Love is God’s government.
Not a government of rules and task lists,
But a government that flows from God’s heart in us received by faith in Jesus Christ,
Government that produces the approach, resources, services, security, and harmony that makes its subjects whole.
Love is God’s government that makes its subjects whole.
#love #heartwords
Am I experiencing anything less than love, joy and peace?
The ultimate realignment question is:
WHERE ARE YOU?
“Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, ‘Where are you?'”
— Genesis 3:9
WHAT IS THE LIE BLOCKING GOD’S LOVE?
“So he said, ‘I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.'”
— Genesis 3:10
WHO AM I BELIEVING?
“And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?'”
— Genesis 3:11
HAVE I BELIEVED ANOTHER VOICE? GOD IS THE ONLY SOURCE OF GOODNESS AND TRUTH. EVERYTHING ELSE IS HARMFUL LIES AND BELIEVING IT RESULTS IN CORRUPTION WHICH CAUSES ME TO RELATE TO EVERYTHING IN A HARMFUL WAY (EVIL), INCLUDING LIGHT—THE RESPONSE BEING TO HIDE.
“And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”
— John 3:19-21
GOD LOVES US. BELIEVING GOD IS THE WAY TO LIFE.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
— John 3:16
BELIEVING GOD IS THE WAY TO ENJOY GOD’S LOVE.
“for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God.”
— John 16:27
BE AMAZED: GOD LOVES US AS HE LOVES HIS SON JESUS! ENTER INTO THE COMMUNION AND WONDER OF GOD’S LOVE.
“I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”
— John 17:23
HOW WE LOVE—THE DEFINITION: OBEY GOD.
“This is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, that as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it.”
— 2 John 1:6
WHAT IS GOD’S COMMANDMENT? LOVE GOD. LOVE FOR EACH OTHER IS IN THAT LOVE.
“‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?’
Jesus said to him, ‘”You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.'”
— Matthew 22:36-40
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
— John 13:34-35
“If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?”
— 1 John 4:20
WHERE AM I? AM I IN CHRIST—GOD’S LOVE?
“If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.
If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.
As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.
If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.
This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.”
— John 15:6-14
REST IN THE PLACE OF PERFECTED LOVE THAT COMES WITH BELIEVING GOD.
“And we have known and believed the love that God has for us.
God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world.
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.”
— 1 John 4:16-18
So, am I experiencing anything less than love, joy and peace?
Where am I?
I’m believing You, God.
I am resting in Your love through obedience.
#perfectourlove
“For Love to be experienced, I have to be exposed.”
That’s the word that came to me.
It’s an answer to an almost two-year-long prayer where I asked, “Father, show me You. Please let me see You the way Jesus sees You so I am likewise driven by a love, an awe, a reverence, an adoration, and an unwavering commitment to You.”
Two years ago, the Holy Spirit gave me, “Seek Me in the face of My people.”
I obeyed, and it was transformative.
A new fire has been kindled in my heart by the Holy Spirit.
I am experiencing God.
Now, I believe that the Lord is calling me to a new level of intimacy with Him through people, to move from “meeting at”: meeting at church, meeting at Bible study, meeting at marriage ministry, meeting at this event, meeting at that function, meeting at lunch, to “living with.”
Honestly, I don’t know what that means yet. All I get is the sense that it involves uncomfortable risk, letting down my guard, and leaving the places of safety that I’ve constructed. He is my shield.
To do that, I have to go, I have to show up, I have to be present, and I have to expose myself—all things that are horrendous to a self-proclaimed introvert.
But, I gladly, albeit reluctantly, step forward to learn obedience (love in a new way – 1 John 5:3) through the things I will certainly suffer that I may know Him.
So, I will show up. I will let in. I will expose myself.
But why haven’t I been showing up before now?
To understand that, I have to understand what the opposite of showing up is:
Hiding.
