The Bible makes it clear that God is seated on His Throne in heaven and that love originated with God who is LOVE! (1 John 4:8) Love is an attribute of God. Love is at the core of God’s character, His Person, God is love itself! All of God’s attributes—His holiness, righteousness, justice, or even His wrath are all in perfect harmony with His true love. God’s Divine essence of love did not begin with the creation account in Genesis but goes back to the beginning according to Genesis 1:1 when God created the heavens and the earth when He created myriads of angels—His heavenly hosts. From the accounts in Ezekiel 28: 13-15 and Isaiah 14: 13-14 we learn that love is a choice as Lucifer chose to reject God’s love. In love, God does not force Himself on anyone. God revealed His love by creating mankind in His own image after His likeness—in the image of God’s love. It was God’s desire for mankind to experience His love in a personal way as He fellowshipped with them in the Garden. However, Adam and Eve also chose to reject God’s love in disobedience. Those who come to Him do so in response to His love. God’s love is a gift. GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD, that He demonstrated His self-giving, sacrificial and eternal love for mankind through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ who loved us and gave Himself for us! God’s love for us is perfect; therefore, it is not subject to variation. What does vary is our awareness of God’s loving Presence. God desires to hold us in His everlasting arms, to enfold us in His Love. Jeremiah 31:3 states: “The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have drawn you with loving devotion.” The phrase “I have drawn you” emphasizes God’s active, gentle, and loving pursuit of individuals. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” (Jn. 6:44) James 4:8 states, “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” As believers, we have the love of Christ within us and is an invitation to intimacy with God—a relationship rooted in spiritual alignment and repentance. We are experiencing a tug of war in the Spirit at this time that requires the Body of Christ to come into personal awareness and intimacy of the Father’s love through prayer, worship, Bible study, confession and obedience. God is seeking to bring His people into the fullness of His love for us, so nothing stands between us and Him so we can share that love with others. Loving others is evidence of knowing God—those who do not love have not truly come to know Him. (1 Jn. 4: 7-12) Jesus said, “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide in My love.” (John 15:9) May we see an outpouring of God’s love and see His hand in the nation, the world and in our own life in 2026!
We must not let worldly distortions about the love of God keep us from proclaiming that “God is love!” We must be aware of the great deceptions and distortions of the enemy. There are powers and rulers who seek to step into our territory and life and dominate what legally they should have no right. There is a battle raging between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. Scripture tells us that Satan appears as an angel of light to deceive and distort truth. Because he rejected God’s love, God has rejected him and Satan is the adversary of God and a terror to God’s creation as he targets mankind. He replaced God’s love with hate and masquerades to deceive the world with the love of money—the root of all evil, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life. Satan stepped up his distortion of God’s love in America in the 1960’s promoting “free love” that introduced the sexual revolution taking the intimate relationship God ordained for marriage and equated love with sex. It was a gradual conditioning of the people that has developed into the trafficking of women and children for sexual abuse as a part of his MO in Ezekiel 28:4-5, 9—obtaining riches, trafficking and declaring he is God. Satan has stolen the true meaning of love and manipulated it into a weapon against humanity with porn and lewd sexual exploits. God will not be mocked. His anger has risen to bring wrath and judgment upon those who have been pawns of Satan. God’s love demands His justice. As believers, we are instructed to be aware of Satan’s devices. In Ephesians 6: 10-13 we are told to put on the armor of God each day in order to stand against the wiles of the devil. Paul made it clear to believers “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Wrestling requires alertness, strategy and an understanding of how the opponent moves. It requires skill and strength. We cannot wrestle while we are distracted or unaware. We cannot wrestle if we speak defeat over ourselves before we even engage. We cannot wrestle if we have not trained and conditioned to do so. We cannot underestimate an opponent when we wrestle. This all applies to how we must approach and engage and wrestle against the kingdom of darkness. We have been given power and authority through Christ Jesus to trample upon serpents and scorpions and against ALL the power of the enemy, not some of the power, all of the power so nothing shall be any means hurt us. (Luke 10: 19) The enemy is defeated by God’s power and authority but we are required to daily put on the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the sandals of the gospel of peace, take up the shield of faith, put on the helmet of salvation and take up the sword of the Spirit—God’s Word. We must stand because when we turn away from God and His Word, we turn away from His love and peace.
