Love- The Secret To Your Success

Sermon

2 John 6

“And what this love consists in is this, that we live and walk in accordance with and guided by His commandments- His orders, ordinances, precepts, teaching. This is the commandment, as you have heard from the beginning, that you continue to walk in love-guided by it and following it” (The amplified Bible).

Love- The Secret to your Success

The commandment of Love

Quite simply, God says love is keeping His commandment that brings love out of the indefinite into something explicit. But God has done even more that define love for you. He’s given you instruction so that you can know how to love as He loves. By giving you His word, God had given you His love manual in black and white. All you have to do is follow it, and you’ll be walking in love. If you’ve made Jesus Christ the Lord of your life, you’ve already taken the first step of obedience. The love of God has been born within you. But, unless you take action, that love will remain hidden within you. Love works in much the same way as the force of faith. Faith is born into you when you are begotten of God, but until you begin to act on God’s Word, that powerful force lies dormant. The same thing is true concerning the love of God. You can have the Love of God abiding within you and still be unable to allow this love to work through you and reach other people. Like, faith, love becomes active through knowledge of the Word.

That’s why the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Philippi saying, (Read Phil 1:9)

The love of God is released in your life by acting on the knowledge of God’s word. Without revelation knowledge followed by action, love lies undeveloped and selfishness continues to reign supreme in you- even though you are a new creature.

(Read I John 2:5-6)

As you act on God’s word, the love of God will be perfected in you. That’s when love will begin to flow from you to others. There is nothing- absolutely nothing-that is more important than learning to love. In fact, how accurately you perfect the love walk will determine how much of the perfect will of God you accomplish. That’s because every other spiritual force derives its action from love. For example, the bible teaches us that faith works by love. And answered prayer is almost an impossibility when a believer steps outside of love and refuses to forgive or is in strife with his brother.

In the beginning of the love chapter, I Corinthians 13, the Word says that tongues are just noise if there is no love. If a person has the gift of prophecy, understands all knowledge, and has enough faith to move mountains, with out love his is nothing. If he gives all that he has to the poor and even sacrifice, his life, without the love of God he gains nothing. (Matthew 16:26-28)

Without love your giving will not work. Tongues and prophecy will not work. Faith fails and knowledge is unfruitful. All the truth that you have learned from God’s Word work by love, they will profit you little unless you live the love of God.

1 Cor 13:4-8 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant. 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. 8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. NRSV

These scriptures paint a perfect picture of how love behaves.

That may sound like a tough set of requirements, but you can meet them. You are a love creature. God has recreated your spirit in the image of love. And He has sent His love Spirit to live in you and teach you how to love as He loves. You can live the love Life!

Become love conscious by confessing and acting on God’s word concerning this love. As you meditate on these scriptures, see yourself living the love life. You are the one who has to make the decision to perfect the love of God in your life. No one else can do it for you. So, make the decision in faith and commit yourself to obey God’s Word about love.

Let me warn you. There will be times when you would rather do anything than allow love to rule. (It will seem as though it is taking off a pound of flesh!). There will be times when it would be much easier to go ahead, and get mad, to seek your own and retaliate. Love is directly opposed to the senses. The senses have been trained to put themselves and their desires above anything else. They’ve been trained to selfishly seek their own way. But love, the word says, does not seek its own rights or its own way. And to walk in love, you must demand that your senses (flesh) be subject to the Word.