How do we practice love? And how do we tap the Christ within so that we are able to love the difficult and irksome ones? The call is even to extend love to those who have abused us—our enemies. First we must function in a higher framework. Hannah Whitall Smith in her classic The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life said, “The human beings around us are often the bottles that hold our medicine prescribed and given to us by the Great Physician of our souls to heal our spiritual diseases.”75 Graham Cooke in his book, Approaching the Heart of Prophecy, also points us to this higher plane: “It’s not easy to love everyone, but it is the call on every prophet’s life. To test us in this, God deliberately puts people around us who are meant to be loved by us. Often we will have to be very creative to love them; some of them, by design, are not easy to love. But those unlovable ones, ironically, teach us the most about God’s heart. I call people like these grace growers. They cultivate the grace in my life by forcing me to be intentional about loving them.”76 Cooke continues, “God puts these people in our lives to teach us about being Christlike….We all have difficult people around us, but they are going to teach us experientially how to discover and explore the love of God. It will kill us to love some of them; such struggle cracks open our heart to the Holy Spirit. God wants us to look at His children with the same love He feels. The harder they are to love, the more God will pour Himself out on us to accomplish that action. What a mystery this is! The very people we find the hardest to get along with can bring us the closest to Christ.”77 We must know God’s ways and perceive His hand in relational struggles. We must understand that God orchestrates things such that we must enter into His death on the cross—the cross our self nature is placed on in union with Christ—and so bear about in the body death to our natural reactions. At the point of death to self, the Holy Spirit releases Christ’s resurrection life. We experience His supernatural grace in order to love. Death works life is the Scriptural principle. (See Galatians 2:20.)
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The Throne of Grace
1 Corinthians 1:3 (TPT) May joyous grace(c) and endless peace be yours continually
from our Father God and from our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One!
c 1:3 The Greek word charis, in its original sense, is descriptive of that which brings pleasure and joy to the human heart, implying a strong emotional element. God’s grace includes favor and supernatural potency, and it is meant to leave us both charming and beautiful. In classical Greek it was meant to convey the attitude of favor shown by royalty. See Torrance, The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers, pp. 1-5.
2 Peter 3:18 (TPT) But continue to grow and increase in God’s grace and intimacy with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (b) May He receive all the glory both now and until the day eternity begins. Amen!
b 3:18 The Aramaic does not use the imperative but makes it more of a decree: “You continue to be nourished in grace and in the intimate knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Messiah, and of God the Father.” Spiritual growth is yielding to the grace of God and having passion to know Jesus Christ intimately. In time, we grow into His beautiful image.
What great wisdom it is to understand that our Creator desires to supply us with everything we need to function such that we love Him and we love others with His selfless love thus fulfilling all the Law and the Prophets. What a great thing to understand that His will is a walk of union with God’s heart and mind and God is love. To reach higher levels of obeying “Not my will, but Thine, be done” is to reach deeper levels of knowing the Lord’s love. (Luke 22:42 KJV) Love equates to obedience, and obedience yields intimacy with the Lord. He becomes more real; His presence weightier. Jesus said in John 14:21, “The person who has My commands and keeps them is the one who [really] loves Me; and whoever [really] loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I [too] will love him and will show (reveal, manifest) Myself to him. [I will let Myself be clearly seen by him and make Myself real to him.]” (AMPC) And to be close to Him like John was is the ultimate fulfillment.
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love lessons 