Volume 2007/3
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"He will throughly purge his
floor, and gather his wheat into the garner”
Mat.3:12
In this series We have said God is raising up
saints that will come to the stature of the Son of God, the stature of the Son
of Love. As we see in 1Jn 4:16, it says
“God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him.” As many as received him to them gave he
power to become the sons of God. This
power is already deposited in you by the Holy Ghost. You are to use this power to become a son of
God, a son of Love.
We described what love is and what love is not
in 1Cor 13. Love is patient and kind, love is
not envious, love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. Does not behave itself unseemly (not
rude), seeketh not her own (not self-centered), not easily provoked (does
not get angry easily). Love
thinketh no evil (does not remember wrong done to it). Love will forgive, does not bring up old
quarrels. One says, “that’s how you did
last week, I will not take this anymore”; it means you did not forgive that of
last week, otherwise you will take it again.
“If you do not forgive your brother, your Father in heaven will not
forgive your trespasses”. The Christian race is based upon
forgiveness.
God forgave you when you were the worst of
sinners. You say your sin is not as
much. But you are still the worst of
sinners! Whether you have not sinned in
your whole life, you are still the worst of sinners because you are a son of a
sinner, or a daughter of a sinner. That
makes you the worst of sinners.
Amen! You may say your sin is
small compared to that guy. You are
still the worst of sinners, because you are a grandson or granddaughter of a
sinner. But God forgave you, so you
better forgive your brother his trespasses. God wants you to forgive everyone
that offends you so that you can be the son or daughter of our Father God.
Love thinketh no evil. Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but
rejoiceth in the truth. God’s nature is to hate iniquity, so don’t
rejoice in sin. If you see people that
dwell in sin, rather reprove them.
Rejoice in the truth, “in his word doth he meditate day and night”.
Love beareth all things. Love believeth all
things (believes the best in people), hopeth
all things, Love endureth all things.
No matter what your neighbor is doing to you, love endures all things. Why?
Because you are a son of love.
When we begin to exercise these attributes, we are creating an
atmosphere for the seed of love to germinate and take us over, and overwhelm us
so that we can be sons of love indeed.
How do we let the seed germinate? Make an atmosphere for that seed. Put a seed in the ground, we have to create
moisture for that seed to germinate.
Similarly, God has shed the love of God in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost. The seed is planted already. By exercising these attributes of love, we
create an atmosphere for the seed to germinate.
Love is not selfish, not envious, not getting angry easily. Consciously doing those things, you are
creating the atmosphere for the seed to germinate, blossom and take you over
until love is controlling your emotions.
Then the power can follow you, because the power is a witness for the
sons of God, sons of Love.
Apostle Paul wrote concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, “declared to be the Son of God
with Power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the
dead” (
When
the Lord Jesus performed miracles, or healings, he was demonstrating the power
of Love. For example, a leper came to
Jesus and said, “Lord, if thou will, thou can make me clean”. And the Lord said, “I will, be thou
clean”. It is the will of God for us to
be well. Some people thought God put the
disease upon mankind. God did not put
the disease on man, but he allowed the world to be this way from Adam. Man’s choice brought the trouble. God created Adam and gave him the liberty to
choose whether he will obey him or not.
Otherwise he would have to make him a robot. There is a saying that if you love your bird,
let him loose. Human beings will not do
that. You say, “if I let the bird loose,
it will fly away and never come back”.
If you love the bird, let it fly away if that is what the bird
wants. This is the principle of Love which
God portrayed in letting Adam have the free-will to choose. There is a repercussion of course for your
choice. For love’s sake God allowed Adam
the liberty to choose. So from Adam, God
demonstrated his love, for God is love.
Because God is love, he did not make a
slave out of Adam. He gave him the liberty to choose to obey him, but gave him
instruction what to do and what not to do.
Similarly,
if you love someone, free him, release him from all the hurts he has done to
you, by forgiving him. “Whose
so ever sins you remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose so ever sins you
retain, they are retained..” (Jn.20:23)
Human wisdom says, “how can we allow our
enemy to run over us, we have to fight back”.
“Why did God allow Satan in the
garden of Eden?” The Lord Jesus Christ
could have used his power to slay all those who were crucifying him. But He chose to obey the Father, to lay down
his life for mankind. God’s love was
demonstrated!
