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New
Website! Check out the new
Elijah Ministries Website! Speaking
Engagements 1.
Parenting Teen
Retreat hosted at Evangelical
Institute of Greenville, SC. April 16-18. I'll
be the main speaker at this event and would love to have you join us. For
more info go to: http://www.eibibleschool.org/conferences/retreats/parenting 2.
LEAH of
Long Island, New York will host a homeschool conference April 30-May 1.
http://www.region10leah.org/convention.html Chariot March 2010 - Norm Wakefield Unfailing
Love, Part 2
Last month I began this series of articles with a view to encouraging and
equipping you to experience and express God's unfailing love. The Apostle
Paul wrote to the Corinthians about God's love, "Love never fails." I hope
you will join me in pursuit of this kind of love!
Here's what I call
The Love Lesson: unfailing love is a gift from God to those who
know Him and live through Jesus Christ. According to God's Word, love is
the greatest commandment, the greatest gift to be pursued, the greatest
power, and the greatest proof that someone knows God and is born of God.
The Apostle John in his first epistle wrote that expressing
self-sacrificial, unfailing love testifies to the reality of a
relationship with God. I call the testing of spirits that John suggested
in Chapter Four, The Love Test. John tested the spirits by
investigating their source. The Source Test:
Idolatry is love from the world
There is a kind of
love which is from the world. The world's kind of love is an idolatrous
love. I explain idolatry in detail in my book Equipped to Love:
Idolatry-free Relationships (www.spiritofelijah.com).
What is the source of idolatry? It is from the world - from him who is in
the world, namely, the spirit of antichrist. Notice what John wrote:
By
this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus
Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not
confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of
which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the
world. You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because
greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. They are from the
world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to
them (1 John 4:2-5).
People
who are from the world look to things and people in the world instead of
to Jesus Christ as their source of happiness, peace, and love. John said
they speak as from the world, and those who are not from God listen to
them. How does the world speak today? The world speaks through a myriad of
mediums: TV, music, videos, movies, ads, books, etc. The common
denominator of the message is that Jesus is NOT God. From the viewpoint of
the world, the sources of happiness, peace, and love are people and things
in the world.
In
Chapter Two, John mentioned the appeal of the world's kind of love. "For
all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes
and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the
world" (1 John 2:16). The spirit of idolatry and antichrist can be summed
up in this: "I want." The source of the spirit of idolatry therefore, is
the world and he who is in the world, the antichrist. Another way of
thinking about antichrist is to think of self as a god put in the place of
the true God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is self that makes
gods or idols. That's why God commanded His people, "You shall have no
other gods before me. You shall not make for your self any idols"
(Deut. 5:7-8). God knew that if we looked to anything in the world other
than Him as the source for love, we would never experience or express His
kind of love. The Source Test:
Unfailing love is from God
God's
kind of love is very different from the world's kind of love. Love, which
is from the world, an idolatrous love, is only given when it gets
something first. Contrast that kind of love with how John defined God's
kind of love when he wrote, "In this is love, not that we loved God, but
that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our
sins" (1John 4:10). God didn't love us if we would love Him. He didn't
expect anything - He loved us when we were idolaters and didn't know it!
He sent His Son who emptied Himself, took on our idolatries and
selfishness on his own body, then justified, forgave, and revealed Himself
to us when we were undeserving of such glorious, unfathomable, unfailing
love.
Whereas
the spirit of idolatry has the world as its source, true unfailing love
comes from God. Unfailing love isn't something you try hard to do. It is a
gift from God, who manifested His love in and through Jesus Christ and
then through those born of Him. John wrote, "Beloved, let us love one
another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of
God and knows God. By this the love of God was manifested in us,
that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might
live through Him" (1 John 4:7, 9). John was saying that when a person
experiences God's love in Christ, who emptied Himself, bore his sins, and
gave grace to him expecting nothing in return, then he can live through
Jesus' love. That's what God intended! Unfailing
love is the fruit of the Holy Spirit
"By this we know
that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit"
(1 John 4:13). The proof that a person abides in God and that God dwells
in him is that he has been given the fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is
unfailing love. Most of us are familiar with Paul's description of the
fruit of the Spirit from Galatians, "But the fruit of the Spirit is
love..." (Galatians 5:22). The ministry of the Holy Spirit in the lives of
the children of God is to enable them to see, understand, and experience
God's kind of love revealed in Jesus Christ. That's why John wrote, "We
have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is
love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him"
(1 John 4:16).
Do you know the
love God has for you in Christ? Do you believe He loves you? Leon Morris
wrote of the power of God's love in Testaments of Love, p.165.
To
come to see that God's love is a deep, warm love—a love constantly
lavished on us quite irrespective of our merits, a love that cost the
cross—is to reach a turning point. It is impossible to experience this
love and remain unchanged. A man may respond to it with all his being,
saying in effect, ‘This is tremendous. Deep down this is what I have
always wanted.' He will then open his heart to God's love and respond with
an answering love.