This revelation comes out of Genesis 3:9-11, which recounts Adam’s interaction with God after the sin of taking someone else’s word over God’s. As a result, he hid.
“Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, ‘Where are you?’
So he said, ‘I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.’
And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?'”
— Genesis 3:9-11
Observe that Adam and Eve’s fear and shame were NOT the result of anything God did or said. They were ashamed BEFORE God said anything to them. They became ashamed because of the information they accepted from another source, namely about themselves.
“I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
Eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is like watching porn rather than being taught about sex by a loving father.
Rather than seeing your bodies and the beauty of sex in the context of sacredness, awe, exploration, acceptance, appreciation, safety, promise, and commitment, through porn you receive a distortion framed in selfishness, objectification, subjugation, trivialization, comparison, performance, perversion, and risk…
What was peddled as freedom results in fear, which is often the case when we get our information from those who don’t love us. And fear results in hiding.
“I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
God’s response absolutely leveled my heart:
“Who told you that you were naked?”
This is what God chooses to say among the infinite options of things He could have said in response. So, it begs the question, why?
In a single statement, I believe God wages a war that He’s already won, starting His attack on the source of all sorrows—sin, which separates us from Him. God exposes the root of sin and takes an axe to it:
“Who made you afraid, telling you that you are anything less than loved and accepted so that you needed to hide?”
-And the crux of the matter-
“Why did you believe them over Me?”
THE problem is believing someone other than God, and believing something other than what God said.
The result is fear, which causes us to hide.
I know a lot about hiding. I’ve been doing it for nearly forty years now. All because I’ve believed a series of someones over God and believed something about myself that God didn’t say.
God said, “Who told you that you were naked?”
“Naked” is representative of all the damning things we’ve come to believe according to the distorted value system of this world.
We can take whatever that is, especially things we’ve come to believe about ourselves: ugly, worthless, poor, stupid, unwanted, unlovable, alone… and plug it into that sentence:
“Who told you that you were ______?”
Mine is: a disappointment.
In my heart of hearts, I believe I am a disappointment.
I go into every interaction with people assuming that I’m going to disappoint them in some way and ultimately be abandoned. So, naturally, I avoid interaction, and it causes me to hide.
It has affected every relationship that I have.
It has caused me to put burdens on others to make me feel like I’m not a disappointment, especially in romantic relationships, including my wife.
But that’s an impossible task when at the heart of the problem is I’ve believed someone other than God. If I didn’t believe God, how can they possibly convince me?!!
I repent.
The lie I believed is deep-seated from a very early age. I’ve believed the scowls. I’ve believed the isolation at a time when I should have received nothing but love. I’ve believed that I am only embraced and accepted on the basis of merit rather than for just being. I’ve believed I have to look a certain way and have certain things.
It became a part of me, too intricately interwoven to remove without killing me or making me utterly unrecognizable, which is precisely why I have to die.
I have to die to the person who lives according to the word of demons, what this world says and Satan, the ruler of it, and be born again according to the incorruptible seed of the Word of God, which is Christ, by His Spirit, with a heart that believes Him.
Therewith, I will make war with every thought or emotion that causes me to want to hide, accounting the old me as dead. I will live in newness and counter it with the question,
“Who told you that?”
And, I will believe God.
God says you are accepted in the beloved (Ephesians 1:6). Full stop.
I am not accepted on the basis of performance, appearance, or merit, but simply because of who He is.
When we see God as He is in truth, we see everything else appropriately, and it casts out all fear.
“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.”
— 1 John 4:18
“And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”
— 1 John 4:16
Now, I endeavor to realize this Love and to know Him more fully.
The Spirit tells me that requires others.
“For Love to be experienced, I have to be exposed.”
So, I press.
I can’t be exposed if I’m hiding. So, I will confront every suggestion that causes me to want to hide with what God said, “Who told you that?” And, I will fight to believe Him.
