The Way You Love Me (Jeremy Camp)

The Way of Love

13 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

² If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.
^3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

^8-10 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

¹¹ When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
¹² We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
¹³ But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

I love how the message bible translates 1 Cor 13.  We are given three things:  faith, hope, and love but the greatest of these is love and we are to love extravagantly!  We cannot totally fathom or understand how great God's love is towards us.  We may try at times, we may even grasp a measure of it, but I do not believe we have really and truly experienced how great His love is for us.  I know at times when I have tried I have been overwhelmed and completely undone by how great His love for me is.  Imagine if He revealed all of His love towards me.  I may still be on the floor enjoying Him!!!

The flow of love from God to me is simple I love Him and He loves me but that is only part of the great commission.  In the second part we are commanded to love others as we love ourselves.  I know personally I could not even begin to love others until I first began to love myself.  Learning to love myself was not easy and is a process I am continually walking out with God.  Daily I must remind myself what God says about me so I begin to walk out how love is described in 1 Cor 13.  After all the word says "love cares more for others more than for self."   I wish I could say I have it all down.  I love God, myself, and others but it is still a process that is being worked out.   But this is what I do know:  God's love is a waterfall flowing down on us and then it becomes a river flowing out of us.  My river may be small now but it is continually growing.

One way I believe that the river can grow is by putting God's love into action.  Love is more than a feeling we have towards something, it is a verb.  A verb, for all of you who may have forgotten, is a word that conveys an action.  I have been praying on how I can personally put God's love into action and how I can take others along with me.  God recently gave me a wonderful vision regarding this that I truly believe goes along with the prophetic word Corrie Ten Boom had over Northwest Arkansas.  For those of you who do not know Corrie's word over this region was that she saw a great revival taking place here.  For years I have heard this and for years I have always been told it would occur within a particular church.  I am not saying this won't happen but God does not see us as as a particular denomination, He sees the "church" as His bride.  The church is the believer and not a building or a denomination.

In my vision I saw two puzzle pieces, the two puzzle pieces represented two different churches in this area.  In the vision the two pieces were joined together.  Together these two churches were training and equipping the body of Christ to put God's love into action within the community.  The impact they had was to such an extent that other churches (puzzle pieces) were joined together with the first two to create a great and bigger picture of the love of God in action.  It was not just one church here and one church there, it was the body working together!  With the churches joining together to put God's love into action in Northwest Arkansas revival was sparked and the atmosphere was changed and electrified to the glory of God.

What an amazing and awe inspiring image!  I am honored that God would reveal this to me and pray continually that He would bring this to pass as only He can do.

As I prayed over this message I believe the new Jeremy Camp song The Way You Love Me conveys this message so well.  If we showed the world around us how God loves us it would entice them to want Him to.  Let His light shine through you now and always.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Matt Redman

Today I read online that the worlds ugliest woman was buried. The headline was enough to capture my attention as I wondered why anyone would deserve such a title.  The woman actually lived in the 1800's and because of some medical defects that gave her an ape like appearance and facial hair the world deemed her the ugliest woman.  The man who married her exploited her in a carnival freak show and even her son who lived a matter of days was embalmed and exploited because he too bore his mother's defects.  When she died her body continued to remain part of the freak show until someone 150 years later said enough was enough and it was time for her to be buried.

The point of this story is no matter what this woman looked like she was created in God's image.  To Him she was His beautiful creation, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made!  I first heard the song Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Matt Redman in October at a women's encounter.  I loved the song because it so greatly illustrates Psalm 139.  

We are so fearfully and wonderfully made!  We are all made in God's likeness, in His image.  How can we call something ugly that is supposed to reflect what God looks like?  How can we look at our flaws and maybe the things we most dislike about ourselves the most and not see the beautiful one that God created?  When God looks at us He sees a beautifully wonderfully created being.  Begin to see yourself as God does.  Stop looking at the flaws and failures and begin to live your life fully for Him.

Because I use music so much in this blog I was disappointed that I could not find the song anywhere on YouTube so I created my own video and received permission from the record label to post online.  I hope you enjoy my first attempt at creating my own video's.