12 Minutes
More often than not, God uses His people He has placed in our lives to speak to us. Those who hear His voice records what He has to say and not only in biblical writings. God still today continues to speak through the words that His people are given to write. God wants a people who can objectively evaluate and discern situations and respond from a biblical perspective in a form that give others access to His reasoning. So, we write. From the time when broken clay tablets were found with inferences of truth till now, we have the obligation to share that which God provides.
Proverbs 5:11-14
All words, spoken, signed, or written, are to be marked by agape love and compassion for God’s people. Ignore the earthly fluff of a person. Listen for the heart of God in the awareness of what is expressed in truth. Listen for the demeanor to discern when words or positions are endowed with spiritual encouragements rather than personal opinions. Listen for the confidence that the writer, the speaker puts in their trust in Christ’s sovereignty. If the words are sincere, we will have battle scars as God moves us through trials to align our characters with His purposes. Words of correction, reproof are for the perfecting of character through Jesus Christ in our battles against the world and the flesh. When we come to say what God would have us say, we have to be ready to hear from the Holy Spirit and share God’s word liberally with others. It’s a position of honor that deserves respect because of the greater accountability. When we hear, when we read, as we study, we must discern the knowledge, the wisdom, the truthfulness, the integrity of the counsel offered.
We must know that the motive is founded in God’s love. And there is this highest form of love. The love of God for man, for His creation. It embraces the deepest and ultimately profound sacrificial commitment that both transcends and persists regardless of any circumstance. In its most holiest of obligation, of binding, of assurance, of responsibility, of faithfulness, of indifference, and of steadfastness it is reciprocal. God to man, man to God. Agape love is the engagement of empathy extending to the desire for good while wanting the best, having right intentions to have no self-seeking motive. It is truly selfless. It is not of attraction. It is actually offered to another in the way of atonement. It is as though it is a reparation. It is a healing and a compensation for what is endured. God so loves His because these will endure in innocency to the end, every suffering brought upon them with the confidence and the faith that it is God Himself performing that which readies us for heaven. This agape love is the core of service for God, integrity in life, excellence in obedience, and shared purpose in the saving for Christ’s sake all that come to him. Agape love unites. It is intentional. It is a distinction relative to a vow. This is the love that is offered to save, to restore. It is a choice. Agape love is very powerful. It is effectual because regardless if one is drawn to another, it is sourced in the will of a person.
Agape love is not a natural kind of affection. It is integral only in one’s relationship with and to God. It is an experience that perseveres in Christlikeness. Think of its essence as being a testament. It is not simply the deed of love, it is the actual being love. It is an existence. It is expressed in the spiritual confines of life as it is a thing possessed. You want to see it? Watch what it does. It is life poured out in the crimsonness of humility. Sacred in its purpose. It is a demonstration that resolves God’s determined design to bring His people to perfection. If you are not rooted in the very truth of God then you have not the heart that immeasurably, unfathomably is passionate for God’s salvation. We are to believe God’s word more than we are to believe in ourselves. Agape love is not something you can measure by your feelings. If you come not to reason with God, you hinder the manifestation of the light that shines upon unfailing love.
Agape love is a rare jewel. And any who offers to speak, to write for God, offers themselves as a sacrifice. Jesus taught the most necessary things in life are to love God supremely, to love other people as He loved us, and to make converts of the people. We cannot separate the knowledge of God from the love of God. Agape love is a discerned choice. And when this love is the motive of belief, a trust, a cherishing of words written or spoken should frame a right understanding of truth claims that give narrative to our lives. With God’s spirit we can know and believe what is spoken or written is true. There is to be a conviction in every line of understanding. We are to embrace words that expose the inner person. Every word is to have the intent and the purpose to refer not only to growth in the knowledge of God but to the pursuit of godliness and a transformed life teaching us to follow Jesus. God’s people are to use their words to move toward the goal of Christlikeness so that they will not only know what is true but that their lives would reflect this doing truth as well. The things that we hear from God, we are to witness to faithful others that they may teach others of the agape love that is God. God’s word that is written on our hearts must also be written from our hearts. Agape love that motivates both speaking for and writing for God is an intentional, a conscious choice. It serves the recipient as a true mark showing hope for their salvation. One who writes for God must reason God’s decisive love, which is decisive because He is in control and has a purpose in mind. There are many reasons a proper understanding of the truth of God's word is critical and one of the foremost is Jesus' declaration that "by this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have agape for one another.”
