all!

John 3:16  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Romans 5:8  But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

Colossians 1:19  For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ,

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Have you ever thought about how amazing God's love is?

God's love is great enough to love a rebellious sinner that fails to acknowledge him as God and give him the love and respect that he deserves. I don't love him as well as he deserves and he doesn't love me how well I deserve to be loved either. He loves me far better than I deserve.

God loves me so much that he has done everything that he can do to give me the option of spending eternity with him. He left the splendor of heaven and come to earth to suffer and die just because of his perfect love.

There was not any other motivation for God to send us his son on that first Christmas night other than his love for us! After thousands of years of rebellion he is still loving mankind and offering us a path forward to live with him for eternity.

We can learn a lot about how to love better by following his example. God was willing to become a vulnerable little child whose life was threatened, born into poverty and used for selfish gain by the crowds around him.

He showed us how to love despite the reaction of the people that we are giving love to. So what if the love doesn't come back to you, according to our example, we are still supposed to show love, Jesus endured a lot of abuse and he never stopped loving us.

1 Corinthians 13:13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

There are a lot of gifts being passed around this time of year, some of them small and inexpensive, some of them are creating a lot of debt, but their is a gift that will top them all. The only priceless gift that creates a huge debt that you should be giving is the gift of love that we have received from God.

Thank you Lord for really loving us and giving us the definition of love so that we can know how to truly love others completely.

Help Us To Love

God help me to love the way that you love me.

Video: Tori Kelly - Help Us To Love

There's a love so high (that you cannot get over)

That same love's so wide (it'll take forever just to get 'round it)

But love died somewhere

Behind that cross you wear, you're afraid when you look at me

That ain't real love

Not the kind from above, hmm

But there's a friend of mine (that stays closer than a brother)

Oooh, love laid down his life (so why do we still fight one another?)

All this hate I see on the TV screen

In my country 'tis of thee

(God help us to love) to love the way that you love me

Hmmm, God help us to love the way that you love me, oh oh

This world is weeping, hurting, broken and begging for change

Oh yeah

But still we marching, praying, dying, and things stay the same

When will we see?

Till everyone's free

There'll never be peace between you and me

God, your love is the cure

For the rich and the poor

God, please will you open our eyes?

'Cause I want a love so high (that you cannot get over)

Ooh, I want a love so wide (it'll take forever just to get 'round it)

No, no, no, no, no

But it don't come cheap

It takes everything to make love more than a dream

God help us to love (God help us to love)

God help us to love (this world needs your love)

We need your love (what we need now is love)

Fill us with your love, Lord (unconditional love)

We need your love (rain down on us, your love)

Oh, we need your love (fill us please with your love)

God help me to love the way that you love me

God's Love Must Be Shared

2 Corinthians 5:14-15  Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life.  15  He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them. 1 Peter 4:8  Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins. Hebrews 6:10-11  For God is not unjust. He will not forget how hard you have worked for him and how you have shown your love to him by caring for other believers, as you still do.  11  Our great desire is that you will keep on loving others as long as life lasts, in order to make certain that what you hope for will come true.

Revolutionary

When did hate become so ordinary?

Video: Josh Wilson - Revolutionary

Maybe you're not like me

Maybe we don't agree

Maybe that doesn't mean

We gotta be enemies

Maybe we just get brave

Take a big leap of faith

Call a truce so me and you

Can find a better way

Let's take some time, open our eyes, look and listen, yeah

And we're gonna find we're more alike than we are different, yeah

Why does kindness seem revolutionary

When did we let hate get so ordinary

Let's turn it around, flip the script

Judge slow, love quick

God help us get revolutionary

I'm turning the TV down

Drowning their voices out

'Cause I believe that you and me

Can find some common ground

See maybe I'm not like you

But I'll walk a mile in your shoes

If it means I might see

The world the way you do

Let's take some time, open our eyes, look and listen

And we're gonna find we're more alike than we are different

What would Jesus do

He would love first

He would love first, hmm

What would Jesus do

He would love first

Yeah, He would love first

So we should love first

John 13:34-35 So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.

Choose Love

God's extravagant love is our example.

1 John 4:9-11, 19-21 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.

10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.

19 We love each other because he loved us first. 20 If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? 21 And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their Christian brothers and sisters.

