Do You Know the Power of Walking in Love???

The Power of Love

his article will serve as a follow up to our article titled, “The 9 Fruits of the Holy Spirit.” In that article, I gave you the verse from Galatians where the Lord is telling us there are 9 specific fruits that He can transmit up into our personalities through His Holy Spirit. In this verse from Galatians, the very first quality that is listed as one of the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit is the quality of love – and I do not think this was by accident!

When you really study and meditate on the verses I will list below, you can sum all of them up in one simple statement. God is looking for you to be able to love in 6 different areas – all with the love of the Holy Spirit being available to you to help you out in each one of these areas. God wants you to be able to fully love in all 6 of these realms. You are to learn how to:

1. Love God
2. Love yourself
3. Love your family
4. Love your friends
5. Love your neighbors
6. Love your enemies

You will notice there are 6 specific areas that God will want you to really be able to love in. Bottom line – God will want you to love right across the board – from loving Him down to being able to love the worst of your enemies. The first 4 areas are much easier to learn how to do than the last two areas – especially the last one in being able to love your enemies and those who will try and hurt you in this life.

Loving most of your family and friends is very easy because of the strong natural bonds that we have already established with them. But learning how to love some of your neighbors who you have no real special bond with, or complete total strangers will be much harder for you to do, especially with the way that our world has become with so many more people keeping to themselves and being afraid to trust anyone.

However, this can be done with the help of the Holy Spirit. Once you start to feel the love of God Himself for some of these people, it will then become much easier for you to befriend some of these people and help them out when the need may arise.

Again, Jesus is the perfect example of someone who was always helping total strangers. When you study what He did as He was walking on our earth, He was always stopping and talking to people, along with helping, teaching, saving, healing and delivering some of these people when the need would arise. He was always there to meet their needs, especially their spiritual needs.

Just as Jesus was able to walk in perfect love in His words and actions with other people – so too can we learn how to walk in that same godly love if we will allow the Holy Spirit to enter us into this sanctification process where God the Father can then begin to work all 9 fruits of His Holy Spirit up into the very cores of our personalities.

Though we will never be able to love in the perfect way that Jesus can since none of us will ever become the fourth person of the Holy Trinity – we can still try to do the best we can in our dealings and relationships with other people.

Now I will give you some of the best and most profound verses from the Bible on the quality of love, how powerful of a thing it really is, and exactly what God the Father is looking for from each one of us in this area. I will break these Scripture verses down under their appropriate captions so you can fully grasp the revelation the Lord is trying to give you in this area.

1. Love is the Greatest of All the Virtues

These first two verses really set the stage on how high God is really ranking the quality of love. As you will see with the way these two verses are being worded, God the Father is placing the quality of love as #1 in the entire scheme of things.

The first verse lists three specific virtues, with faith being one of them. And then it ends stating that love is the greatest of these three virtues – including being greater than faith itself. Just stop and think for a minute what God is trying to tell us with just this one statement in that having the love of God operating and flowing through us is even better and greater than having higher levels of faith in Him.

Without faith in God – we cannot connect to Him. Without faith in God – there can be no miracles. Faith is our lifeline to the Lord. Without faith in God, we would be spiritually dead in the Lord. So why would God say the quality of love is even greater than our lifeline to Him, which is our faith?

I believe God is trying to tell us something very important with this statement, and the apostle Paul perfectly captures what that something is in the second verse I will list below. Paul makes one of the most classic statements ever made on the importance of love and how this quality fits into the big picture as far as God is concerned.

Paul says that you can have the greatest gift of tongues, the greatest gift of prophecy, the greatest understanding of all the mysteries and knowledge of God, have the highest levels of faith in God, and do some of the greatest works for God – but if you do not have the love of God operating in your life, then all of this gifting, power, knowledge, and works in the Lord will all be for nothing! I repeat – all for nothing!

It will have all been for naught when you have to end up giving a full account of yourself to the Lord on your day of judgment with Him. Bottom line – all of your accomplishments in the Lord, and all of the good fruit you may have produced for the Lord in this lifetime will mean absolutely nothing to Him if you did not walk all of this out in the spirit of love.