Think of this scenario: If you are creating a machine that you know
in about 50 years this machine will disobey you and do havoc to the point of
killing your son. You most likely will
change your mind and not make the machine.
Or suppose you like a puppy dog, and you want
to buy this puppy but you see in a vision and know that in about 3 years this
puppy will turn wild and bite your only son to death, will you still buy the
puppy? Will you have any love for the
dog and still buy the dog knowing what the dog will do to your beloved son in 3
years? No human being can do that! But God, who knows the end from the
beginning, still went ahead and created Adam, knowing that Adam will disobey
and it will take the blood of Jesus to save mankind from the disaster, because
God is Love. No other explanation than
to say God is love!
This
is what God is saying; when Love overwhelms you, you can lay down your life
even for your enemy. You will be able to
pray for your enemy as God commanded.
Take the example of the Lord Jesus
again. He said “I know my sheep”. Yet he hand-picked Judas Iscariot! He knew what Judas Iscariot would do. He would betray him and deliver him over to
the enemies. If it is you and I, we will
refuse to pick him even if he is begging to be one of the disciples, we won’t
want him in the inner circle of the 12 apostles by which he will know our ins
and outs. But Jesus said: ”have
I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil.” He hand-picked him, for a purpose of
course. Nevertheless, it is still
showing that God is love, by giving Judas Iscariot the same chance as the other
apostles, to repent and not do evil, and he failed. It shows the God’s kind of Love, that will
not turn back though what you foresee is bad.
God foresaw humanity will rebel and turn against him, he still created
man anyway. There is no explanation than
to say God is love. You may say, God
destroyed man in the days of Noah, and in the days of
Of
course he also knows the end that he will take it over at the end of 6000
years, and we are close to the end now.
In
Exodus 34, we see the same God of the old testament is what Christ showed to us
in the new testament. Christ is the
express image of God. Why did Moses write
his books that seem to portray God as a dreadful God that killed them in the
wilderness? Most of those destructions
were repercussions of their choices. God so much love and he let humanity
choose. While he was giving them the law
that “thou shalt not make graven images”, the same people were making graven images. (Exodus
32:1-7) And there is always repercussion
that follows those misdemeanors. God does not need to wink an eye. The repercussions will follow. Tell your son to not touch fire. You don’t need to make the fire burn him if
he touches the fire. Fire will naturally
burn. That is repercussion. God is a holy God, and those sins cannot come
before his presence. God does not need
to wink a finger before the repercussions follow the misbehaviors. They are
ordinances. That’s why he stayed far off
from humanity. God is light, and in him is no
darkness at all. (1Jn 1:5).
He
said “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life”.
An example:
There is electricity wired in your house. You tell a boy, “don’t press this button”. If the button is pressed, all lights will go
off. You went away and the boy disobeyed and pressed the button, and all lights
went off. You didn’t make the lights go
off. It is repercussion of the boy’s
disobedience. God gave Adam same
instruction: don’t eat this fruit, if
you do, this will happen. He did and it
happened. God is love, he does not make
a robot out of mankind, but gives man good counsel.
In Exodus
34:6, God described himself thus: “The Lord, the Lord God; merciful and gracious. Longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and
in truth. Keeping mercy for thousands; Forgiving
iniquity and transgression, and sin; and will by no means clear the guilty..”
You can see that God just described the attributes
of Love we have mentioned! Love is
what? Patient: that is longsuffering; Kind: that is gracious. Forgiving iniquity: that means Love does not
remember wrong done to him. 1 Cor 13
describes Love, and that is what God declared himself to be in Exo.34:6.
God
is holy and Just. God did not acquit
mankind of the sin of Adam. He simply
made a provision for the blood of his Son to be shed for the redemption of
mankind. He forgave all mankind. You that reads this, your sins have been forgiven. You just need to come to Christ and partake
of the sacrifice of the Lamb of God so as to have life. God is love!
He has willingly forgiven mankind.
“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing
their trespasses unto them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” (2Cor. 5:18) He is calling you to come to him. “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy
laden and I will give you rest.”
If you are already a believer, begin to
exercise the attributes of Love and the seed of Love in you will have the
ground to germinate, blossom, and take you over, so that you will be the son of
God, the son of Love, and come to the stature of Christ. He
must get the first fruits unto God, the first fruits unto Love. In word and in your deed, the power of God
will manifest when you are a son of God, a son of Love.
