Personal Love for God – Part 2
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 541 aired on January 3, 2016
Good morning and welcome to the FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
moments please stay with me. It’s going to be a time of motivation, inspiration, education, and it
will be done with no manipulation, no hidden agendas. We’re not trying to solicit any money. We
are not trying to get you to join up, fess up, give it up, nothing like this. The FLOT Line is
simply a show about giving you accurate content, not asking you for something, giving you
something, giving you the Word of God. Hopefully this will allow you to verify and identify
God’s plan for your life and if you can do this you always have the freedom to orient and adjust
to the plan. The FLOT Line is heard every Sunday on this radio station and sometimes we’ll
change stations from time to time, move around, because really what we’re looking for, those of
you that are hungry to grow, hungry to learn, hungry to advance in God’s plan, those of you that
want to learn more and become what I call part of the pivot of mature believers. The pivot of
mature believers is that core group of mature believers that delivers a nation under time of
disaster. No politician that we elect can ever deliver a nation. The only thing that’s going to
deliver a nation as the Bible says,
“If My people that are called by My name will humble
themselves and seek My face and turn from their ways, then I’ll hear their prayer.”
Remember
that passage in 2 Chronicles in the Bible? You are the key to this. As goes your spiritual life, so
goes the future of this country. If we continue to ignore the Giver and enjoy the gifts, we are in
for some real problems. I think this country is at a crossroads. I really believe this with all of my
heart and I think the upcoming generation of young people that may listen to me or that I may
get a chance to visit or speak to, they are going to have to make some serious decisions about
what they believe and where they want to go with their life. America is at the crossroads and part
of the problem is we have ignored God’s Word. We’ve turned our back on the Word of God.
We’ve been a sucker for human viewpoint and have not followed divine viewpoint. If you have
something that you need to do and you ask a person, “Person A, what should I do?” and they tell
you, “If I were you, I would do this,” but then you go to the Bible and say, “Bible, what should I
do?” The Bible may say, “You should do this.” Well, divine viewpoint is what the Bible says.
Human viewpoint may be what your friend says unless they give you Scripture from the Bible.
For example, if someone does you wrong and someone steals from you or someone gossips
about you or slanders you or maligns you or criticizes you or embarrasses you, and you ask your
friend what they would do or what you should do, they’ll say, “Well, I’ll tell you, if it was me this
is what I would do.” Well that’s your first sign of danger right there. Go to what the Bible says.
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another even as God for Christ’s sake
forgave you.”
You see, the real thing that we don’t have in our nation today is a little word that
we’ve lost the meaning to, we really don’t understand love. Love is a tremendous problem
solving device and the more you know about love and the more you use love, the more you can
solve any problem that you may have with any person. The world is a place of sin, you and I are
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born into sin. We are born as the Bible says,
“For by one man sin came into the world and death
by sin and now death has passed on all for all have sinned and the wages of sin is death.”
How
did God solve this problem of sin? The answer is simple, you know the verse, John 3:16,
“God
so loved the world,”
He loved us. Love finds a way to solve the problem. How did He do it?
“God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.”
God gave something. When you
love you give. If you understand love as a Christian motivation, you are always the giver, never
the taker. You don’t take revenge, you don’t seek to get even. You give for example, forgiveness.
You might not like this because you may rather have revenge. You’d rather get even because
what these people did to you might not have been nice. It might have hurt you. It might have hurt
your feelings. Yet not being a lover, but being a taker, then you’re never going to solve any
problem with any people.
“God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,”
that’s
how God solved the problem of sin and you can solve problems with love also starting with
personal love for God. We are reviewing one of our problem-solving devices, problem-solving
device number six on your FLOT line.
Personal love for God is what motivates you to use
divine viewpoint in your life. Listen to 1 John 5:3.
“If you love Me, you will obey Me.”
You
see two words put together, love and obey.
“If you love Me, you will obey Me.”
How can you be
obeying God when you seek revenge? How can you be obeying God when you’re bitter? If God
Himself forgave the world for the sin against Him, why can you not forgive one person for their
sin against you? Because your sin nature doesn’t want to, you feel better getting revenge. You
feel better getting even. You’ve watched too many movies my friend and this is where you need
to understand, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ you don’t ever seek revenge. The Supreme
Court of Heaven is open 24 hours a day and if you have a problem, you turn it over to the justice
of God and the justice of God can handle it. The Bible clearly tells us,
“Judge not lest you be
judged,”
in Matthew 7:1. So why should I attempt to judge someone and judge the motivation of
why they did something if God can do it much better than me? God can handle the situation
much better than me. If I love God, remember 1 John 5:3,
“If you love Me, you will obey Me.”
