Love is Efficacious
Love acts
We know God loves because he does things for his beloved.
God is love, so he loves (1 John 4:8).
God’s love rescued his delivered them from slavery and brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey (Ex 3:7-8)
God’s love made plans for us; to prosper and not to harm us Jer 29:11
God’s love draws us to himself with unfailing kindness (Jer 31:13)
God’s love is shown to a thousand generations—of blessing (Deut 7:9)
God’s love causes him to save us, delight in us, and to rejoice over us with singing (Zeph 3:17).
The major expression of his love for his people is that he sent Jesus to die in our place. (John 3:16)
While we were sinners, God demonstrated his love for us by having Christ die for us. Rom 5:8.
God’s love is shown to us in that he adopted us as his own children. 1 Jn 3:1
God’s love casts out fear 1 Jn 4:18
God’s love causes him to want to lift us up and to take care of our anxieties (1 pet 5:6-7)
God’s love caused Christ to give his life for his bride (Eph 5:25)
God invites us to join him in loving others
Love God (Deut 6:5; Deu 10:12; and Lk 10:27)
“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,” (Deuteronomy 10:12)
Love your neighbor (Lev 19:18; Mt 19:19)
Love your wife (Eph 5:25)
Love your husband (Tit 2:4)
Love children (Tit 2:4)
Love enemies (2 Kings 6:22; Pro 25:21-22; Mt 5:43; Lk 6:27, 35; Rom 12:13, 18-21)
Magic
Love changes things, particularly the beloved. This is true magic. Notice in the instances of God loving that because his love moved him to act, the actions affected the people he was loving.
Love created life started and ran off down the road
Love rescued –> Israel became a real nation and lived in a land flowing with milk and honey, with all the attendant blessings.
Jesus died on the cross –> Creating a permanent relationship with God
Jesus died on the cross –> Creating the church, who became beautiful
Jesus rose from the dead –> is making his bride beautiful because of his continued love
Husbands loving wives –> makes her beautiful (Eph 5:25ff)
Husbands loving wives –> increases the effectiveness of his prayers.
Father’s bringing up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord –> godly offspring (Mal 2:15). Actually, in this verse husbands’ love for their wives produces godly offspring.
Wives respecting/loving their husbands’ –> respectable husbands (1 Pet 3:1-6).
Loving enemies –> turns enemies into friends, or worse enemies (Lk 6:27-36)
Through all of this, the love changes the beloved, but it also changes us into better lovers. So, Love changes everyone and everything.
Notice that all of this begins with God. It starts with him, continues in him, relies on him, believes in him, trusts in him, and rests in him. Love does the changing and it “works” because God is love and he is in and through it all.
This means that if someone wants to make or see change in their life or in the life of people close to them, they need to be close to God, walking with God, studying, knowing, rejoicing with, delighting in, singing with, dancing with glorying in God. And this requires that we spend a lot of time in the Word of God and with his people, talking with him and with his people.
For Counselors.
Homework: Needs to be helping the CE to be changing into someone who knows God in a way that his love will have an obvious and clear presence in their lives. And this means that homework must be Bible strong. Memorizing one or two verses isn’t nearly enough. They need to be replacing the World with God. So, if they spend nine hours a day with non-Christians at work and then three hours each evening with pagans on TV, something serious needs to change. And it needs to change in the direction of being with God so that the love of God can change them from the inside out.
They need change and Love changes things. Love is efficacious.
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