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Love is one of the most over-used and most misunderstood words in the English language, I can love my corn flakes in my cereal bowl or I might love people that make me feel good, the word love must be very confusing to somebody learning English as a second language.

The Bible proves to us that God's love is a purposeful commitment to sacrificial action that isn't deserved. I wish that was an original idea but somebody thought of that definition and if you search the entire phrase it comes up all over the internet.

It is cool to think of the Bible as a love story from Genesis to Revelation we find that God is always pursuing his people that he chose to love no matter what. In today's scripture the apostle John gives us a picture of real love from God's example.

Love started with God, he lovingly made us and you might say we deserved his love at that point but soon after that he proved the depth of his love by continuing to love us after we became his enemy.

Ephesians 1:4-5 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

A great sacrifice was made so that I could have a peaceful and loving relationship with God. It is amazing to realize that I was so bad that God had to die for me but I am so loved that he wanted to die for me. How can you resist a love that made such an extravagant and willing sacrifice?

The natural thing for us to do would be to take the easy way out and choose hate but the Bible tells us that we don't have that option as children of God. Maybe hate is too strong of a word but we don't even have the right to withhold love.

If God chose love for me when I was so undeserving then I need to follow his example and do the same for everyone around me. I don't have a reason to not love somebody compared to the reason that God could have used to not love me.

Take a look all through the Bible and you will find God choosing to love people that disappointed him, people that turned their backs on him and chose to ignore him, that is the commitment that God made to me and I need to do the same.

The Cold Church

The church in Ephesus looked good on the outside.

Revelation 2:1-4 "Write this letter to the angel of the church in Ephesus. This is the message from the One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven gold lampstands: 2 "I know all the things you do. I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance. I know you don't tolerate evil people. You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not. You have discovered they are liars. 3 You have patiently suffered for Me without quitting. 4 "But I have this complaint against you. You don't love Me or each other as you did at first!

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Ever visit a church that you have never been to before? Maybe you are looking for a new church home and you want to know that the church that you are considering is really a good church. You can visit a few weeks or maybe even read some reviews online but you can't be sure that the church is really a good church. We may be fooled but Jesus has the eyes to see the true condition of the church. (Revelation 1:14)

The church in Ephesus looked great, they had ministries and programs, they had good teaching, they defended the truth and didn't tolerate false doctrine but they missed one thing that Jesus wanted to warn them about.

This church was in a very pagan city with a culture that must have been influenced by the temple dedicated to the worship of the goddess Diana which was located there. Ephesus was an important and famous city, the temple was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, they had games that rivaled the Olympics, a library and a large amphitheater.

This church had an awesome start, the ministry started with Aquila, Priscilla, and Apollos worked at the new church plant and then Paul came into town and reaped a great harvest. Timothy served there and John was also there until his exile to Patmos. (Acts 18:24-28, 19:23-41)

The message to the church in Ephesus is that what we do for the Lord is important but so is why we do it! The church was serving sacrificially, they were defending truth and they were enduring persecution but their motivation was wrong.

You can be very busy serving God but if you are doing it just to follow the rules instead of it coming from an overwhelming love for him then you are no better than the religious leaders that Jesus was talking to:

Matthew 22:37 Jesus replied, "You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind."

Jesus spoke those words to some of the best people on earth. A lot of the religious leaders were really very good people that followed the rules and tried to do exactly what the law said they should do. The problem with that is, even the best religious leaders of Jesus day with good intentions, were guilty of serving and sacrificing without loving.

It may surprise you to learn that the church that is passionately serving must be careful to be passionately loving as well because it is possible to serve, sacrifice, suffer persecution and physical abuse and yet not really love Jesus Christ. Without love for Jesus it's just religion!

If you can be a church that does not passionately love Jesus in a persecuted country then the odds that a church in the United States does not love Jesus properly is very high. We live so comfortably that we begin to rely on ourselves and forget about the source of our blessings.

Psalms 32:11 So rejoice in the LORD and be glad, all you who obey Him! Shout for joy, all you whose hearts are pure!

The intensity of my love for Jesus needs to burn strong everyday. His love for me never fails but my love for him needs to be cultivated and nurtured at all times. It will be so awesome when we get to live without sin and there will not be any competition from the world for my affection.

I need to stop and take time to remember the work that God has been doing in my life and continue to fellowship with him everyday because I love him and want to serve him joyfully.