He Loves You, Now Remain in His Love

Below are two Facebook posts I made recently. I feel they also belong here.

Remain 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” (Jn 15:10).

But doesn’t Jesus love everyone? Well, He loves those who love Him. What I mean is, in the very same way that Jesus “remained” in His Father’s love, so too are we to remain. Jesus remained in His Father’s “special” protection, so He could claim Psalm 91 for Himself. He remained in His Father’s “special” wisdom and understanding (the “secrets” of heaven were His). He also remained in the joy, comfort, and peace “from heaven” (a divine calm). Basically, He remained in His Father’s “PLEASURE AND FAVOR.” When Jesus spoke, it was the Father’s Words, when Jesus prayed, the answer was YES every time! THIS is “abiding in God’s love.” Now listen closely: When we as children of God, are abiding in Christ’s love, walking in obedience to Jesus’ commands to love Him first, and then to love one another (as brothers and sisters in Christ), THEN we can confidently claim Psalm 91 and ALL the promises of God for ourselves in this life. The financial provisions, the knowledge that our health is “completely” in His hands, that our daily decisions came from Him even before we prayed about them, and that every prayer request is a YES from God. Do you get my point? When we take up our cross (considering ourselves literally crucified to all that opposes God) and follow Jesus by loving Him, then each other, where then does worry, the unknown, or fears of tomorrow fit?

This may very well be convicting! (I’m like, what did I just write. I’m convicted). So now we ask the Spirit to search our hearts (Psalm 139:23-24) and to give us wisdom and strength to “abide”

He loves you!:

Remember when your children were so tiny and ignorant, how they would be “naughty” and you would gently help them understand how what they were doing was wrong, and why it was wrong? And recall how when they were teenagers and they were being “rebellious” because they had been told the consequences of their actions and understood them, but how as a parent it hurt your heart to see them going the wrong way, which was truly just hurting themselves? And remember how when they became young adults you grieved in your heart because now they had fixed themselves in a pattern of living which would, in the end, ultimately destroy them? And remember how they thought you were just a jerk and angry and “unloving” because you could not support their choices. But how IN TRUTH it was because you loved them that your heart grieved, and it was this grief that “appeared” to them as anger and hate?

This is the Father’s love for His children. And depending upon the level of our “maturity”, He will hold us accountable. If you are an infant (spiritually), He will respond to you in that way, but if you are an adult (spiritually) He will respond to you accordingly. He DOES NOT expect more, or less, than our level of maturity. Therefore, let us know His love, what motivates His discipline, not confusing love with hate, and lastly, let us now recall the letter to the Laodicean church in Revelation 3, and recognize He grieved, but held them accountable, just like a good Dad would. I made this connection to the Laodicean church for the sole purpose of giving “context” to Jesus’ strong rebuke to a church bearing full responsibility for its choices. So that, like some, we will not put “that kind of Jesus” in a different box than the “kind and gentle Jesus” that we are so familiar with. Sometimes we forget that Jesus sits enthroned as King and Judge at the right hand of His Father in glory now. He is kind and gentle with the humble, but He is strong and firm with the proud. And He never changed!