I
hope you'll be encouraged by what my friend and mentor, Jerry White, Jr.
wrote in his blog, A Disciples Notebook (www.adisciplesnotebook.com),
"God's love for you is not one of toleration but of tender compassion. You
may struggle with believing that God loves you because you keep on
discovering ugliness in your self-life. You keep stumbling in your daily
walk and wonder how God could really love you when you fail so often. You
may have become disgusted with yourself and thought that God must feel the
same way about you. God has known perfectly the worst about you, ugliness
that you have not yet discovered about yourself, and for reasons He never
explains He set His love upon you for all eternity. His love is patient
and kind forever. His love always extends forgiveness with long-suffering
towards you. His steadfast love never fails. God wants you to
receive His unexplainable love in your unworthy state and thank Him for it
with a worshiping heart."
When
God sends the Holy Spirit to birth His children and live in them, He does
so out of His unfathomable, rich, determined, unfailing love. The Holy
Spirit's presence is the proof of the Father's love for them. How do you
know if the Holy Spirit is present? You love others with the kind of love
you have experienced from God through Christ. If you have experienced his
forgiving, long-suffering, steadfast, unfailing love, then you can't help
but express that same quality of love as you live before God through His
love. If He loved you when you knew He should be disgusted with your
actions and attitudes, then you have a basis for loving another person
when you are disgusted with their actions and attitudes. You look at God's
love for you revealed in Christ!
I'm
not saying that a child of God is never selfish, unforgiving, impatient,
or fails to love. Of course we all sin, but John's point was that those
who truly know God and are born of God are able to overcome the spirit
that is in the world, the spirit of idolatry, the antichrist spirit.
Expressing God's kind of love is their practice because they have
experienced, "have come to know and have believed," the love which God has
for them. Thank
God for His unfailing love
I
hope you'll take a moment, pause, and acknowledge God's unfailing love.
Express your thanks to Him for how you know His love is unfailing in your
own case. Is there someone God has placed in your life who is undeserving
and unworthy of your love? Have you realized that God has placed them
there so you could show your gratitude by expressing His love to
them? Loving others as Christ did in this world is a wonderful privilege. Next month we'll talk about how God's love courses through the lives of His children to others and the benefit it is to their lives. If this series of articles has been an encouragement to you, please send it to friends and family members. May God's love be expressed more often, more deeply, and more consistently in our lives as we pursue abiding in His unfailing love. Would
you like to be on the Elijah Ministries Prayer Team? The backbone of Elijah Ministries is the prayer team who pray diligently for God to turn the hearts of men to Himself, their wives, and their children. Before I leave to speak, I send out a prayer team invitation to those who will intercede for God to work for His glory in us as a team for the Kingdom. Not only is it a blessing to those whom I speak and myself; but it is also a reminder to the team about the direction of their own hearts. If you would like to enter into the labor together with me, you may go to my website and click on "Prayer Team". Has Norm's Chariot or other resources been an encouragement to you? As a nonprofit organization, Elijah Ministries needs support from people like you in order to function. If God has ministered to you through Elijah Ministries and Norm Wakefield, would you consider supporting the work? You can do so here. (Elijah Ministries is a tax-deductible 501c3 and is financially accountable to an overseeing board of 8 non-paid members from around the country.) The Chariot is also available as a podcast. You can automatically receive the Chariot each month in iTunes by subscribing here. (An RSS capable browser such as Internet Explorer 7 or Safari is required.)
If you
haven't visited our website, www.spiritofelijah.com,
please stop by sometime. You'll find: * Resources to equip you and your family * Previous Chariot articles * Norm's speaking schedule *
Free MP3 downloads * Subscribe to the Chariot Podcast here. * Various resources/pages translated and available in Spanish * An online store to purchase resources and make tax-free contributions by credit card
I invite you to be a part of the
moving of the Spirit of Elijah in your church, community, and the world.
How?
1.
Send this article to other men or families that you know would
benefit from it. You might inform them of the previous articles
available on-line at our website.
2.
Share resources from the Spirit of Elijah Ministries with others.
If Equipping Men or Rising to the
Call have been a blessing to you, then you know it will be
beneficial to others. Either share your resources, tell them about the
resources, or purchase a set or two as an investment in their lives. 3. Share with others what you have learned and put into practice in turning your heart to God, your wife, and your children. If God has done this in you, then He wants to affect others through you.
4.
Join the Elijah Ministries email prayer team and make
intercession for others that their hearts would be turned in revival to
the Lord, their wives, and their children. This can be done on-line at www.spiritofelijah.com.
Norm
Wakefield 03.10 To unsubscribe, click here.
Do not change the subject of the email that launches when you click
above; just press send. Or send an email with the subject Unsubscribe
Chariot to chariot@spiritofelijah.com.
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