Pastor Ed’s Blog

Keep Fervent in Your Love For God

In our present series of messages, we’ve been looking at what it means to live in the overflow of God’s love. We’ve seen that the key to loving others comes from continually living in the fullness of God’s love for us. We also saw that there is nothing that we cannot face when we know that we’re loved by God; there’s no temptation we cannot resist, no cross we cannot bear, and no giant we cannot face.

Last week, I started unpacking the meaning of Jude’s brief exhortation: “Keep yourselves in God’s  love” (Jude  21). In other words, Jude is saying: “Keep yourselves in the place where you’re continually experiencing and enjoying God’s love.”

Last week, we saw that the Devil will try to assault us with the flaming missles of accusation and condemnation in order to cripple our faith and to prevent us from enjoying God’s love. But, thank God that we are heirs of the New Covenant. ”When our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart.”

Jesus disarmed the enemy of our soul; Jesus bore all of our sins in His body on the cross, and then God nailed to the cross the very law that condemned us, along with all of its charges against us. There are no more sins to condemn us, no more charges to prosecute, and no more law to even bring a charge against us! There’s nothing that can separate us from the love of God!

This  Sunday, we’re going to examine another important aspect of what it means to, “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” Love, by it’s very nature, is reciprocal. God initiates but we need to reciprocate. I can’t appreciate and enjoy God’s love for me, if I’m not nurturing my love for God. To keep myself in the love of God, I need to keep the flames of my love for God burning brightly.

I’ll be teaching on the importance of keeping fervent in our love for God. It’s easy to drift from our devotion to God, or to allow the fervency of our love for God to cool down. Before long, our service for God can become disconnected from our love for God. We’re going through the motion of devotion, but our hearts aren’t really engaged.

Whether you need to renew your first love and re-ignite your passion for God, or simply fan again the flames of your love and devotion to God, you’re sure to be encouraged this Sunday. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, I pray that, as you fellowship with Jesus and encounter the word of God, your hearts would burn within you with the fire of God’s love.