If
I love God, that’s personal love for God, then I will use divine viewpoint, I will do what the
Bible says. One of the greatest distortions on the part of Satan you need to remember is in the
area of love. In this angelic conflict, in the time in which we live, in the days in which Satan
seeks to vindicate himself, he doesn’t want to go to the Lake of Fire. He doesn’t want to spend
eternity in the Lake of Fire. He wants to impugn the love of God. He wants to say, “If God was
love, He wouldn’t send anybody to hell.” Yet people forget that God is justice. The justice of God
is the guardian of the righteousness of God and what the righteousness of God rejects, the justice
of God must judge. There’s no way around it and justice and righteousness are both part of the
love complex of God. God loves you but yet the love of God can do nothing for you until the
righteousness of God is satisfied. So how can the righteousness of God be satisfied and you not
have to go to hell? The Bible is clear,
“He that knew no sin was made sin for us so that we may
be made the righteousness of God through Him.”
God solved this with His love by sending
Christ, He died in our place. When we receive Him, we receive His righteousness and once we
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have the righteousness of Christ, then the righteousness of God is satisfied and the justice of God
is lifted. We do not ever, ever have to face the Lake of Fire, not because we’re good, not because
we obeyed some creed or we observed some laws, but because we have the righteousness of
Christ in us. This is how love solved the problem. He imputed to us this righteousness when we
believed in Jesus Christ just like He imputed to Jesus on the cross our sins. On the cross the
judgment occurred and when we believe in Christ, forgiveness occurs. It’s an amazing thing.
Satan is able to distort love. He has made it an emotional feeling. He has made it all of human
viewpoint. If you think love is an emotional feeling, you don’t understand it. You have to come to
realize the love of God has been distorted by Satan in every aspect of life so that Christians begin
to get the concept that, “If I love God, I shouldn’t harm anyone,” or “I shouldn’t kill a terrorist,”
or “I should love all the sinners.” Yes, but that’s a different love. I’m going to show you the
difference between impersonal love and personal love and the difference basically is this.
Impersonal love is a function that you are required to have from divine viewpoint. The Bible tells
you, you have to love the sinners just like God did, but personal love is the motivation to do it.
Personal love for God is your motivation to use impersonal love for others.
So when you
love God, you are reciprocating God’s love for you. That’s why the Bible says in 1 John 4:19,
“We love Him because He first loved us,”
and once I have personal love for God and I do what
the Bible tells me to do,
“Study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not
to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth.” “Grow in the grace and the knowledge of
your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,”
and other verses I’m going to mention. Once you love God
and obey these verses, then you can obey His mandate,
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, just as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.”
You see, it all starts with
your personal love for God and it is not an emotional feeling, it is in obedience. Personal love for
God is in obedience. Yes, God is loving and God is righteousness and God is sovereignty and
justice. There are actually three categories of love in the human race that I can identify. Love for
God is one of them and then a man or woman’s love for their partner, right man right woman
type love, love for your spouse. Then there’s friendship love, people that you genuinely love and
adore who are friends and they may be the same sex. That’s not a homosexual love, that’s a
friendship love. There are two sources for this love. Number one is the filling of the Holy Spirit,
“The fruit of the Spirit is love,”
the Bible tells us. How do I get filled with the Spirit? Well, I’m
indwelt with the Spirit when I’m saved and I quench the Spirit when I sin, and I grieve the Spirit
when I sin, but when I rebound using 1 John 1:9 or Psalm 32:4-5, when I go to God and admit
my sin, then the sin is cleansed and I am filled with the Holy Spirit. At any one time in your life,
right now as you’re listening to me and this may be a good question to ask yourself, am I filled
with the Spirit now? Here’s the answer. If you have unconfessed sin in your life, no, but if you
have kept a short account of your sin, if you know that you have not sinned and failed to admit it
to God, then yes you are filled. Sin quenches the Holy Spirit. Sin grieves the Holy Spirit.
