Dear Friends

We can get so involved in so many religious issues, that we can forget the basic truth. Jesus came to tell us and to show us that GOD IS LOVE. Jesus lived and died to transform us into the image of God, that we might love as God loves and live forever with our loving Heavenly God.

Here are some thoughts from the Bible to remind us of the most wonderful reality of our faith.

God bless you from Bill

Colossians 1:8 (NIV) 

and who also told us of your love in the Spirit. 

What is LOVE IN THE SPIRIT?

We cannot love with the purity and intense goodness of the love of God. Adam and Eve chose to go their own way. Since then we have all had a measure of love in our human nature. The purest expression of this is the love of a good mother for her children but even this love is imperfect

John 3:16 (NIV)

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

God’s love is pure, intense and infinitely great. We know the love of a mother who sacrifices her life for her children but this is a pale reflection of the love of God for every human being. But if we believe and receive the life of Jesus, we have a new life. We can be filled with the goodness of God, filled with the Spirit of Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit.

1 John 3:1 (HCSB) 

Look at how great a love the Father has given us that we should be called God’s children. And we are! ...

1 John 3:14 (NIV) 

We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 

1 John 3:16 (HCSB) 

This is how we have come to know love: He laid down His life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers. 

1 John 4:8-12 (NIV) 

8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 

9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 

10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 

11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 

12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 

How does God change our faulty and often selfish nature into His own loving nature?

Romans 5:5-8 (NIV) 

5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. 

6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 

7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 

8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 

Romans 5:5 (NIV) ...God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.       

2 Corinthians 5:21 (TLB) 

For God took the sinless Christ and poured into him our sins. Then, in exchange, he poured God’s goodness into us! 

God will satisfy your hunger and thirst.

John 7:37-39 (ESV)
37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ”
39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
Jesus is still speaking to day. “Come to me all you who thirst and I will fill you. But why will you come with a small cup or perhaps a bottle? I will fill your cup and your bottle. If you bring a bucket, I will fill that. But have you not read the scriptures that speak of rivers? Why will you be satisfied with a cup when you can have rivers? Whatever you bring, I will fill. Why will you bring so little to Me?’

Think about large tanks. Think about trucks that deliver petrol to garages. If you take a small can to fill up with petrol, it will fill in a few seconds. If you bring a small car, it will fill in a couple of minutes. If you bring a large four wheel drive vehicle or a truck, it will take some time.If you want to expand your capacity for God and His blessings and supply, you need to spend serious time seeking and receiving the Spirit of God. How thirsty are you?

We cannot earn God's favour or His blessings. Everthing we have from God is a free gift. Everything is from God's grace. That means God's favour which can never be deserved. But it takes an act of the will to open yourself to receive from God and it takes time to receive and absorb God's blessing. God's blessing is not just something He adds to you that leaves you the same. When God blesses you deeply, His blessings change you and make you like Jesus.

John 4:13-14 (ESV)
¹³ Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,¹⁴ but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Romans 6:23 (ESV)
²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Jesus is waiting. 

We pray to God, "Save the lost! They are going to hell." Jesus says to us: "Go and find the lost and make friends for My Kingdom."

We ask God to grow our church. 

Jesus says to us: "Go out and pray for the sick, HEAL THE SICK, RAISE THE DEAD." 

We are waiting for Jesus to heal. 

Jesus says: 

Mark 16:15-18 (ESV)
^{15 ...}“Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.¹⁶ Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.¹⁷ And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues;¹⁸ they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

God's plan works like this. If we will do what He says, He will do what He promised. If we pray in the Holy Spirit with a sincere heart, He will build up our faith.

If we lay hands on the sick with a heart of obedience and trust in the words of Jesus, we will start to see the results that He promised.

The other day at church, someone said: "The people here are not ready for healings and miracles."

If we want people to be ready to receive what God has promised, we must boldly declare the promises of God and keep speaking and declaring and praying in faith until faith comes to us through the hearing of our words and our hearers start reaching out and receiving.