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\ / MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST -- http://www.heartlight.org/
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May 11, 2009
YOU WON'T REACH IT ON TIPTOE
Add to your brotherliness ... love.
2 Peter 1:7
http://www.SearchGodsWord.org/desk/?query=2pe+1:7&sr=1
Love is indefinite to most of us, we do not know what we mean when we
talk about love. Love is the sovereign preference of one person for
another, and spiritually Jesus demands that that preference be for
Himself (cf. Luke 14:26). When the love of God is shed abroad in our
hearts by the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ is easily first; then we must
practise the working out of these things mentioned by Peter.
The first thing God does is to knock pretence and the pious pose
right out of me. The Holy Spirit reveals that God loved me not
because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so. Now,
He says to me, show the same love to others - "Love as I have loved
you." "I will bring any number of people about you whom you can not
respect, and you must exhibit My love to them as I have exhibited it
to you." You won't reach it on tiptoe. Some of us have tried to, but
we were soon tired.
"The Lord suffereth long. . . ." Let me look within and see His
dealings with me. The knowledge that God has loved me to the
uttermost, to the end of all my sin and meanness and selfishness and
wrong, will send me forth into the world to love in the same way.
God's love to me is inexhaustible, and I must love others from the
bedrock of God's love to me. Growth in grace stops the moment I get
huffed. I get huffed because I have a peculiar person to live with.
Just think how disagreeable I have been to God! Am I prepared to be
so identified with the Lord Jesus that His life and His sweetness are
being poured out all the time? Neither natural love nor Divine love
will remain unless it is cultivated. Love is spontaneous, but it has
to be maintained by discipline.
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