Believers sin. So when we confess our sin or when we rebound, we are filled with the Holy
Spirit.
The filling of the Holy Spirit is one of the sources for personal love for God. The
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other is your spiritual life, 1 John 2:5, the Bible says,
“Whoever keeps His Word truly the
love of God is perfected in him. Because of this we know we are in Him.”
Did you hear this
verse, 1 John 2:5?
“Whoever keeps His Word, truly the love of God is in him,”
We’ll go back to a
word called obedience and obeying. Why did Jesus Christ go to the cross? He loved His Father.
What motivated Jesus Christ to obey the mandate to go to the cross? His love for the
Father. If you love the Father, you will keep His Word.
1 John 2:5,
“Whoever keeps His Word,
truly the love of God is perfected in him.”
The love of God must grow, must increase.
The more
you know about the Word of God, the more you love God.
This means the more capacity
you have for God, the more appreciation you have because the more you understand Him.
Don’t tell me you love God if you don’t at least try to obey God. Now this means in your spiritual
life you are advancing spiritually, growing spiritually as the Bible mandates and this means that
in your physical life you’re fighting that sin nature lust and sin nature desires and you’re doing
your best to say, “No, no I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to put myself into this position
where I can be tempted.” Remember you have three enemies that are always tempting you: your
flesh, the world, and the devil are always tempting you. You’ve got to overcome the world, the
flesh, and the devil and the only way you can overcome them is by your love for God motivating
you to obey God by being filled with the Spirit and growing in grace until you become a mature
believer. Two sources of love are the filling of the Holy Spirit and your spiritual life. When you
love God that’s the greatest motivation in this world, motivational virtue is love for God. Love
for others is functional virtue. The Bible teaches this in James 2:8-9 called the royal law and
under the royal law we are to love other people, believers and unbelievers alike. All believers
who become spiritually mature believers, believers that stay filled with the Spirit consistently,
not 24/7 because you’re going to sin but when you rebound and recover from the sin, you don’t
stay out of fellowship for seven or eight hours whooping it up saying “Whoopie, I’m enjoying
my sin.”
All believers who become spiritually mature will have true love for God in their
soul because that’s an essential part of the spiritual character of the mature believer, love
for God and impersonal love for others.
That’s an essential part of his spiritual character and
you need to remember, love is only as strong as the essence of character of the person who has it.
It’s not simply an overt expression. It’s not simply physical touch. It is much deeper than this. I
mean, if I went into a church and I said, “Everybody that loves God, stand up,” I’m sure the
whole congregation would stand up but then if we put it to the test.
How do we know if we love
God? Are we being obedient to God? Are we staying filled with the Spirit? Are we
advancing daily in God’s Word?
Remember what our Lord Jesus Christ said,
“Come unto Me
all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Remember where He said,
“Take
My yoke upon you and learn of Me. My yoke is easy, My burden is light,”
learn, study, grow.
Why are these words in the Bible? So that you can become the person God wants you to be. Who
is this person? It’s a person who replicates the life of Christ. It’s a person who re-presents Christ
to his family, to his friends, to his community. It is so that when people see you, they see Christ
in you. That’s why these words are here and that’s why I stress this so much to you. So many
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people have the wrong idea of what the Christian life is. It’s not all sweetness and light. It’s not
running around, “Brother this, sister that, hallelujah this, and hallelujah that.” I mean, come on,
this may be fine but some times this can be so phony that it’s obnoxious. The real stuff, the real
thing where the rubber hits the road is when this brother or this sister does you over, does you
wrong and then how do you handle it? Or when life gives you a raw deal and how do you handle
it? If you love God, do you get bitter at God and angry at God because you got a raw deal in life
or do you know that God always, always has your best interest at heart? Do you love God as long
as He blesses you with material things? What about like the book of Job? If everything you had
was taken away from you, would you still love God? Blessings come and blessings go but the
source always remains the same. It’s not an emotion, it’s a mental attitude and it’s always stable.
