Is the love you offer, expect, and advocate the love of GOD? Is your love being transformed by the word of GOD? There are plenty of emotions and feelings in the world which man identify as love, but they fall short of having the true properties of real love. One of the ways you can tell true love from false love is that true love glows when subjected to intense heat like iron, however false love will give off a light which is quickly turned into darkness and vanishes like smoke as it takes flight in the power of the air. Whatever GOD makes is good, life giving, and endures. GOD is love. We live in a world that has been polluted by a counterfeiter called the Great Deceiver, also known as Satan. Satan’s goal is to destroy everything which reflects GOD.
Like me, you also may have had someone in your life you considered a friend, only to find that the love they had for you was false, because when things got heated their love turned dark and disappeared. The love they offered lacked the qualities of real love; patience, temperance, meekness, longsuffering, kindness, righteousness, and hope. I had a brother once that I considered a true yokefellow which when we were at odds and needed to work through an issue remarked that he had a wife and children at home and he didn’t have time for additional drama. That was the last conversation we ever had. I come with a burden that I may need help carrying at times, as does every one of us because we are still being perfected. We have not yet achieved the flawless expression of perfect love at all times and in every situation (1 John 3:8). So, as we journey through life, we will reach places which expose our need to grow and that is by design. A friend is someone who excepts your imperfections with a core faith that you are willing to persevere through the growth processes to answer the call of GOD. Your oneness or union is based on a mutual resolve to grow closer to GOD which facilitates you growing closer to one another. If this sounds conditional it is because it is. Only counterfeit love professes to be unconditional. Here are the words of Christ,
9 “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. 10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. (John 15:9-10)
13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. 14 You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. (John 15:13-14 NKJV)
I find that so many Christians have a problem receiving the truth of these scriptures and others that are in harmony with them. Though these scriptures plainly state conditions of GOD’s love, I have found that many Christians insist that GOD’s love is unconditional. Here me out, GOD is love unconditionally, in the same way the sun is always the sun. The sun gives off light all the time but based on where you are positioned you may not be able to perceive the light or feel the warmth. I am not saying that sometimes GOD does not love you, neither are these scriptures I have cited. In agreement with the scriptures I am saying there are conditions you must maintain in order to partake of GOD’s love. The deceiver and those who are deceived have placed a false quality on love that he may have occasion to return later and accuse GOD of being false. Can one be buried under earth with their eyes closed and still abide in the light of the sun and feel its warmth on their skin? No. Neither can a person experience the love of GOD if they refuse to unearth their spiritual man in repentance and obedience to GOD (1 Corinthians 2:12-14) . The restoration of Lazarus consisted of a big stone being rolled away and him coming out of the tomb and then being unwrapped in order to be free again. Christ finds all of us in the state of Lazarus, and He has moved the stone, and given us the power to come forth so we can be unwrapped, but we have to get up and hop to it or we will not become free to experience His benefits (John11:38-44).
It is sad but true, everyone will not be willing to receive your love even as everyone has not received the love Christ offers. To love you have to be a warrior. You must be willing to battle the enemies of love whether they exist externally or internally. We all must eventually deal with the oppositions to love. We war against the barriers to love but not those who need love. People often say that love conquers all, but this saying is not true. Some people surrender to love in agreement with the virtues of love. They become convinced and have a change of heart. That is our hope for ourselves and those we are trying to love. Scripture informs us that the devil comes to kill, steal, and destroy, and he does it through trickery and deceit.
We are commanded to love one another as Christ has loved us. Christ gives us a perfect example of what love looks like. In order to love us, He descended into our humanity without compromising His holiness and righteousness to establish a relationship with the intention of raising us back to glory with Him. He didn’t come to stay in that place with us forever, nor did He come to merely stroke our feelings and be complicit with our demise. He came to inspire, motivate, and empower us unto the fullness of Life. You don’t have to compromise who you are and what you believe in order to love, nor do you have to validate falsehoods. Some people will not see the value in what you are offering and therefore be unwilling to accept GOD’s love through you. The division between you all will just become more evident and you will have to stay your course though they are unwilling to come along. This distance between you and these dear people may not be physical but it is in the spiritual. Eventually it will manifest itself in the physical. Endure hardship as a good soldier but do not allow yourself to be entangled with the cares of this world. If you get entangled, when it is time to rise up to what is next you may find that you are stuck.
theinscribedheart 
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