Love and Hope+Faith

I have been studying Love for the past week way more in depth and with way more time since I have decided to devote all my free time to God. Which is a lot of time. And I have learned of a few things that the Bible says of it that go together to make a big web that has a huge meaning and command behind it. This in my opinion will have some opposition from certain people, but in my defense, I am a 17 year old who is just writing what I learn from my studying the Bible. So with that said I will begin.

Before we can go into how Love is suppose to be done or understood we must look at what it is. For this we look at 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. It says,

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, it is not puffed up; do 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.

Love is all these things. It is nothing evil and is everything good while also being self-sacrificial. Love is also unstoppable. It never fails and it never dies. Love is a constant force. Love is eternal. If you don't believe that then keep reading.

Okay. That's what Love is. And we are all capable of this Love. We have it. But we must be weary of what we Love. 1 Timothy 6:10 says,

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

The Love of money leads to many other sins and can lead people away from Jesus. It becomes the Love of possessions. A Love of things and money is the love we must not have. That is clear. There is no other way around it.

Next we look at God's Love for us. We already know what Love is. "What does it look like?", and "What does it cause?" are the questions I'm going to answer with this. Most of us already know what it looks like, in fact, we should all know what it looks like. John 3:16 says,

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

God's Love is shown as the gift of Grace that He has given us by sending His Son to die on the cross to pay for our sins. The ultimate sacrifice. That is what God's love looks like. But what we often do not realize is that it gives us a lot more than Grace. It gets us through this life. Romans 5:1-5 says,

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulations produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

We are not only saved but we are given a Joy and Hope during our hard times in life. When we are going through a hard time we gain perseverance to push through the hard time, this makes our God inspired character. The person we are destined to become as a follower of Jesus Christ. The person we become makes us look to Heaven for our own reason to want to go, and to Hope for it. So God's Love also affects what kind of person we become and gives us Hope in times of hardship. However, this only works if we have Faith. We'll get to that soon.
God's Love also does something else. It takes away our fears. 1 John 4:18 says,

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.

God's Love is perfect in every way. So His Love that is perfect casts out our fears. This makes sense when you think about the fact that we have an eternity in Heaven waiting for us. What is there to fear when we have the God who made everything on our side? Nothing. But it only does so if we have Faith in God to help us. You'll see why I keep saying this soon.

Next we look at who we are suppose to Love. Because it will help make everything make more sense I'll talk about Loving other people first. First, God commands us to Love each other the way He loves us. John 15:12 and 1 Peter 4:8 say,

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."

And above all things have fervent love for one another, for "love will cover a multitude of sins."

God's Love covers a multitude of sins, among other things, but this is very important. We humans struggle the most with forgiving other people for the sins they commit. So saying that, God asks us to Love one another as He has Loved us, that means to also forgive them. You can not Love and hate people at the same time just like pure water and salt water can not come from the same spring.
So how can we show our Love for others? Through our actions. 1 John 3:16-18 says,

By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

In order to show this Love for others, we must show it in our deeds. What is the Loving deed that you know you should be doing but are neglecting to do? Well you should get ready to go and do it. Because the next part of this post is going to make you want to do it.

I am now going to talk about Loving God. I saved this part for last because in order to understand how to Love God I had to tell you everything else I've mentioned already. Now for it all to make sense I must mention one verse. It is 1 John 4:8. It says,

He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

Now the part where I mentioned that Love is all powerful and eternal makes sense doesn't it? Now I don't think I have to explain this because it's too straight forward to explain. So how do we Love God? And why was I stressing the fact that you need Faith to receive the rewards of God's Love? 1 John 5:1-5 says,

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world-our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

I'm going to say right now that Hope and Faith cannot exist without Love. Which means we cannot have Faith that Jesus Christ is our Savior if we do not have the Love of others that I have already described. If you look at it this way, the verse I mentioned before this said that God is Love, and that if someone does not Love then they do not know God. If Jesus is God, then if we do not Love then we do not know Jesus. So if you don't Love, then you cannot understand or have true Faith in the fact that Jesus is the Savior. So in essence, if you do not Love others the way I have described, then you do not receive God's Grace. This is proven even more when it says that those who believe in Jesus as their Savior are born of God. If God is Love, and they who believe in Jesus as their Savior are born of Him, then they are born of Love and come from Love. And they automatically Love others. If you do not Love then you do not have the Faith in Jesus or the Hope of an eternity in Heaven.
However! There is a huge piece of Hope for you written in the Scripture. To Love God is to obey His commandments, the greatest of which that follow all others are to Love God with all your heart all your soul and all you strength and then Love all others as yourself Matt. 22:37-39, all of which are an EASY burden to carry out. And it is easy to Love. We just make it seem harder than it is. So if we Love, which God tells us is easy to do, we become who God wants us to be, we have Hope, we have Faith, and we gain Salvation. And with them it tells us that we can conquer the world. That's why it is called the greatest gift of all. This is why 1 Corinthians 13:13 says,

And now abide in Faith, Hope, Love, these three; but the greatest of these is Love.

