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(John 21:15-17) Loveth Thou Me?

Updated on February 25, 2014
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Do you love Me?

Jesus asked the Apostle Peter thrice, if he loved Him:

The first time He asked, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He didn't just ask him if he loved Him, but more than these, referring to the other disciples. Peter answered, yes, Lord You know that I love You. Jesus said to him, feed my lambs.

The second time He asked, and Peter gave the same answer as the first time, and Jesus said, feed my sheep.

The third time Jesus asked, Peter was grieved because He asked a third time. This answer was different, Peter said, Lord You know all things, You know that I love You. Jesus said again, feed my sheep.

Did you notice that Peter didn't ever answer the first question fully? If he loved Jesus more than the others. The most essential element of the question was whether he loved Him. What quality of love did the Apostle's response ascend to? The quality of God knowing his heart and knowing all things. Loving God is rising to the occasion of Agape! It is arising to shine because the glory of the Lord is risen upon and in you. The love of God is glorious! It is what the redeemed of the Lord is to first ascribe to God alone, but is channeled to a dying world and to the Body of Christ through our lives, as well.

This was a call to love on a very high wave length. Jesus called Peter to rise to loving Him. To love as Jesus loves is most certainly a high call. But, it is what Jesus believes we are capable of doing. Moreover, loving Jesus is the foundation for loving others with the same fervor and essence. Jesus' love for me melts my heart and inspires in me the desire to love His way. There has never been a creature who has inspired my heart to desire to have mercy, forgiveness, compassion and look beyond faults as Jesus Christ. Love must be built upon God loving us, because we don't really know how to love until we meet up with Him.

A new commandment I give unto you that ye love one another as I have loved you. Jesus believed it possible for the disciples to love one another, as He loved them. His love is holy love, it is Agape to the highest. Yet He perceived the disciples and every disciple who would come after them capable of this quality of love, or He would not have given the command. Talking about the high calling through Jesus Christ!

Jesus is telling us to rise above the natural and sensual aspects of love and look high. God's love is higher than any we can ever experience in the natural. Spiritual love transcends and overshadows every kind of love in the natural. The Greek were most diligent and effective in defining the different kinds of love. Love for God, friendship, family and the love man and woman exhibit in a marital union. Our love for God is not equal to His love for us and never will be. How can we love so absolutely? Nevertheless we can love Him with all of our hearts. His love is penetrative and soothes us, as it comforts and consoles us even through adversity.

When we choose to love, we become vulnerable and openhearted and we are choosing the attribute of God that never fails. Love is a healer of all emotional pain. God's love is still healing us inside out, yet with His stripes we are healed by faith. We should always embrace the healing power resident in His love. Love is absolutely powerful, because God is absolutely powerful.

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There is power in loving Jesus

We must take this personal before it can become a reality collectively. Treat these words as if He is right here asking us the same question. If I do my part, and you do your part, we will witness the power of God in such a new and living way and in a way we have never seen or witnessed before.

The Apostle John makes a powerful statement in John 3:1, Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew not him.

We must answer Jesus' question personally first, Do you love me? Our answer will ensure whether we will indeed love each other. The qualifier being Jesus first loved us and that it is the only right thing to do, love Him too.

If I would love you the way that Jesus loves me, and you would love others that way also, the world would be knocking down the Church doors to come, and be in the presence of the love which God is, and shackles would fall off of them at the portal and gateway into Church. I believe that healing miracles would happen in ways that we are not yet aware of because love is a miracle.


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Love heals

Love is healing to the wounded heart. Love is the master builder upper. The concept of love and the reality of love are two extremes, which are unequal in parallel. Natural love as exhibited today is selfish instead of selfless. It falls short because it is conceptual rather than tangible because only half of the command is operative. What is that? Jesus instructs us that the way He loves us we should love others too. The cry of selfishness declares I will love you if you love me in return. By design self wants to set up a contractual agreement, which states I will if you will, if being the qualifier. The quality of His love is exclusive. One of a kind!

The many aspects of or the various components of love that we may experience or exhibit cannot hold a candle to the love of God. His love is of a holy order. Holiness is what surges His love with power. All that we touch in the realm of natural love is through our senses and flesh. God’s love is high above senses and flesh. His love is spiritual. We sense His love with our spirits. You can’t see it to touch it in order that you can believe it. It is by faith that we receive the love God gives us.