Knowing and believing the love of God for us, accomplished through Jesus Christ, is glorious, but obedience: experiencing, expressing, and expanding on the love with others will be difficult, and I will suffer because that love will be opposed.
As I present myself naked and exposed, standing on what God says, there will surely be others that will mock me, ridicule me, and assert what the adversary says—that I am not loved.
But, I will fight to believe God.
Please pray for me.
And, if you’re so prompted by the Holy Spirit, join me.
#perfectourlove
The Garden of Eden was paradise, created and sustained by the Word of God.
Everything was good until Man believed that God could lie and accepted a message from elsewhere with the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
This is how we became separated from God.
And, it is impossible once a fruit has been plucked for it to be reconnected.
We were hopelessly condemned to an inevitable death.
But, God.
But in the unsearchable wisdom of God, He provided a Branch who, if we believe, makes us new fruit that are grafted in.
We fell from a place, but God permanently secured us in a Person.
At His right hand are pleasures forevermore.
God has provided The Way to paradise, created and sustained by the Word of God.
Paradise is being with Him.
Being with Him begins with believing Him and then walking with Him in obedience to His example which is love.
#perfectourlove
“Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered” from Hebrews 5:8 speaking of Jesus is a breathtakingly astounding statement.
What did Jesus, being God, have to learn?!
The scripture says, “obedience”. But, what does that mean?
I believe it means love in a new way
because,
“For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments…” — 1 John 5:3
I believe that from before the beginning the love between the members of God is perfect —lacking nothing. Put bluntly, man does not exist because God needs us in any way.
I believe everything exists as a means for the members of God to express, explore and expand their love for one another. Man exists as a result of that love and we get to be a part of it.
It is remotely similar to how parenting, especially the challenges that come along with it, allow me to know my wife (and myself) in beautiful new and novel ways.
The love of God is a perfect, beautiful, boundless, growing love, eternally demonstrating itself with every circumstance and under the most extreme conditions.
For those who don’t know the Answer the question is
“Is love true?”
Or, said another way,
“Will love continue to be love, even in this?”
The answer is what God declares; The Father giving the Son as revealed by the Holy Spirit.
It is what the life of Christ demonstrates.
Always, Yes.
I AM ⟺ I AM
It’s a proof that proves itself.
So, what did Jesus have to learn?
Obedience. Love in a new way.
Love under the violent assault of an adversary and that must endure the ravages of sin without becoming any way diminished by it.
These are the means by which He learned.
Jesus did this perfectly, and by it became the first fruit, the model, and qualified to be the Redeemer for all born under such conditions, having been tempted (tested) in every way that we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)
“And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him”
— Hebrews 5:9
Now, as He was sent, I am sent.
So Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”
— John 20:21
So, the question my life strives to answer is
“Is love true?”
Or, said another way,
“Will love continue to be love, even in this?”
Everything is for this purpose. For love to be declared and for me to experience, express, explore and expand on the love I have with God —to participate in the beautiful communion of God’s love.
Oh, thank you Jesus!
All things do indeed work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28) because whatever I face, good or bad, is an opportunity to experience, express, explore and expand on the love I have with God.
Could this be why the Apostle Paul writes that he WELCOMES the fellowship of His sufferings THAT. HE. MAY. KNOW. HIM. (Philippians 3:8-14)
So, whatever I’m struggling with, the question in the midst of my suffering is:
“Will He love me, will I love Him, even in this?”
God’s side of the equation has already been answered through Christ. Always, Yes. (Romans 8:35-39)
So, I strive to respond,
“Yes, Lord, I will love you even in this.”
Which means obedience to Christ’s example
That the truth of Your love may be declared and that I may experience, express, explore and expand on the love I have with You.
NOTE: The artwork is something I created as a fan of anime with some help from AI. (It’s not all AI. I did a lot of work in Photoshop to create it. This is the kind of stuff I want to help students to learn as a means of expression, personal investment in their education, and meaningfully engaging with the technology). It’s for an original series called Shizukana Kishi or Still Knights that I was inspired to create by my son Chris Luckett (hopefully I can get him to help with the score).
