“Do you love Me? Do you really
love Me”, Jesus asked Peter on a sandy beach after His resurrection and Peter’s
denial of Him. “Oh yes Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus, in His beautiful way, gently
asks us this same question: “Do you love Me?”
In scripture, we’re told that, if we
love Him, we will obey His commandments.
But how can we obey if we can’t hear?
…and how can we hear if we’re holding
anything back?
…and how can we let go unless we
fundamentally understand our own brokenness and need for Him every second of
every hour of every day?
…and how can we understand our own
brokenness until we stop…and look into His eyes.
Do You Love Me?
Then, and only then, will we respond
to Him in the way that anyone would who has truly looked into those beautiful
eyes…by “putting off our old self, which belongs to our former manner of life
and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of our
minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true
righteousness and holiness.” Eph 4:22-24
Be free. Let go…that you may want nothing
that He doesn’t want.
We have One Life – It is His. We are
not our own, but have been bought with a price, the highest price that was ever
paid or ever will be paid.
Do You Love Me?
“In the world, we will have
tribulation”, Jesus says, “but, take courage, I HAVE OVERCOME THE WORLD!” John
16:33b…and we are in Christ, and so, are overcomers with Him and in Him!
Let us, therefore, “grow up into all
aspects into Him who is the Head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, joined
and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is
working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” Eph
4:15&16
Let us continually “put off the old
and put on the new”.
Do You Love Me?
Then you must trust Me completely by
yielding everything to Me, including your patterns of thought and
behavior. I made you. I fashioned you. I created you to be a specific person, a
unique and beautiful expression of My glory that only you can be…but will never
be unless you really, in truth, lay everything down at the foot
of the cross.
Unless you take up that cross, as I
did, daily and follow Me, you cannot be My disciple. Not that I won’t
let you be My disciple should you fail to do this, but it will be impossible to
be Mine unless you do so.
I will help you bear it, for “My yoke
is easy and My burden is light.”
Do You Love Me?
I Am Sovereign.
“On this mountain the Lord of hosts
will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of
rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And He will swallow up on
this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is
spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord will
wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of His people He will take
away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, ‘Behold,
this is our God; we have waited for Him, that He might save us. This is the
Lord; we have waited for Him; let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation.’”
Isaiah 25:6-9
For thus says the Lord God, the Holy
One of Israel, ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and
trust is your strength.’”
Isaiah 30:15
Let us rest in His arms and sleep in
His boat, trusting ourselves daily to Him who judges righteously.
Do You Love Me?
Place no confidence in the flesh.
Apart from Jesus, we can do nothing.
“For everyone who has been born of
God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world - our
faith.”
1 John 5:4
Do You Love Me?
Why are you holding back My child?
Hold back no longer. Lay it down.
Have done with the tremendous burden of being your own god, with all that that
entails: 1) Defending yourself, 2) Elevating yourself, 3) Defining yourself
apart from your Creator.
“If we walk in the light, as He is in
the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son
cleanses us from all sin.”
I John 1:7
Do You Love Me?
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