Friday, January 29, 2016

NO GREATER LOVE THAN THIS - EPILOGUE



EPILOGUE
“GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS,
THAT A MAN LAY DOWN HIS LIFE…” (JOHN 15:13)



NO GREATER LOVE
Hopefully you learned in these excerpts from TRANSFORMING LOVE that God chooses you, draws you, loves you, changes your identity, speaks to you, becomes Lord and makes you holy.   
The components of the relationship with God may seem unusual, but it is actually the healthiest relationship you can have. The YADA relationship will truly enhance your overall health and well-being.
When someone loves you and knows you so well you feel extraordinarily safe: IT FEELS GOOD. It feels good for someone to care so deeply for you consistently.
 I am talking about the kind of attentive care that will stop you from being desperate for dysfunctional love. God re-conditions you to a true and holy love by purposefully teaching you the right way to both give and receive love. 
The loving relationship with God will improve ALL your other relationships. God calls you to know him (YADA), so you can know his love for you and you can experience his kind love for him and for others.
In one of my quiet moments God said to me, I called YOU to “know” me. Who did I discover God to be? Love. God is Love. I came to know that God’s kind of love must be experienced and comprehended from a HOLY perspective and not just a human one. I was a student with a deficit in the area of true love, but God gives me so many chances to learn about his ways. I am so thankful.
God is extravagant with his chances towards those He loves. How many times have I messed up?  How many chances did I receive to get my mess-ups right? His love outlasts all our chances to get it right with Him. My wrongs, when I asked for forgiveness, caused God to shower me with a tsunami of Love.  
 How could I not return that love to God and onto others? To whom much is forgiven there is much love (Luke 7:36-48).
How many offenses are too many for God? How many chances does he give before His Grace is exhausted?  I don’t know. But I learned, where my sin increased, God’s Grace increased even more. Why does God give a man or woman so many chances? What is His motive for doing that? LOVE.
That’s God’s nature. He can’t go against who He is. He is Love. I bet Heaven’s atmosphere is the breath of Love. It is probably as normal as breathing. I am ever thankful God’s ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts.
But his ways are higher than our ways. People can exhaust the chances they have with each other, but there is always another chance with God as long as you are on this earth.
God called me for purpose and said, “You are MY Heart, Pensacola and the mouthpiece for My Heart.” God directs and helps us walk in our purpose when we trust him.
I asked to know God and God’s heart.  He showed me his ways through his “oneness” relationship with me and my personal relationships with others.
I learned God’s holy ways goes against the flesh and human nature. Who God is and the way God does things are unnatural to man and mankind often judge God’s holy ways against their own ways of doing things.
To mankind, it is often distasteful (objectionable) to continue to love someone who seems to have exhausted his or her chances or committed certain atrocities against another human being, but LOVE covers a multitude of sins (wrongs).
God’s understanding of mankind’s sinful plight is like deep waters. Man’s love will drown where God’s love prevails. God in his infinite ability to love can sympathize with mankind’s dilemma with sin, yet has never sinned.
Again, God alone can sympathize with mankind’s plight with sin and therefore has the fortitude to love an individual through their deepest issues and concerns.
That kind of love is a mighty weapon against the dark foes of the soul. It has the power to continue to reach out, through countless hours, days, weeks, and years, to those who have fallen into the gutters and trenches of life to give them a victorious finale.
There is no greater love than the love of God.
God loves you. If you are his child, you are “…in the beloved..” and God is pleased with you. As God’s child, through faith in Christ, there is nothing you can ever do to change the fact that he loves about you.
God designed a way through Jesus to have a relationship with you and you are pleasing in God’s sight. God wants you to experience the depth of his love for you.
How does that happen? You learn God’s loving ways through revelation knowledge of the way God loves you. You learn God’s loving ways through revelation knowledge and real-life experiences of loving others God’s way. There is no better way to know someone except by walking in their footsteps.
God taught me through personal experience that love covers over a lot of offenses. Love is fully forgiving and doesn’t keep a record of another person’s wrongs towards you. Love is enduring.
Love suffers long, because it desires to give the other person a chance to get it right with them. Love is faithful. Love is loyal. Love makes a sacrifice and therefore will always be costly.
