There’s A Cross To Bridge The Great Divide - Mark 12:29-31 Series

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Review

We are in the midst of a study on how to increase your emotional love for God by having delightful, satisfying experiences of His presence, and you do that a little differently with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The last two weeks we talked about how to have fellowship with the Father. The main thing we receive from the Father is love. So when He gives you gestures of His love, you have fellowship with Him by responding to that love with delight in His presence, trust in His fatherly care, fear of His displeasure, and obedience to His will (preferring His presence over any earthly pleasure). And the most blessed, most joy-producing kind of obedience is when you obey the command to love His children.

The passages that say the Great Commandment is the summary of the whole law – those passages actually focus on the love your neighbor part of the Great Commandment rather than the love God part. You keep the whole law when you love your neighbor.

Romans 13:8 he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.

In Matthew 25 Jesus described Judgment Day in very simple terms: Those who loved Christians will go to heaven and those who didn’t will go to hell. 1 Corinthians 13 says if you give everything you have to feed the poor and die as a martyr but do not have love it is all worthless. James said if you do not love the brother in need your faith is dead and you are lost (Jas.2:14-17). Paul said the goal of all his teaching was love (1 Tim.1:5). Jesus said “They will know you are My disciples by the way you love one another” (Jn.13:35).

Love is a deep affection for a person that drives you to give up whatever you need to give up in order to bring that person to experience spiritual life and to experience it more abundantly. When you love the people God loves because God loves them, that is an act of fellowship with God the Father, because your heart is beating the same as His.

Because Love is from God

I think most of the time we miss out on much of the joy that can come from loving others because we fail to realize the source of that love.

1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another because love is from God

One of the biggest hindrances that keeps you from loving people as you should is thinking that love is from you. It isn’t – it is from God! And if something is from God you should desire it. When you see some dried-up soul in need of love, if you position yourself in between God and that person, that river of delights from the heart of God will wash right through you onto that person. And when it does, if you realize what is going on, you are experiencing the presence of God.

If something is from God that thing is of great value. So not only is it a delightful thing to experience it flowing through you – but it is even more delightful when you realize what a valuable thing your beloved is receiving from you. Raise your hand if you have ever been hesitant or reluctant to be involved in ministry to others because of a sense of inferiority or inadequacy. Most of us face that at some point or another. We think, “My gifts aren’t all that great. I’m sitting out of ministry right now because I just don’t have much of anything to offer. This church doesn’t really need me – they’ve got all kinds of other people who are far more gifted. What I have to offer just isn’t worthwhile.” But the question is not whether what you have to offer is worthwhile. The question is whether what God has to offer through you is worthwhile. If love comes from me, it is probably not something people need. But when I realize that my love is from God, I will realize how much people need it.

If someone gave you a truckload of oranges you might hand some out to folks and you might not. But if you came across a whole village of people who were dying of scurvy (which is cured by citrus fruit), and you saw little children with their teeth falling out and horrible, painful sores from their lack of vitamin C, suddenly you would realize the incredible value of your truckload of oranges, and that would make you eager to hand them out in the village.

OK, so fellowship with the Father happens when you respond to His love with a father/child-type love relationship (delight, trust, fear, and obedience – especially obedience to the command to love His children). Now let’s move on to fellowship with God the Son. How do we interact in delightful, soul-satisfying ways with Him?