He Loves us for real
He does. He loves me. He loves you. When you truly experience the love of God, it makes you feel like you are the only person on the planet. His love becomes so personal, you can see that he would have died just for you. It becomes even more personal when you see his goodness everyday. Until you believe he is good your eyes can’t see it. You can’t see that he paints every sunrise just for you! Can you see that it rains as a sign of his blessing? Every cool wind a sign of his mercy and grace. God finds purpose in loving people.
He has decided to love you infinitely. It is not an emotionless decision. His love is emotional and reasonable. God loves you with his mind and heart. He chooses to love you unashamedly and his choice is packed and charged with intense emotion. He is sovereign. He is The Lord of the universe but he has summarized himself in one word, love. God is love. There are so many things that we could say God is. We could say he is kind, benevolent and magnificent. We would be right in saying so but God has chosen only one word. He chose love.
Ephesians 3:17-18
May Christ through your faith actually dwell settle down, abide, and make His permanent home in your hearts! May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love, That you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saint’s God’s devoted people, the experience of that love what is the breadth and length and height and depth of it;
Paul's prayer is that you would be founded securely on love. Rooted in it. That kind of experience in prayer makes you dangerous in life. The devil fears God's dread champions. As you gaze on The Lord, demons are being squished by his glory.
Renewing the mind
Renewing the mind is essential to the Christian life. All attitudes creep out of our hearts. "Guard your heart for out of it spring the issues of life"(Proverbs 4:23). The heart and the mind are synonymous in scripture. It was the center of all thoughts, attitudes, and actions in the scriptures. Grace does its work and reveals God to the human spirit through the Holy Spirit. That encounter where the human spirit meets with God is called revelation. It's those moments of enlightening that happen in the presence.
Revelation- unveiling, pulling back the veil on hidden things, to make known what is already there. The act of revealing or disclosing.
Speak your mind
The power of speaking your mind is helpful to renewing our minds. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17). The continual meditation of the human heart upon the words of God is pivotal to a transformed heart. Only as we develop the habit of seeing reality as God does will we be changed. when you live with a renewed mind, the impossible looks logical.
My food is to do his will
I remember being at a prayer breakfast where the sick were receiving prayer. After seeing the healing evangelist make an effort to heal the sick and seeing some sick people still in need of healing, I made a move. To my right was a woman in a wheelchair. I went to pray for her. I felt no anointing but I knew that God is good and that he loves us dearly. I laid hands on her. Suddenly, this woman jumps out of the wheelchair! She starts screaming at the top of her lungs "Thank you, Jesus!! Thank you, Jesus! To put this in context she is screaming this in the middle of a hotel conference room. She had been confined to that wheelchair for 10 years and she was free. She was excited and she was going to let everyone know about it! My friend who was with me left to get his book signed by the healing evangelist. I texted him “you just missed Acts chapter 3.” He ran back to see the miracles that were happening Soon, I had a prayer line in the middle of the hotel! All things are possible when we believe.
The drunk becomes sober
One night while ministering on the streets of Caseville, MI during their annual cheeseburger festival. We had just seen some radical encounters. I was ecstatic! There is such glory when the body of Christ comes together to love people. After seeing demons cast out and people healed and saved, I was ready to call it a night. God had a different idea. I was walking by some drunk people. The cheeseburger festival is Caseville’s version of Mardi Gras so this was not an uncommon sight. As I walked past the drunk group, I casually said “ Jesus Loves you!” to these guys. One of them yelled “ Who is Jesus? I serve my Budweiser god!” at the top of his lungs in the middle of the street. Suddenly, the Spirit of God fell on me. So much power and electricity hit my body, I yelled out “you and your God right here, right now!” I say to this guy “you’re going to sober up right here right now!” You’ll have to excuse all the exclamation points but this was a charged divine moment. I lay hands on this guy while declaring soberness. He said, “bro, I don’t think your prayer is working.” Suddenly I get a word of knowledge and I said how many fingers am I holding up? As soon as I said those words he sobered up. It was unbelievable. Then he started yelling “Lord I feel your Spirit, I feel your presence!” I was thinking this is unbelievable, The Lord’s doing my preaching for me.” So I said Here bro, take some more! Then he said “ What do I do?” The modern equivalent of “what must I do to be saved?” So I said, “If you can drink at this hour, you can find a church at this hour.” He left his drinks and ran off to find a church. That’s how we preach the gospel! Not just talk but a demonstration of the Spirit and power.
1 John 4:19
We love Him, because He first loved us.
Without the personal revelation of the love of God in our hearts we are unable to do anything for God. God is not interested in our activity first. He is interested in our hearts receiving his love. When we stay focused on what we can do for God. We lose sight of love. Love definitely serves but serves out of a place of being. Being with God. In that place, as Bill Johnson says “ We never make sandwiches that Jesus didn’t order.” His love possesses us and makes all the work possible. Our focus has to be on him and receiving his love. Living out of his goodness and delight every day. God is biased towards us. He favors us as his kids. We are entrenched in his delight. It is our posture. Our place of dwelling. We live loved. We live in the fulcrum of his delight. We are supported by his goodness and mercy. You can’t express faith and miss him. He is the guarantee. He is a covenant keeper and he is devoted to your development and growth as a person, as a human, and as a son of God. He is partial to you in every situation. When you don’t know what to do. Just be. Just be in his presence and let the fire of human effort go out for lack of fuel. Let the fire of religion go out for lack of interest in human work. We serve a God who said IT IS FINISHED. The ‘Tetelestai’ of God. The finished work of Jesus allows us to rest on the seventh day with God. Just being with him. Man was created on the sixth day because he was meant to experience the rest of God, where we cease from dead works and lay down in his. One of the uses for the Aramaic word ‘tetelestai’ in ancient times was in receipts. It’s finished guys. Isn’t that good news?