First we need a revelation of the love of God and the decision to respond to His love. I haven’t always known that God loves me. I found that out through a tract one good morning. John 3:16 inculcated through my heart until I believed it. There I was granted revelation of love. God revealed to my unregenerate heart that because He loved me He gave His only begotten Son, and that if I could produce the faith of a mustard seed and believe in Him I would receive for my belief eternal love and life. God's love is absolute! It is time to reproduce after His kind of love.

There is much more to the love of God, which we need to be aware of. It is power packed with action. God loved so much that He gave. Inherent in this love, which we know as Agape, is the God kind of love, which qualifies it, to be holy. A Holy God loves that means the love is holy. It can’t be obtained but through God.

The way in which God loves us there is depth, (it runs so very deep) height, (it is higher than high) length, (it is long lasting) and breadth (it extends far beyond the great beyond.) It is clean, pure, undefiled; unadulterated, uncontaminated, unpolluted, untainted it is holy. We have all loved at one time or another, or either we were in love with the concept of love. Natural love may not have materialized in our living because was not reciprocal. Then there are those who marry and find that natural essence of love.

There is still a gulf between natural love and love according to the spirit. It is interesting that the Creator did set in motion the ability for us to obtain love through many diverse operations. We can love a spouse, we can love our family and we can love friends. Yet all of these varieties need the power of God’s love to be successful. The divorce rate is an indicator that something went wrong along the way. The ideals, which drew two people together, vanished just like the wind. They forgot to just keep on loving each other until death do they part. Suddenly, there was a reason or a cause why they just didn’t want to try for the sake of love. Natural love seems so fleeting when it was meant to be an exclusive union with bonds, which could not be broken. They just didn’t believe that God so loved, so why don’t you do the same towards each other.

Patience and long-suffering are the fruits of love that humanness just doesn’t embrace. Turn now to God and ask yourself who is more patient and long-suffering than He is? You repented right there when you turned to look at Gods’ glory and the holiness that makes Him who He is God.

Look at the world today, swaggering and swaying to its own set of rules. I can see why fornication should be shunned, because is not under the umbrella of God for unions which take place between man and woman. It is an illegal and unlawful stance sin teaches. Children were ordained to be born under the mantle of two parents who wanted to guide and steer their lives together. Single parenting is not the perfect will of God as it pertains to raising children. It is the permissible will. Single parents that call upon God after the fact at least know that God is duly needed in their equation, in light of an absentee father.

It breaks your heart; I am the product of two parents that decided after at least 15 years to call it quits. Of a truth my heart was broken in two pieces and it pained me beyond my ability to recognize or understand it. I wandered around a broken child soon to be entering into my teenage years, still wanting my parents to be together again. How does this type of bond sever to the core like this? Neither parent had ever told me growing up that they loved me, but at least I knew inside that they did. In retrospect, I have learned and have forgiven each parent.

Again remember Jesus on the cross asking the Heavenly Father to forgive them, for they know not what they do. Following Jesus makes this application the only remedy and solution, I too have asked the Father to forgive them both, for they knew not what they were doing. If they had known God, they would have gotten the power needed to bond in and through Him and produce the cords of love we all needed. Without God life is as pointless as unsharpened pencil. God is love and love will never fail because it is holy, just like God.

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Loving Jesus is the best thing I've ever done

There is a song entitled, "Falling in love with Jesus" the words are extremely powerful if you don't get caught up in semantics regarding the word failing, but grasp the spirit of the song. The video of this song is attached below. Let is speak to your heart! It has made my heart desire to love Him even more.

The stanza goes like this;

Falling in love with Jesus, falling in love with Jesus,

Falling in love with Jesus, was the best thing I've ever done.

In His arms I feel protected, in His arms I never feel disconnected,

In His arms I feel connected, it is the best thing I've ever done.

Making the decision to love Jesus is the best thing we can ever do, it is the best decision we can ever make. Accepting Jesus as Savior and Lord is the best choice we could and can ever make with our right to choose.

Choosing Jesus empowers our right to choose. We invest our free will in the righteousness of God. We know about free will and the right to choose, and that we can accept salvation or reject it. Have you ever honed in on the fact that you have made the determination to choose Jesus, therefore you have utilized the right to choose the Creator forever.

We have chosen for ourselves to love the Lord our God, with all of our heart, mind strength and soul and to rise up to the occasion of loving others as we love ourselves. Loving Jesus gives us emotional freedom and it is a miracle to love Him and be loved by Him. It is a choice that only God knows because He is the Kardio Gnostice, the heart knower.

My answer to the question is yes

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