 Love continues, even if it does not receive anything in return. Love does not come with a wage attachment, where you have to somehow earn it. Love does not come with a partiality tag, where you somehow have to be worthy of it. Love does not come with a merit tag, where somehow you have to be deserving of it.
Love is free towards the recipient of it and will not demand anything in return. Love won’t change, even if the recipient changes, walks away, rejects it, follows after another,  is unfaithful, offends,  or totally forgets about it.  That what God taught me about love. Why does God love like that?
Divine, holy, agape love is operating in your heart when you love in this manner. When God’s love is poured out in your heart you learn it’s a tenacious love!  
God called me to know His ways and he called you to know his ways too. Love is God’s way. I am one of the mouthpieces for God’s way.
When loving God’s way you will also find that love is not insecure and will not demand anything from the recipient. Love does not have low self-esteem and will not demand validation from its recipient. Love is concerned with its own expression and not the expression of the recipient. Love’s only agenda is love.
Any resistance to walking in God’s holy love is the flesh and the influences of the old nature’s limited way of doing or thinking about love. God’s love has been poured out in our hearts to give us an opportunity to truly give and receive TRUE love.
Any resistance to walking in God’s kind of love, it a clear example of how our ways are not like his ways. His HOLY ways are distasteful to us and unnatural to the carnal nature. We find it distasteful to forgive some of the offenses others have placed on us.
God’s Love covers a multitude of sin.
My life’s journey thus far have been about walking in God’s love, receiving it God’s love, and being trained in God’s kind of love. It has been a costly endeavor, but well worth the journey. God’s love is liberating and exquisitely transforming.
Loving others while applying God’s truth helps you get a vision of how God extends forgiveness, grace, and mercy to you personally.
For instance, someone had done something bad to me and God said don’t treat them according to their wrongs toward you. I said “What….?” However, that’s grace. Another time, someone had done something bad to me and I was justified to punish them with my attitude, but God said don’t do it. Again, I said “what?” Now that’s mercy and mercy triumphs over judgement (James 2:13). A third time someone had committed some really heartbreaking things against me and it hurt deeply, but God said to forgive them. 
None of these things were easy to do, but I trusted God to work in my heart so I would want to do them and carry it out. And God did.
Every time I love as God directs it changes me in two ways: I able to see how God loves me and how the application of his love works on others. Knowing God’s personal love for you and experiencing his personal love through you is truly transforming.
When you allow God to love through you, it sometimes teaches you what it costs Jesus to love you. When you personally experience challenges when loving others and forgiveness is the only way to continue the relationship you can also learn what it cost Jesus to love you.
Exercising or extending grace, mercy, and forgiveness in your personal relationships help you appreciate grace, mercy and forgiveness in your relationship with God. True love is costly. When you truly know the price God paid through Jesus, to love you, you will finally surrender safely into his loving care.
All that I may have lost and gained in this life can never be compared to the opportunity; I have, to fully enjoy the YADA relationship with God. May I, and hopefully you too, be lavished, soaked, covered, and forever transformed by God’s endless love.
Godspeed

Dr. Pensacola H. Jefferson

THE BOOK 
"TRANSFORMING LOVE"

8 comments:

  1. Hello,
    I loved the post, just a question: Yada stands for. .?
    Thank t

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. HOPE THIS HELPS"

      The Hebrew word “know” (yada') takes on a special
      meaning in the semitic languages and this specialized meaning has to do with relationship, and primarily a relationship that is based upon the making of a covenant. In addition, the Hebrew word “know” (yada' – Strong's #3045) can mean “enter into covenant together” In other words, YADA = a covenant oneness relationship (with God).

      Delete
  2. Hello,
    I loved the post, just a question: Yada stands for. .?
    Thank t

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. The Hebrew word “know” (yada') takes on a special
      meaning in the semitic languages and this specialized meaning has to do with relationship, and primarily a relationship that is based upon the making of a covenant. In addition, the Hebrew word “know” (yada' – Strong's #3045) can mean “enter into covenant together” In other words, YADA = a covenant oneness relationship (with God).

      Delete