This is why each and every Christian should make it their #1 goal and priority in this life to learn how to walk in the love of God for their lives.

Nothing will touch other people more deeply than having the love of God shining through you and your life. With the quality of love being an universal language that everyone can understand and witness to – this quality, more than any other quality, will be the main one that can lead nonbelievers to salvation in the Lord, and lead other believers into a deeper walk with God. I do not think it is a coincidence that the quality of love is listed as the very first fruit of the Holy Spirit in the verse from Galatians on the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit.

Here are the first two profound verses that will show us how important the quality of love really is in the big picture.

1. “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13)
    
2. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I have become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1)

This last verse from Paul perfectly puts the quality of love in proper perspective for all of our lives, in that everything we do for the Lord has to be done in love.

2. Walk in Love

These next set of verses will tell us that we all have to learn how to “walk in love,” how to “stir up love,” and how to “love from a pure heart.” They tell us that everything we do for God down here has to “be done with love.”

These verses are all good, basic, foundational verses on the subject of love. Here they are:

1. “Therefore be followers of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us … ” (Ephesians 5:1)
    
2. “Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith … ” (1 Timothy 1:5)
    
3. “Let all that you do be done with love.” (1 Corinthians 16:14)
    
4. “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together … ” (Hebrews 10:24)
    
5. “Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous; not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling … ” (1 Peter 3:8)

Simply put – God wants everything that we do for Him in this life to be done in love. We simply have to learn how to walk with His love operating in our lives. There is no other way to live this life but walking it out in the love of God towards Him, towards ourselves, and towards one another.

3. What Love Is

In my article on the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit, I gave you the definition on love from some of the different Bible Dictionaries and Commentaries. For the sake of this article, I am going to go ahead and restate these definitions, and then add several more verses from Scripture on what some of the qualities that are in true love from a pure heart.

Here are some of the definitions on love from some of the different Bible Dictionaries and Commentaries:

1. Unselfish, benevolent concern for another; brotherly concern; the object of brotherly concern or affection
    
2. The self-denying, self-sacrificing, Christ-like love which is the foundation of all other graces
    
3. Unselfish, loyal and benevolent concern for the well being of another
    
4. The high esteem which God has for His human children, and the high regard which they in turn should have for Him and other people
    
5. To love, to have affection for someone; to be a friend; the love of brothers for each other

Now here are two very good verses on what is found in true love:

1. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18)
    
2. “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

This last verse from Paul is a real mouthful. True love will always be kind. True love will never flaunt itself for attention. True love will never be jealous of others and their accomplishments. True love will always be thinking of others and their welfare. True love will never rejoice or wallow in evil and sin.

The first verse from John states that there is no fear in love. Those who are trying to love you by trying to rule over you in fear are not truly loving you in the way God has intended. Those husbands who are physically and/or verbally abusing their wives in an effort to try and control them with fear are not operating in true love, contrary to what they may be thinking in their warped and debased minds.

They verbally and/or physically beat their wives down and then pick them up, and then tell them how much they love them so they can keep on perpetuating this cycle of violence and abuse. This is not true love – this is pure evil!

The above verse from John says that perfect love will cast out all fear. If these men truly loved their wives, they would not be physically or verbally abusing and violating them in the ways they have been. These kind of men are an abomination to the Lord – and what they call love, God calls pure evil.

So many people’s idea of love for another is to try and manipulate other people for their own personal gain and profit. The last verse from Paul says that true love will never think of evil, much less ever do evil to another – and that it will not seek its own, which means it will never attempt to love another person for their own personal gain, profit, or ego.

As a result of all the contamination that is in this fallen world, many people have lost the ability to truly love other people in the pure way that God has intended. This is why all Christians need the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit started in their lives – so God can begin to get them cleaned up in their thinking and in the way they act towards others.

To Read the Full Articel please visit the link below:

http://www.bible-knowledge.com/power-of-love/