The Love of God – Discipleship

The Love of God – Discipleship

“And the Lord direct your hearts
into the love of God”
2 Thessalonians 3:5

The desire and over-riding purpose of the Holy Spirit at work in the human heart is to direct us INTO the Love of God. There is no greater evidence of an individual’s growth in God than the manifestation of His fire and His love.

The Agape of God is ever divergent from the love of man. The Agape of God is pure, free from the contaminates of self. It is a love that has but one source and origin: God Himself. It hates mixture and compromise. The Agape of God offends the religious but draws the lost and wandering into its holy sphere of influence.

In the very next verse Paul declares:

“Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us.”
2 Thessalonians 3:6

The Love of God – Discipleship

Moving in the Holy Spirit Paul clearly presents a love that defies the religious love of men. He is praying and exhorting the believers at Thessalonica to allow the Lord to direct their hearts into THIS love of God, one that is deep, pure, and ever pressing into a crucified life. Our apprehension of THIS love requires a voluntary submission of our hearts, to deny ourselves, and to pick up our own cross and follow Him.

“And he said to them all, If any man will come after me,
let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.”
Luke 9:23

Discipleship is the Call of God for us to discover the Love of God and to grow and become pure expressions of that love which requires a crucified life. It is a call to selflessness, a call that requires freedom from all that is of us that we might reveal all that is of Him.

“And whosoever doth not bear his cross,
and come after Me, cannot be My disciple…”
Luke 14:27

The Love of God requires surrendered vessels. It is a love that freely exhibits the nature and purity of God’s heart in every situation. It contains grace for the broken and the lost of this world, yet an intolerance for any form of hypocrisy and pretense within His Church. It is a consuming fire that frees us from self-righteousness, self-seeking, and ulterior motives.

“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples,
if ye have love one to another”
John 13:35

Only disciples are capable of revealing the purity of this Divine love. Discipleship is the entrance into a life that is “able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge”.
Ephesians 3:18-19

The crucified life has one desire resonating within:

“According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
Philippians 1:20-21

Though we have yet to attain to this fulness, may our passion be that He direct our hearts!

“And the Lord direct your hearts
into the love of God”
2 Thessalonians 3:5

†

“I take the love of God and self-denial
to be the sum of all saving grace and religion”
Richard Baxter

See Related Article: The Holy Love of God

Brian Troxel