Inherent in every presentation must be the proclamation of the preciousness of the love that was shown at Calvary. It is to encourage one to surrender to the enticement of the Holy Spirit who is at work in us to will and to work to God’s good pleasure. There is to be the certainty of love which means death to self and defeat for sin since the essence of sin is self-will and self- gratification, a love activated by personal choice of our will, not just to fellow believers but to all men everywhere. Agape love is to be our lifestyle, our habitual practice. In our strength it is literally impossible to carry out this description of supernatural love, but it is "Him" where it is made possible as we yield to the enabling power of the indwelling Holy Spirit recalling that agape is the first component of the fruit of the Spirit. Agape may involve emotion, but it must always involve action. Agape is unrestricted, unrestrained, and unconditional. Agape love is the virtue that surpasses all others and in fact is the prerequisite for all other loves. The traits agape portray; unselfishness, self-giving, willful devotion, concern for the welfare of others is the imitation of God's love in Christ. Agape love counts no cost too great.
Not to those who love us, but who hate; not to those who are pleasant and agreeable, but who repel; not because our natural feelings are excited, but because our will is to minister, even to the point of the cross, must our love go out. And every time we, in this way, sacrifice ourselves to another for the sake of the love of God, we enter into some of the meaning of the sacrifice of Calvary, and there is wafted up to God the odor of a sweet smell. Beloved, when God presents spoken or written truths for you contemplate His covenant agreement. Then take a moment and meditate on the profundity of the truths inherent in agape love and please consider, for the sake of your testimony and for the sake of the glory of the Lord and His kingdom how this is determined to awaken a sense of reasoning in the apprehension of all truths. Think of the constituent element of the truth in evaluating what love the mystery of godliness works. Agape is Christ’s loving nature truly becoming our own. If we reason rightly with God’s word, Christ has his proper place in our hearts, we do not have to be told to love, just as we do not have to be told to breathe. Why God inspired the writers of the bible and why He inspires His people to write today under the motivation of agape love is because it is controlled by His will. Jesus didn't speak of ordinary human affection. He is the Word agape just as God is love. This divineness is not based on a favorable or unfavorable account of another. Agape love is an act of obedience, it is deliberate. The absence of such is the presence of sin. The absence of love has nothing at all to do with what is happening to us, but everything to do with what is happening in us. Sin and love are enemies, because sin and God are enemies. They cannot coexist.
Where one is, the other is not. The loveless life is the ungodly life; and the godly life is the serving, caring, tenderhearted, affectionate, self–giving, self– sacrificing life of Christ’s love working through the believer. Agape love is what Jesus asked Peter about. Agape love is what moved God to send His only son.
God’s opening up His counsel that we might come to understand the reasoning of His doing truth and giving of Himself completely to others is the epitome of agape love. It has always been God’s people revealing what God places in them to speak, to write, as the merit of every word is for the sake of giving. God’s change was predicated upon His agape love’s perfect expression on earth in the Lord Jesus Christ as he defines this sacrificial love. For He left heaven, came to earth, took on a human form, was spit on and mocked, was crowned with a crown of thorns, nailed to a cross, abused, and had a spear thrust into His side. He loved the people so, to die for them. That's sacrificial love. How did the process of divine inspiration occur? How did the eternal God speak through human beings? What happened to the writers to cause them to compose the scripture? God decided to reveal certain truths about Himself through His servants. These are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.
Notice how when God allows us to write concerning His truths it helps to reinforce the truth that Christ is to be the focal point of our faith. It gives us a greater intensity to hone in on the total essence of the truth as truth presented outside the scripture enlarges our capacity to reason. We not only preserve the word of God deeper in our hearts, but we lean in closer to inspect the jewels of truth. We see words we’ve never seen before; we realize truth we’d never gleaned previously; and we finally understand the power of writing out God’s Word. When we sacrifice our opinions, God’s word is turned over and over in the mind before their full force and beauty takes possession of us. Writings constrain us to see the words. Rich and sweet truths are reasoned. Powerful truths found in many familiar passages become embedded further in our hearts because we took the time to hear what God had someone write offering deeper application. What does agape love have to do with studying the word? We move beyond differences of understanding to see the most profound and special ways truth is shown when compassion and care, through His words and deeds are given compliment by the love we show one for another. We are His disciples.
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