Do you remember when you first fell in love with your spouse? When I was courting my bride Karen, everything reminded me of her! I was consumed by my love for her. That love for her has grown and matured over the years, but at times my love for her brings spontaneous and extraordinary desires in me to please her. This is not something I dwell on; it swells up inside of me.
I’ve come to realize that this spontaneous love is not of my doing; it is agape love…my unconditional love for my wife given to me from Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. My being in love with Jesus produces not only spontaneous love for my wife, but also and more importantly it results in spontaneous love for my Savior. It is a pure and unspoiled love; this is the essence of love that Paul described:
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“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does 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.†(1 Corinthians 13:4-8a)
Love never fails. Uh-oh Bro Dave, you and I are in trouble. Yes, our love at times fails, but not Jesus’ love. Jesus’ love never fails because it is heavenly love that comes from the Father.
Paul knew the importance of agape love because of how radically it changed his life. Love for one another was always on Paul’s heart:
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“And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.†(Philippians 1:9-11)
This is the former Saul who persecuted the church and now he is praying that the church’s love would abound.
Spontaneous love finds you doing things out of character with your former self. In fact most times I cannot explain why I did something; it just happens within me. Oswald Chambers put it this way:
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“Love is not premeditated, it is spontaneous, i.e., it bursts up in extraordinary ways…If we try to prove to God how much we love Him, it is a sure sign that we do not love Him. The evidence of our love for Him is the absolute spontaneity of our love, it comes naturally. In looking back we cannot tell why we did certain things, we did them according to the spontaneous nature of His love in us. The life of God manifests itself in this spontaneous way because the springs of love are in the Holy Ghost.â€
Are you trying really hard to prove how much in love with Jesus you are? You need to stop. Stop trying so hard, just let Jesus reign in your life. I love this line from Casting Crowns title song from their new CD “The Altar and the Door.†Mark Hall sings:
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I’m trying so hard to stop trying so hard
Just let You be who You are
Lord, who You are in me
Jesus, I’m trying so hard to stop trying so hard
Just let You be who You are
Lord, who You are in me
You need to stop trying so hard and let Jesus be who He is. Paul tells the Roman church:
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“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.†(Romans 5:5)
Go back and read that again to be sure you catch all of it.
You do not have to produce spontaneous love. God has ALREADY (already meaning it’s happened) poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit whom we received when we gave our lives to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Spontaneous love…
Not something Dave does; it is the work of the Holy Spirit.
It is a sign of my being in love with Jesus.
Are you in love with Jesus?
Allow Him to pour out His spontaneous love through you.
In Christ
Dave
Ps. 37:4
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Copyright © 2010 David Jeffers
