Dear Beloved in Christ! My wife and I are Bible teachers who teach the goodness of God shown in His unconditional Love and Grace. During ministry when we share what we teach often we get a similar type of response from many people – “Yes we know that God loves everyone”. This response is great if there is enthusiasm and curiosity to know more but what here I am talking about those dull responses which create a question that are they really knowing that God’s Love is the only message of the Bible or are they just taking it as one among many other messages of the Bible.
Why I have mentioned this experience here is that I don’t want that just by reading the title (God’s Love) even if these type of thoughts come to your mind that “O I know this” or “I have read or heard about this many times before”, you will still read further and will not miss many precious life sustaining and fruit bearing seeds.
Beloved we are God’s garden and vineyard and field under cultivation. [1 cor 3:9 Amp], and Bible says in 1Pe 1:23 (Kjv), “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.”
Beloved what is this God’s Word referred here as seed. Is it every text written in Bible?
All Scriptures are God – inspired and part of a unique plan of salvation but in parts different parts have different purposes. By sowing randomly any scripture in our heart it’s hard to become as fruitful as we desire to be. This is the mistake that we make out of ignorance many times.
Actually God’s Love is that mighty seed hidden in scripture which has the power to break the hardest heart.[Rom 2:4]. When we grasp and comprehend the revelation of His Love in His Word with the help of the Holy Spirit – that is the seed which indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundred times as much as was sown, in another sixty times as much, and in another thirty.
When we all were dead then His love (1 John 4:9, song of song 8:6) was the seed that sprouted forth God’s life in our heart and made us His living garden. When we sow this seed in our heart, with the passing of time the seed springs up and God’s life start growing in our heart (His garden); First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.
Love is not one of the characters of God instead it is Who He is – God is Love (1 John 4:8,16)
The fruit that the Bible is talking about is Love [Mat 22:36-39, 1 john 3:14].Which also confirms His Love as the one and only Seed, because we know that fruit and seed are always same. And this is not the general love as the world knows. God’s Love is Agape (Unconditional Love) and He is the only source of this type of Love, so we can say this love or fruit can’t be produced by self – effort. When we try to produce it by our own effort we come up with weak ones which wither
away.
This is what happens when we see the commandment to love and start trying to do that by our own effort. We see good results for some time but very soon the fruits dry up. We start seeing failures and start making some good excuses like – “we are human beings… We are trying our best to find and workout our shortcomings..” In the end many times nothing works and we get screwed up. But many times the problem is not sowing fruitful seeds in our field (heart).
Let me try to explain this in short.
Suppose there is someone who has hurt us and thinking of him brings thoughts of hatred into our heart. But by thinking of him in this way we are sowing seeds of hatred in your heart. And as a Christian we may think I HAVE TO love this person to make my Father happy. Because we are compelling ourselves we are sowing seeds of compulsion or fear into our heart.
After sowing these unfruitful seeds we try to bring out fruit of love in our effort to fulfil the commandments of our Heavenly Father. The intention or motive may be correct but the Bible says in proverbs 4:23 that “keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flow the springs of life”. Thus unfruitful seeds bring out unfruitfulness or failure in our self efforts.
There is a Biblical way of fulfilling His commandment of love. If we have such a person in our life, instead of thinking about his wrong doings we can think about God’s love for us even when we were not lovable. His Love for us never fails even when we fail. His Love for us never changes even when we change for the worse. God so loved us that He gave His only begotten Son for us, that we should not perish, but have everlasting life by believing in Him. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.
By meditating on this Truth we are sowing seed of God’s Love in our heart (God’s garden) and His life will sprout out of us which can love even the biggest sinner of the world. Then we will be able to love that person with God’s love which will flow out of us effortlessly. His commandment will be fulfilled without self effort. That’s why Paul says, “Not I but Christ lives in me”
I will encourage us that instead of waiting to practice this when we will have someone like this start sowing seed of God’s Love in our heart by meditating on His love for us. And with the passes of time Tree of God’s life hidden in the seed that we have been sowing will spread into all the corners of our heart. And only Love will come out of the abundance of our heart.
So beloved let us keep praying according to Eph 3:14-19 : For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.
Thank You Jesus.
Bro. Jawahar Kr. Singh & Sis Ghazala J. Singh
Grace Bible School Siliguri, WB, INDIA