This personal love for God and this impersonal love for other believers and unbelievers alike
does not turn on and off. It doesn’t appear and then disappear. People that do not have any
capacity to love are always uptight people. They are people that have very little sense of humor. I
can’t stand being around somebody like this, someone who takes himself too seriously. Listen, I
don’t mean to be crude here but I’m going to be honest. If God could use a jackass in the life of
Balaam the prophet, do you think maybe He could use you? Does it not dawn on you that God
was in business before you got here and He will be in business when I’m gone and when you’re
gone? Get off the high horse and get off the no sense of humor. It’s not a sin to laugh, it’s not a
sin to cut up, it’s not a sin to be funny. You’re taking yourself way too seriously. God has a plan
for you and I can assure you the disciples laughed and cut up and had a phenomenal time with
the Lord Jesus Christ when He was here. I can’t imagine there would have been anyplace more
enjoyable than to be in His presence. I’m sure the Lord was not overtly, deadly serious all the
time. Oh there were times when you didn’t want Him looking at you like Peter in Luke 22:60
when he denied the Lord three times. And when the Lord was let out after being beat, He looked
directly at Peter and that look had to be a look of love because Peter went out and wept bitterly.
He thought he wasn’t even a disciple anymore. It wasn’t a look of hate. I can imagine the most
phenomenal look I would ever see in my life would be the Lord Jesus Christ looking into my
eyes and by just looking at me, telling me, “I love you.” Can you imagine that? Can you imagine
what it is going to be like when you get to heaven to see His eyes and see Him look at you with
the same love that He had that caused Him to die for you? I don’t know if we can even
comprehend this. You know, experience doesn’t make you a good lover, do you know this?
The
two men that knew the most about love in the entire Bible were never married, Paul and
Jeremiah.
The more experience you have with the opposite sex, probably the further away you
are from knowing what real true love is all about because experience, it doesn’t have any bearing
if you’re a good lover. People talk about this, they’re a good lover, that’s ridiculous. A good lover
is a person that has Bible doctrine in their soul, a person who is filled with the Spirit, a person
who can be kind and forgiving, a person who can be understanding, a person who’s not
judgmental and not critical, that’s the kind of lover you’re looking for. Philippians 1:9 talks about
this lover and what kind of person he is and this is what Paul said.
“This is my prayer, that your
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love may abound more and more in knowledge and in depth of insight.”
How does your love
grow? Well Paul just said it,
“That your love would grow in knowledge and in depth of insight.”
If you consider love is like a river and where I live we’ve had a lot of rain lately and the river
right now is very much out of the banks, it’s very destructive. There are a lot of places
underwater right now, homes and cars and automobiles because the river has left the banks. In
your life the banks that control the flow of love, if love could be called a river, one of the banks
is knowledge and the other bank is understanding, insight, perspicacity, wisdom. See, before you
can have wisdom you must have knowledge because if you don’t have knowledge, how do you
know what wisdom is?
Wisdom and knowledge are the banks that contain love and keep it
from becoming an emotional overload.
When love gets out of the banks, it’s destructive, it will
destroy. People have killed over love because they let it get out of the banks. That’s why you
have to understand this. The Word of God in your soul helps you approve the things that are
excellent. It helps you to be sincere without offense until the day of Jesus Christ. That’s what the
Bible says, here it is again,
“This is my prayer that your love may abound more and more in
knowledge and in depth of insight so that you may be able to discern what is best that you may
be pure and you may be blameless for the day of Christ,”
Philippians 1:9-10. Wow, do you mean
to tell me that my love for God, my personal love for God causes me to grow, gives me
discernment, and I’ll be able to understand what is pure and blameless in my life so that when I
am presented before Him, I will hear Him say, “Well done?” Do you want to hear this or do you
want Him to say, “Have a seat. We’ll talk in a few thousand years since you never obeyed God.
You said you loved Him. You gave your tithe, you went to your church, you sang in the choir,
you said you loved Him, but you never learned. You never learned how the right thing has to be
done in the right way. You went through the ritual, but there was no reality to it.” Bible doctrine,
the Word of God in your soul maintains this love that I’m speaking about on an even balance. It
does not scatter love on objects that are not designed to be loved, objects that should not be the
objective of your love. Your love is made and given by God to go in one direction to begin with,
to Him. And when it goes to Him and you have personal love for God, then it can branch out to
other people because you have wisdom and knowledge and insight, and it won’t get out of the
banks and destroy the people you’re loving. Think about it. There is so much to say about this. I
hope you’re listening, same time, same station next week. This is your host Rick Hughes saying
thank you for listening to the FLOT Line.