Because manga is a Japanese art form, it is traditionally read from top right to bottom left. For those who prefer to read it the way we typically do in the United States, I’ve included a version of the panels in a western format below.
#perfectourlove #shizuka #shizukanakishi #stillknights
Under what conditions does love stop being love?
This is what this life is designed to test:
our love for God,
and under what conditions does the love we have fail? What thing, if lost, would cause our love to end?
We are not subjected to fiery trials to test our love for God because God is a sadistic megalomaniac,
but because the first commandment:
‘And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’
— Mark 12:30
is necessary to perform the second commandment:
‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
— Mark 12:31
and is the only bond strong enough to accomplish God’s grand design: His ever increasing glory through Oneness, making us inseparably one with God.
“Jesus answered him, ‘The first of all the commandments is: “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.”‘”
— Mark 12:29
“I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”
— John 17:23
The love that you love God with is the source of the love for everyone else, and however strong your love for God is, it is the limit of how strong your connection is to the person dearest to you.
If the love you have is less than God’s love, everything supported by it, everything built around it and everything connected to it will fail at some point.
There are some weights in life that anything less than love will not survive.
And there’s a coming day, the great and terrible day of the Lord, where whatever is within anything less than love will be destroyed.
So, our love is tested FOR OUR GOOD, so that our love is perfected,
because God’s love never fails
— 1 Corinthians 13:8
so that we, and everything built on and connected to that love lives and not dies, that our communion as One may be perfect
all for the wonderful glory of God.
What an amazing thing it is that we can be a part of that!
So, I encourage you to count every hardship you’re enduring as all joy! Remembering the point of the test.
Finish this sentence: “Aquila and…”
Many disciples can finish that phrase without a second’s thought.
“Aquila and Priscilla”, though scarcely mentioned in Scripture, are models for God-honoring marriages.
Namely, in this way: when you think of one, you think of the other because as they are depicted in the scripture, they are always together and act as one.
How is their marriage God honoring? Because, through their marriage, they live out the “great mystery” of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:22-33).
Others should not see or think of us primarily as an individual.
We are betrothed to Christ.
When people see us, they should see Christ.
When people think of us, they should immediately think of Christ, because we’re always together and act as One.
That is what our marriages and lives should reflect.
#perfectourlove
No one could ever convince me that Love does not exist.
Or, that it is just language for a mutually agreed upon construct,
or merely an electro-chemical reaction in our brains.
Because I’ve known Love to exist apart from these things,
transcendent,
powerful,
sovereign,
alive
—an agent that causes, not an effect.
Love is law that’s obvious to everyone when it is not obeyed.
God is Love.
In fact, that’s what brought me to belief: love undeserved,
love that existed
despite the fact that I had not acknowledged or participated in any semblance of a construct of mutual value or regard,
love that was experienced
despite the electro-chemical reactions in my brain: feelings of sadness and depression.
It was not my imagination.
It was not an emotion.
It was an encounter.
It is a Person I reliably meet every time I’m loved or every time I seek to express love.
And it matches Jesus to the letter as He is described in Scripture and even as I learn more about Him.
It’s a person that is not whatever we want it to be but a person with an identity just as distinct as a fingerprint.
It’s an ID everyone is wired to make. Everyone can tell what is more or less love, which is what makes John 13:35 true:
“By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
— John 13:35
“All will know” not by just anything we call love, but by something very specific as indicated in the immediately preceding verse:
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”
— John 13:34
We can’t make Love whatever we want it to be.
“All will know” by love that Jesus is,
love that Jesus demonstrates,
love that Jesus commands.
“This is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, that as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it.”
— 2 John 1:6
Love is law.
“Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
— Romans 13:10
Love is a Person to be obeyed.
“But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him.”
