FOUNDATION STATEMENT: Keeping the commandment of love is a total giving of yourself over to God. Loving God is giving God every word that you speak, giving God every thought that you think, and giving God every action that you take. It’s loving God with every word that you chose to speak, every thought that you chose to think, and every decision that you chose to make. That’s loving the Father.
I. Christians have been deceived into about the commandment of love
A. Christians have been deceived into thinking that they already got this and we don’t and the results in our lives have been reflecting that.
1. Keeping this commandment is much more than just being a “good Christian.”
B. The enemy has gotten us to neglect this in our deception that we got it
1. Consequently we have a whole lot of form, but no power.
C. To not neglect the commandment of love we got to know what “THIS” is
II. What is the commandment of Love? (Matthew 22:37)
A. Love the Lord Your God with all of your HEART
1. Your heart/recreated spirit is like soil that you sow seeds into (Mark 4:14-15)
2. To love God with all of your heart is to guard your heart and keep out all intruders and word seeds that are in opposition to God’s Word (Proverbs 4:23)
a. We’ve whittled that down to keep from adultery, foul language, pornography, and things of conduct like that. How about keeping your heart from word seeds of sickness, poverty, lack, and defeat?
b. Genesis 2:15 – Adam got in trouble because he didn’t guard his garden Satan came in and sowed words seeds
3. To love God with all your heart is to sow the seed of His word into it so that His Word can reproduce and manifest in your life
a. I don’t dare let anything get in my heart that’s in opposition to the Word
B. Love the Lord Your God with all of your soul – MIND
1. To love God with all of your mind means that you love God with every thought that you think; You diligently do 2 Cor 10:3-5
a. You set your mind on the commandment of love and when anything thought comes into your head that opposes that commandment or the Word of God you cast it down (1 Corinthians 13:5)
C. Love the Lord your God with all of your soul – WILL
1. To love God with all of your will is to love God with every choice that you make (John 14:15)
a. The deciding factor for the decisions that you make is no longer how is this going to make me feel, but the basis for every decision that you make is now does this minister love to the Father
b. I might not “feel” like doing it, but that’s not the basis for why I do what I do. The basis for why I do what I do is, “Does it minister love to the Father?”
2. The greatest love statement that ever came from the lips of man (Matthew 26:36-41, Luke 22:44)
a. Jesus’ flesh was fighting going to the cross. His flesh didn’t want to go. There’s an extreme amount of pressure that he’s feeling. There was a heaviness that fell upon him. His spirit wants to do one thing; his flesh wants to do another. His soul (mind, will, and emotions) is sorrowful. The pressure is so great that he is resisting to the point that blood starts dripping like sweat would from his pours. And then out of nowhere the greatest statement of love that has ever fallen from the lips of man comes pouring out of him, “Father not as I will, but as you will.”
1) I firmly believe he was up there confessing this commandment
2) Every time we confess that commandment, we’re saying the same thing, “Not my will Father, but your will.”
b. When the pressure was put on his mind, his will, and his emotions, what was in him came roaring out of him – Love
1) What comes out of you when the pressure is on?
c. He swore to his own hurt before he violated that commandment (Ps 15)
1) If it hurts my flesh to do it I’ll keep this commandment
2) I don’t care how much pressure is on me and I don’t care if blood drips from my pours, I’ll love God with every thought that I chose to think, every word that I choose to speak, and every action that I choose to make
3. To love God with all your will is to love him with every word that you chose to speak
a. No matter how much pressure is on me I choose 2 say what God has told to
1) To say something that is in opposition to what God said is to violate the commandment of love (Romans 14:23)
b. I only say what my Father says
1) Ephesians 4:29 – Let no foul or polluting language, nor evil word nor unwholesome or worthless talk [ever] come out of your mouth, but only such [speech] as is good and beneficial to the spiritual progress of others, as is fitting to the need and the occasion, that it may be a blessing and give grace (God’s favor) to those who hear it.
2) James 3:14 – Speak the Word only
D. Love the Lord your God with all of your Soul – EMOTIONS
1. Loving God with all of your emotions is controlling your emotions rather than your emotions controlling you (Ephesians 4:26)
a. The emotion of anger doesn’t move into the action of sin
III. Keeping the commandment of love and loving the Father is to totally give yourself over to God to the point where you become one with him
A. Love in the verb form is the Greek word Agapao
1. Agapao – to totally give yourself to; It’s what we bind ourselves with and become one with; It’s total commitment and consumption
B. To love God is to bind yourself to Him to the point that you become one with Him
1. I don’t have a will apart from His will; the ending of two & the beginning of one
a. The harvest of me giving the father my will is His will – Days of Heaven on the Earth
C. To love God in it’s highest form is, “When you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” (John 14:9)
1. His thoughts are your thoughts
2. His words are your words (John 12:49, 8:26)
3. His ways are your ways (John 5:19,30)
IV. As a believer you have to set up a love line boundary for your life and make a decision to absolutely refuse to cross that line come hell or high water (2 Corinthians 5:14)
A. Constrains (synecho) – to cover, to crowd against, to guard, to hold in custody, to compel, to urge on, held, keep in, stops, throngs
1. The love of God covers me and guards me
a. It keeps the word working, it keeps me out of fear, and it keeps me away from the oppression
2. The love of God holds me in custody
a. Sometimes I would like to get out, but love is holding me in custody
3. The love of God crowds me
a. Like a car that is crowded in a traffic jam can’t go anywhere, love has me crowded so I can’t go anywhere
4. The love of God compels me
a. It forces me to stay in love because of its functions
b. It has left you no choice; if you chose to live in violation of it the Word can’t work for you and you’re accessible to be oppressed
5. The love of God urges me on
a. It urges me to stay in love and not violate that commandment of love
6. The love of God stops me
a. It stops me from saying things I shouldn’t say, thinking things I shouldn’t think, and doing things I shouldn’t do
B. The Apostle Paul is saying there’s a love fence that I’ve established in my life and it keeps me from thinking certain things that I shouldn’t think, saying certain things that I shouldn’t say, and doing certain things that I shouldn’t do
1. To think that or say that or do that I would have to cross the love fence and get out there where nothing works
2. The Love of God works in my mind like a filter and if it’s not love I don’t think it, say it, or do it because it’s a love filter that filters anything that’s not love
a. This love commandment should be on your mind to the point that it filters out anything that is not love or faith
C. Everything that we do we do in love (1 Corinthians 16:14)
1. (AMP) Let everything you do be done in love (true love to God and man as inspired by God’s love for us).
2. Everything that I do is done in the sphere of love because outside that sphere nothing works.
a. I do all my talking in love. I do all my thinking in love. I do all my acting in love. I do all my faith in love. I put on the armor of God in love. I sow my seed in love. I drive in love. I eat in love. I pray in the spirit in love.
3. Philippians 2:3 – Do nothing outside of love
D. You got to root yourself, ground yourself, and take your stance in the Love of God and absolutely refuse to come out (Ephesians 3:14)
1. I’m rooted in this and I ain’t coming out of it