HIS LOVE EMPOWERS YOUR FAITH TO OVERCOME



“Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us, God is love. And he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him."  
(1 John: 4:15-16)

Let’s take a look at that again. The Word of God says, "And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us." This is an important statement that John made. "We have known and believed."

Unfortunately in a lot of Christian circles, the Church has misrepresented Gods love. Through wrong thinking and believing we have demanded ungodly, unscriptural beliefs from the world and from each other. We hinder people from coming home, because of how they look, behave or where they come from.

In fact if they haven’t demonstrated that they are like us, then we doubt their value or worth. As a result the world is running from the Church instead of running to her.

We need to be helping people know the love of God, so they can believe in Him. We need to be telling people the good news. We need to be saying;

“HEY YOU BELONG HERE!”

Even if you haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you still belong here, because Jesus has already died for you. You may not know it but God truly loves you and has great plans for your life. We love and value you, and you belong to this family, I don’t care who you are, or what you have done, or what has been done to you, you belong here.

The way that you can experience Gods love, is through faith in Jesus Christ. That’s it. Just believe that He died for your sin. You are worth every drop of blood that He shed. You are Gods child and He spared no expense in rescuing you. You are now free to come home!


Now that’s demonstrating love. You see they first experience His love through us. They experience value, they experience worth through us. This opens the door for them to believe on Jesus Christ.

Now that is what John is communicating here in 1 John 4:15-16. He put his faith in Jesus Christ, because He has known and believed the love.

The word “known” here means; to learn, come to know intimately, get a knowledge of, to perceive, to feel.

He was saying here that he came to know God’s love so intimately that he could literally feel God’s love. He just didn’t have a head knowledge of the love; he actively experienced an interaction with God’s love.

He said, we’ve known and believed the love. Through actively experiencing this love, faith was formed and he believed in this love as well!

To believe means you trust. Do you trust God? Or do you trust something or someone else?

There was a time in my life where I had to choose. I was experiencing a time of loss and failure. I was so devastated that I could barely function. One night the pain of this came to a head, and as I laid there looking at my clock, I wanted to die. I wanted the pain to stop. I couldn’t handle it any longer.

But something rose up in me, and challenged that thought of ending it. I literally felt a nudge in my heart; I heard the words “I LOVE YOU!” I remember thinking, “I either curse God and die, or choose Him.”

Before this moment in my life, I was a part of a Church family that ministered intensely on God’s love for me. I had been through Bible College, and ministry training, and experienced faith victories in my life. Yet what I didn’t know or perceive was the Fathers love for me.

My Pastor at the time introduced God as a loving Father to me and it impacted my life forever.

I praise God that my Pastor got a hold of and experienced Gods love. And for six years He ministered that to me.

He imparted the Fathers love to me weekly. There were times though that I challenged him because he would call God "Daddy", and it irritated me.  God was not a Daddy to me. 

Through his faithfulness, he literally introduced me to the heart of the Father. He demonstrated how to have an intimate experiential relationship with Him, and His love. And through the process of time, I too, began calling God, Daddy as well.

That is what Jesus Christ has done for us. He demonstrated and introduced the world to a God of love, a Father, a Daddy, Who passionately and intensely loves us.

Because I knew and experienced  His love for me, through the power of the Holy Spirit, I was able to rise up in faith and turn from that oppressive darkness, and turn towards my loving Father.

The experience of knowing Gods love personally, fueled my faith in Him, and empowered me to yield to the presence and help of His Holy Spirit that night.

I literally rolled away from death, and turned towards His loving arms of embrace. I turned towards His love, His healing, His comfort, and His strength.

He brought me out of that rabbit hole, and over the next several months I experienced what it meant to dwell in His love.

That is what knowing and experiencing His love does. It empowers your faith in Him.  He wants you to experience His love so powerfully, that it literally fuels your faith to overcome!
(to be continued)


YOU ARE BLESSED!