Love is action, not just emotion. Love is the litmus test of whether we are walking in love. The love of Christ for us is the gateway to being filled with the love of God. Paul prays for Christians to “comprehend the length and width and height and depth of the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph. 3: 18-19) We can have all the titles, degrees, and accolades, but the truth is we are only as spiritual as we are loving. The question is: “How do we treat others?” The answer to this question is the measure of our spirituality, no matter how gifted or knowledgeable we may be. Anything less than sincere love is less than the measure of Jesus. Our church has taken the Jesus challenge with bracelets and tee shirts with the logo “What Would Jesus Do?” The Body of Christ is God’s beautiful, holy, and treasured family. Functioning healthily and lovingly within God’s family is our assignment and our privilege. We must embrace this assignment, loving what God loves with all of our hearts. We must learn to listen to God through His Word and in prayer. Only truth will set us free! We must know the truth so we can share it. We must train to win! This is God’s battle and we are His soldiers called by God for such a time as this! Our attitudes are what matters! Believers are called to love one another and loving others is evidence of knowing God—those who do not love have not truly come to know Him. (1 John 4: 7-12) If we want others to want more of Jesus, we must be reflections of Him to others! People who love God and talk about God and are excited about God, are always people who know Jesus loves them!
True love for one another comes with honesty and truth to bring restoration and healing. God is preparing His Church—the Body of Christ to be salt and light to a lost and hurting world. We are called to bring truth and light in love, to bring healing and deliverance, to set captives free. Far too long we as believers have become squatters—saved and waiting on the Rapture instead of Kingdom citizens seeking God’s heavenly direction on where, how and when to move forward loving Him and loving others! Now is the time that we must awaken to God’s call—to get ready to be blessed and to be a blessing to others! If we are to go forth as healers, we must first be healed. That means taking an inward look at ourselves—the restoration of Christ’s Body.
God is calling His Body to true spiritual maturity and harmony in relationships. We are familiar with the example of finger pointing at others as we witness the three fingers pointing back to us. Jesus said, “You hypocrite! First take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Mt. 7:5) Jesus is calling His followers to address our own faults through repentance, humility and reliance on God so that we can see clearly enough to help others with genuine love and wisdom. Jesus’ teaching in Luke 6: 42-45 reinforces that God knows our heart whether or not it is filled with His love. Recently I heard a man sharing the impact of God’s call upon him to self-examination concerning true love. God revealed to him that he has been codependent by stepping in the way of His workings in those around him. He said, “You have stepped in when I did not ask you to step in. And on the contrary, you have not stepped in and spoken up when I have wanted you to. You have had insecurities within you: there have been times you lived under the fear of man—afraid to speak up and rock the boat. You have even used boundaries to punish instead of to protect. There have been times where you were not living like the real you I created, but instead compromising in unhealthy ways and decisions, hoping for love and acceptance from man that was meant to come from me.” These are sobering words for each of us as God seeks to do a new work in us. God then gave him these words of hope and encouragement: “I am breaking the loop cycles that have plagued you and your families throughout history, and I am bringing you into the fullness of My blood shed for you…Tell My people that I am restoring families, breaking addictions, healing bodies, souls, spirits. I am healing mental health, bringing hope to the hopeless. I am breaking fear, anxiety, and PTSD. Trauma is not too big for Me to heal! I have overcome it all! I will not only heal you, but I will go to the depths of your infliction and infirmity to also renew your mind and give you My mindset so that you do not return to it again! I am bringing people into the fullness of My love for them, so nothing stands between us. And in the same way, I am going to the places in My people and healing them from shame and guilt, and every other thing that stops them from loving themselves and others. For how can you love your neighbor as yourself if you cannot love yourself with these things in the way?” In Psalms we see the word Selah at the close of a passage which means “Stop and think on this.” I believe God is calling us to do the same with these words to make us realize that He and He alone is True Love and we must be filled by His Heavenly Love. We can do nothing without Him but with Him all things are possible! Fill us up Lord and make us whole! The Greater One lives in us, and He is love. Love conquers evil every time. Choosing love is choosing the life God has destined us for! GOD’S LOVE WILL PREVAIL ON EARTH AS IN HEAVEN!
Below is a summary of God’s Love Standards Paul sets forth in Romans 12 for defeating evil with good so His love is revealed in and through us! (Please read and mediate on Romans 12 and hear God’s voice.)
Let love be without hypocrisy; detest what is evil; hold fast to the good; outdo one another in giving honor; be fervent in spirit; rejoice in hope; endure in distress, be persistent in prayer, contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality; bless and not curse those who persecute you; live in harmony with one another; do not be proud; do not be a know it all; repay no one evil for evil; take no revenge; love the haters; stop judging; don’t be a fixer; do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good!