It says that because Faith and Hope cannot be received until Love is done.

Now God has these words for the one who Loves Him. Psalm 91:14-16 says,

"Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and show him my salvation."

Like I said some people might not agree with this post. But I don't really see any other way around those verses. But whether it is the right interpretation or not, it does not change the fact that He does tell us to Love Him and to Love one another. If you do have trouble doing this, I suggest something I learned to do recently. Pray to God to help you Love Him. Because if you Love God then you do everything He says to do in the Bible. And I urge you not to Love Him just because of a ticket to Heaven. Love God for who He is in your life, what He means to you, and because of what He has done in your life. Love God, and everything good He describes will follow.

Thank You For Reading
Long Live Jesus Christ
Amen

Please (#5) - Something Like Silas

Tears

I've been working on another post recently, but I got the idea for this post today and I just had to put it up tonight. Now the Bible does not have much to say about tears, but what it does have to say is important and worth paying attention to. First we need to ask a couple questions and take a look at ourselves.

Why do you think God gave us the ability to cry? The answer is the question, "Why do we cry?" We cry when we are feeling one of two things. The first is when we feel great pain, physical or emotional. The second is when we feel overwhelming joy. In other words, God gave us the ability to cry when we have one of two conditions, which are complete opposites. But what few realize is that even though they are completely different, in Christianity, they are both experienced at the same time throughout one's journey with Jesus Christ. We now look at James 4:9-10 and Psalm 126:5. They say,

Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.

Two verses with a whole lot of meaning behind them. We are told to grieve, mourn, and wail and cry out to God because we have sinned and have brought death upon ourselves. We must mourn for our souls that we have murdered. We have all caused ourselves a great pain through our sin. If you are a Christian, then you have felt the pain of your sins. And even before we come to Jesus and have Him show us our sins, we feel them as we commit them. And when we do go to Jesus for forgiveness and we look at all of the sins of our lives, it brings a pain like no other. I know of no person to not cry when they come to Christ for forgiveness for the first time. That pain grows as we think of all the sins adding up until when we finish the list it's overwhelmingly painful to think of them. And at the very moment it reaches the peak, Jesus takes it all away. He removes the burden, and we breathe, for the first time, without a heavy burden we can't explain weighing on us. After all our mourning and crying out for our souls that we have sentenced to death with our sins, Jesus takes away the sin and the pain it caused. When that happens, the tears of pain we had before stop, and tears of Joy begin pouring out. They come out in such a manner that they feel like they completely wash away any trace of the tears of pain. Because all traces of pain leave.
This is why God gave us the ability to cry when we are in the most pain, and when we are experiencing overwhelming Joy. Because, these are what we feel when we experience Jesus for the first time.

I got the idea for this post because I felt angry all day until this afternoon. While I was alone in my home, I was listening to music and a song came on that I started singing with. As I sang the words, I suddenly felt tears streaming down my face. And as I thought more and more about Jesus, the tears kept coming out more and more. They felt freeing, peaceful, loving, joyous. It made me look at my entire life and relationship with Jesus, and why I chose to follow Him. It reminded me of how close God is to me, and who He is. Right now I wish I could shed tears like that everyday. However, even if I can't, it does not mean I can not remember this feeling and this lesson. I will for a long time. That Jesus paid for me, and that He is always with me.

I'm putting up the song I was listening to when I began crying. Listen to the words. And remember what you are forgiven for. What it was like that first time you really experienced Jesus' forgiveness. Remember what it was like to shed tears of Joy because of what Jesus did for you. Now I leave with a question. When was the last time you felt so moved by Jesus Christ that you cried?

Tears

God can inspire so much emotion.
My soul can't help but be put into motion.
Knowing that He gets rid of my fears,
I shed a great number of tears.
I shed these tears because of great a Joy,
That my God chooses to Love and not to destroy.
I cry because while in pain, He gives me Hope.
As if I were in a hole and He threw down a rope.
I do not cry because of pains and fears.
God's Love and Joy are the reasons for my tears.

Thank You For Reading
Long Live Jesus Christ
Amen