Our God the Father is pure love. HE can only be accessed through the Son. Christ asks us to show our love for Him and for each other. By doing so, we are generating the human emotion of love which in turn manifests God within us or at least that's how I understand it. When we demonstrate our love for Jesus or God by creating art or poems or things that are inanimate, the emotion we're projecting has no chance to reach God. It lies dead in the object we created. This, I believe, is taught by scripture.
God demonstrated the emotion of love by creating His son and giving him to us. Jesus demonstrated the emotion of love for his Father by willingly allowing himself to die on the cross so that we may be saved. Jesus also demonstrated the emotion of love for us by curing our sick, feeding our hungry and by standing up to our authority in the name of His Father.
As most of you know, I've struggled much with understanding His Word but I wanted to share something that happened recently. I share this not because I want praise....God deserves all the credit so that would be wrong. I share this as testament to what happened when I completely by accident followed the 'don't tell the right hand what the left hand is doing' and generated the emotion of love in His name.
One of my friends on Facebook has been working with trying to find shelter for the homeless in our community and he had started a thread where a discussion took place. From that discussion, a woman whom I did not know and had never met had taken part. She mentioned she needed some help at her house with the fence in her backyard... she was elderly and didn't want to bother her kids so I offered to help her and we exchanged info and spoke briefly on the phone to set up a time for me to go over. For various reasons I had to cancel and told her I would reschedule as soon as I could. I had gotten caught up in a couple of things and a couple weeks went by, she contacted me through Facebook to remind me that she was still waiting for me to get ahold of her. I apologized that it had slipped my mind and I told her I could be there the next day. She declined saying that she was depressed and it wasn't a good time. I felt bad so not knowing if she was depressed because I hadn't helped her or if there was something else going on in her life so I thought I would send her some flowers to cheer her up. On the card I wrote "Thought you could use these to brighten your day. Never forget that Jesus loves you." When she received the flowers she contacted me and told me that I had made her day and that she was going to take her 'power' back. I wasn't really sure what that meant but my intent was to cheer her up and that seemed to work so I was happy. Later that afternoon I was taking a brief nap. Before I lay down I looked at the clock and I said to myself alright I'm going to get up in 20 minutes. I fell asleep and I was sleeping pretty good and was suddenly awoken by a very strong beat of my heart and I heard immediately plain as day "I love you Tom". It was loud and clear... no mistaking. I knew exactly who was talking. Never in all my life, in all my praying had I ever been sure that it was His voice that I'd been hearing until that very moment. I looked at the clock and it had been exactly 20 minutes later.
It is this reason that I am now convinced that if I want to reach God, one sure fire way to do it is to surrender to Him and be the hands that generate love for Him in His name...
God demonstrated the emotion of love by creating His son and giving him to us. Jesus demonstrated the emotion of love for his Father by willingly allowing himself to die on the cross so that we may be saved. Jesus also demonstrated the emotion of love for us by curing our sick, feeding our hungry and by standing up to our authority in the name of His Father.
As most of you know, I've struggled much with understanding His Word but I wanted to share something that happened recently. I share this not because I want praise....God deserves all the credit so that would be wrong. I share this as testament to what happened when I completely by accident followed the 'don't tell the right hand what the left hand is doing' and generated the emotion of love in His name.
One of my friends on Facebook has been working with trying to find shelter for the homeless in our community and he had started a thread where a discussion took place. From that discussion, a woman whom I did not know and had never met had taken part. She mentioned she needed some help at her house with the fence in her backyard... she was elderly and didn't want to bother her kids so I offered to help her and we exchanged info and spoke briefly on the phone to set up a time for me to go over. For various reasons I had to cancel and told her I would reschedule as soon as I could. I had gotten caught up in a couple of things and a couple weeks went by, she contacted me through Facebook to remind me that she was still waiting for me to get ahold of her. I apologized that it had slipped my mind and I told her I could be there the next day. She declined saying that she was depressed and it wasn't a good time. I felt bad so not knowing if she was depressed because I hadn't helped her or if there was something else going on in her life so I thought I would send her some flowers to cheer her up. On the card I wrote "Thought you could use these to brighten your day. Never forget that Jesus loves you." When she received the flowers she contacted me and told me that I had made her day and that she was going to take her 'power' back. I wasn't really sure what that meant but my intent was to cheer her up and that seemed to work so I was happy. Later that afternoon I was taking a brief nap. Before I lay down I looked at the clock and I said to myself alright I'm going to get up in 20 minutes. I fell asleep and I was sleeping pretty good and was suddenly awoken by a very strong beat of my heart and I heard immediately plain as day "I love you Tom". It was loud and clear... no mistaking. I knew exactly who was talking. Never in all my life, in all my praying had I ever been sure that it was His voice that I'd been hearing until that very moment. I looked at the clock and it had been exactly 20 minutes later.
It is this reason that I am now convinced that if I want to reach God, one sure fire way to do it is to surrender to Him and be the hands that generate love for Him in His name...