— 1 John 2:5
God is love.
“He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
— 1 John 4:8
Want to know God?
Love
by obeying Jesus and express Love personified.
#perfectourlove
My children have taught me so much.
One of the greatest lessons of my life that I’m still learning came from playing with them a computer game called Minecraft.
Minecraft is like a digital version of the toy building blocks I grew up with as a kid called Legos. But, rather than building an object as you would with Legos, in Minecraft an entire world is generated on the computer that you can build and exist within.
It was a place you could both explore and shape to your vision with resources made available from within the game: wood, stone, metals, gems, crops, animals, etc.. You were only limited by your ambition, your imagination and your computer’s computational power.
We built grand houses and whole villages. We went on adventures spanning great distances across different biomes (green forests, snowy mountains, sandy beaches). We even built machines that automated processes such as harvesting animals into food. We explored and mined vast, dangerous caves to stock our chests with materials and priceless treasure to expand our builds or to use in our next adventure.
Among the heights of items sought after were enchanted diamond tools, weapons and armor. These items were coveted because if you had them, you could practically get anything else. I never achieved this feat, but my much more skilled boys did. It took exorbitant amounts of time, exploration, and great risk to collect all the items required.
We spent hours, sometimes days or weeks building or learning to build our Minecraft world. We even had our own private hosted server (before Microsoft Realms was available) called Blockhaven.
Today, we don’t know where any of that stuff is. The server has been shutdown. The great houses, territories, troves of diamonds, lapis lazuli, ender pearls, the wonderful inventions we worked so hard and invested real time (even real tears were shed) to achieve are all gone. Even many of the memories have faded away. But, the things that remain are the relationships we built and the closeness we developed. They are forever.
Therein is the lesson.
What we learn, what we do, what we achieve, what we build only matters to the extent of what it builds in and establishes with others.
What we build in and establish with others makes everything matter, whether we’re a potato peeler or a Nobel prize winning nuclear physicist. Without it, nothing matters whether we’re a potato peeler or a Nobel prize winning nuclear physicist.
One day, this server that we exist in will be shutdown.
Consider 2 Peter 3:11-12,
“Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat?”
And, Hebrews 12:27,
“Now this, ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.”
But, for those in Christ, we focus on what cannot be shaken —the eternal.
“While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.””
—2 Corinthians 4:18
What is eternal? What cannot be shaken? What can survive the fervent, purifying fire of the coming day of God?
“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”
—John 17:3
What is eternal, what cannot be shaken, what can survive the fervent, purifying fire of the day of God? Life —to be of the same kind of fire as the coming fire of the day of God, us being set ablaze by the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus Christ.
“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
—John 1:4
“Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world.”
—1 John 4:17
“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.”
—Hebrews 12:28-29
The time you get to work does not matter,
That report does not matter,
That money does not matter,
That elite, grand achievement does not matter,
That world changing discovery or breakthrough does not matter in or of itself.
It only matters to the extent of how its done or how its used to build in and establishes with others something eternal.
This is why it is written in Colossians 3:23,
“And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men”
Today, I implore us to believe Jesus so we can truly see what matters: what we build in and establish with others; the only thing that is eternal —relationships and closeness developed in Christ.
“I see whole people.”
With the heart and mind of Christ I should be able to better see people as they would be if they were in the Kingdom of God, apart from the corrupting influence of sin and their trauma from this world, and then deal with them with the patience, compassion, care and courage to love them where the Father would have them to be: whole in Him.
“But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd.”
—Matthew 9:36
‘Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.”
—Matthew 9:35
Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”
—Matthew 9:37-38
So, when we encounter people, we should pray and ask, “Lord, show me who they would be in Your Kingdom” and, “Help me to bear the fruit of Your Spirit and grant me Your manifold grace to love them there.
Make me a laborer in the harvest of my Lord, Your Son, Jesus Christ and I ask this request in His name. Amen.”
#perfectourlove