Lion Heart ENCOURAGE - Loving Me, Loving You.

Intro:

Hey Man of God! How can a man give what he has not received?

A man finds a beggar along the street. The man asks the beggar to borrow him R10,000. Perplexed the beggar looks back at him in disbelief. The man again asks him, ‘please I beg of you borrow me R10,000!’ In astonishment, the beggar exclaims to the first man, ‘are you out of your mind, how do you think I can give you R10,000. How can I give you, what I do not have!?’

And so it is with love.

God is so wonderfully Gracious. And it is His Glory to be Gracious. Praise be to Him!

Encouragement:

Fathers and husbands play such important roles in families today! Your role is key, don’t shy away from it.

Leading, loving, correcting, teaching, providing, protecting, being present, listening, attending, etc and the list can go on.

But where does this all originate from? Where is the fountain for all this ‘energy’?

Ps 87:7 NIV: “As they make music they will sing, “All my fountains are in you.”

In other words, all those things we need to ‘give’ has to come from somewhere, right?

I believe that God has embedded into each of us, a certain energy, a certain capacity, from which we can move and do. From this ‘Genesis Energy’, we get a start in life. We have ‘get up and go’ energy deposited into us. And as we start in the life we should choose wisely how we spend that energy, as it doesn’t last forever. Sooner or later that Genesis Energy will run out. Sooner or later, we will need to find another energy source.

Who, or what, will that be?

The same principle applies to love. Who is the author of love? Who made it? Who defined it?

I want to warn you my brothers, the world doesn’t have love. The world doesn’t understand love. The constant stream of inputs we get from the world is devoid of real love. Be careful how much of the worlds stream you take in. Be careful what you see as normal. Tap away.

The Bible, however, teaches that love is the foundation of all things good. That love is the ‘currency’ of the Kingdom of God.

The world teaches that money is the base currency of the world. ‘Money makes the world go round’. In the face of what the world presents, it seems so ‘softy’ to talk about real love. Like in the face of those high powered NYC execs in SUITS, or in crawling along a battlefield with Jason Bourne, money and physical might seems to be all we need. Right? Money and Might seems to be what we should aspire to. And if heed what Hollywood says, it becomes what we end of chasing. Be careful what you’re filling your minds with.

But then……. we have JESUS!!

JESUS JESUS JESUS! What a wonderful name!

The leader of the Armies of Heaven. The one who dwells in unapproachable Glory and Light. The one Who’s Face shines like the sun in its noonday strength. The lamb who can open the scrolls of Heaven. The lamb of God Who is seated on the right hand of Creator God. The lamb who was SLAIN! Wait, what? Slain…. What!? A pure unspotted glorious and righteous lamb, lying dead with its blood stained pelt. Wounded and limp. Cold and Dead.

The King of Heaven who chose to be born on this muddy earth. In a trough where we feed animals. In an outbuilding. Nearing the dead of winter.

Just step back and picture that for a little while. A KING, in a feed trough…. Was the stall even cleaned properly? Was the stench of manure not still strong in the air?

What is real love? What is real?

HE is LOVE. HE is REAL.

1Cor 13:4-8 NKJ

‘4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.’

This is the foundation of His Kingdom. We need to reorder our minds, reorient our minds to the map that the Bible gives us, to the priorities that the Bible lays out.

So where am I going with this? I’m saying that to be a Godly husband, father, brother, son, we need to know what the real lay of the land is. Not a Hollywood land, but reality.  And then we need to embark on a journey to be transformed to function inline with this Kingdom. We need to base everything on love. His love.

Following that, I’m saying that the only place to get this love is from the source. Straight from the source. Love as God defines it is not available anywhere else but from Himself. And this is by design. As Jesus said, ‘We can do nothing without Him’.

You can’t give what you do not have.

So, if you want to be a husband or father in the model of your heavenly Father, then you need to be remodel by Him.

Matt 22:37-40

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

These first two commandments are 3 steps in this transformation process:

1.        Love the Lord your God

3.        Love your neighbour

2.        As you love yourself

(Note how I’ve numbered ‘loving yourself’ as the second step)

It starts at the source. He is the source. Returning to the source. This happens when we walk in the journey of ‘Loving the Lord your God’. And then step 2 and 3 naturally flow from that. Everything else flows from starting with God.

When we love Him, we slowly learn how He sees and loves us. And once we see that, when we start seeing ourselves as He sees us, only then can we start loving ourselves. And once we can start loving ourselves, we are able to love our neighbours, or our wives, or our children, etc.

Let’s endeavour to be the men God created us to be, let’s start at the Source.

Please fwd this message to those whom you think can benefit.

Your Brother in Christ,

Stanley