(1
Pet.1:22) “Seeing ye have purified your souls
in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren,
See that ye love one another with a pure heart, fervently.”
You
may say it is tough to love the enemy.
Yes, but start by loving the brethren more. Love the believers a little more. Step by step exercise! Start by loving your
friends more. Show more patience, more kindness,
more meekness. If you and your spouse
are always in confrontation with one another, start your love exercise from
there, from your closest neighbor, your spouse.
Show more kindness, more patience, more humility to your spouse. I’m talking of the love that is not easily
provoked, that is not rude, that is kind, and patient, that does not seek her
own, but seek the good of the other person.
Show those attributes first to your spouse. When you begin to exercise these, you are
creating the atmosphere for the seed of Love, which God has already put in you,
to germinate and blossom. Then you can
begin to extend it to the next person, maybe your children, maybe your sister,
maybe the next-door neighbor; then you can extend it to the church members.
When you love, you will not gossip. Love
does not gossip! Don’t talk about “the
pastor did this or that”. Don’t talk
about “Mrs X who is a Christian did that”.
Love will not expose the sins of others, but Love covereth the sins of
others. “He that covereth a transgression
seeketh love, but he that repeated a matter separated very friends.” (Prov.
17:9)
When
you exercise these attributes of Love, then the seed can germinate. When the
seed of Love germinates and blossoms, it will take you over and you will be
able to love those that are sworn against you as your enemy.
We have an example of Stephen. (Acts
7:59-60). He was stoned and he still
prayed, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”. One of the people he was praying for was
Saul of Tarsus who became Apostle Paul.
If he had been cursing them, he would have been cursing a future apostle
of the Lord. God is wise when he said
love your enemy. That is how you can be a
son or daughter of God.
Are
you willing to do this, are you desiring to be a son or daughter of God? God is looking for such love in his body. This message should make you sober and make
you think deep. Are you willing and ready to be like Jesus? “Who
did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again;
when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth
righteously.” (1Pet.2:22-23)
I pray that the Lord make your heart to want to be like Jesus.
God
bless you.
(…to be continued..)
Bro. Julius Adewumi LORD, WHO SHALL ABIDE IN THY TABERNACLE? WHO SHALL DWELL IN THY HOLY HILL?HE THAT WALKETH UPRIGHTLY, AND WORKETH RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND SPEAKETH THE TRUTH IN HIS HEART.HE THAT BACKBITEH NOT WITH HIS TONGUE, NOR DOETH EVIL TO HIS NEIGHBOR, NOR TAKETH UP A REPROACH AGAINST HIS NEIGHBOR.IN WHOSE EYES A VILE PERSON IS CONTEMNED; BUT HE HONOURETH THEM THAT FEAR THE LORD. HE THAT SWEARETH TO HIS OWN HURT, AND CHANGETH NOT.HE THAT PUTTETH NOT OUT HIS MONEY TO USURY, NOR TAKETH REWARD AGAINST THE INNOCENT. HE THAT DOETH THESE THINGS SHALL NEVER BE MOVED! (Psa.15) “WHO SHALL ASCEND INTO THE HILL OF THE LORD? OR WHO SHALL STAND IN HIS HOLY PLACE HE THAT HATH CLEAN HANDS, AND A PURE HEART; WHO HATH NOT LIFTED UP HIS SOUL UNTO VANITY, NOR SWORN DECEITFULLY.HE SHALL RECEIVE THE BLESSING FROM THE LORD, AND RIGHTEOUSNESS FROM THE GOD OF HIS SALVATION.” (Psa. 24:3-5).
“Behold, what manner of love the Father has
bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world
knoweth us not, because it knew him not.
Beloved, now are we the sons of God and it doth not
yet appear what we shall be: but we know
that when he shall appear, we shall be like him: for we shall see him as he is.
And Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth
himself, even as he is pure.” (1 John
3:1-3).
“BUT AS
MANY AS RECEIVED HIM, TO THEM GAVE HE POWER TO BECOME THE SONS OF GOD, EVEN TO
THEM THAT BELIEVE ON HIS NAME.” ( Jn 1:12)
Amen!
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