Setting Priorities in the Spirit 1: Faith - Hope - Love
Posted: Thursday, November 12, 2009
by B RISTICH
Faith, Hope and Love (1 Cor. 13:13)
three greatest priorities in our relationship with Jesus and others
three greatest priorities in our relationship with Jesus and others
1st Cor. 13:13 Now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
A. Faith: The God kind of faith, in Jesus God's Son; the author and finisher of Faith; releases God's Glory, the Anointing of power and actions to manifest into the natural realm. It has substance. It grows, as we understand who we are in Christ and the authority that we have in Christ. Faith is our confident agreement with the Spirit and the Word. The gifts of the Spirit are released by faith (1 Cor. 13:2). It brings the breakthrough of God's spiritual gifts for our heart, body, ministry and the release of His favor and power to remove Satan's resistance.
B. Hope: The confident agreement with God's future plans. It is the certainty of ultimate victory. This is the message of eternity (establishing heaven on earth) and the End-Time drama (prepares for the New Millennium).
C. Love: is intimacy with God and being like God (e.g.: Sermon on the Mount). This is the message of enjoying God's heart and then expressing it others (e.g.: Song of Solomon), (Acts).
D. The Greatest: Faith is substance that releases the gifts of the Spirit. Hope is the purpose of them. This hope is the anchor that stabilizes us (keeps us focused and in peace without fear). Love is how the gifts function. Love is why they function. Love never fails in God's presence.
Love never fails (1 Cor. 13:8)
God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love, which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister. (Heb. 6:10)
II. Earnestly Desire the best gifts: we prophesy in part
A. We are exhorted to be hungry to operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
But earnestly desire the best gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way. (1 Cor. 12:31)
B. We prophesy in part or by expressing faint illuminations of the Holy Spirit.
We know in part and we prophesy in part. 12 Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. (1 Cor. 13:9, 12)
III. the 3-fold love of God
A. Love from God: how God feels about us (revelation of the heart of the Father and Bridegroom). This is the foundational revelation of God's invitation to us to walk in intimacy with Him. When God wants to empower us to love Him, He reveals Himself as a lover to us. We love Him because we understand that He first loved us. We enjoy or pursue Christ Jesus because we understand that He first enjoyed or pursued us. This is God's way to impart God's emotions to us.
We love Him because (we understand that) He first loved us. (1 Jn. 4:19)
B. Love for God: We love God as a response to His love for us.
The Holy Spirit has poured out the love of God in our hearts... (Rom. 5:5)
C. Love for others: The love of God in us overflows in love for others (believers and unbelievers)
I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them." (Jn. 17:26)
IV. The greatest is love: it defines success and happiness
A. Love is the greatest of these three because it continues and expresses God's eternal character.
Jesus said to him, "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' (Mt. 22:37-39)
B. He, who loves most, wins and succeeds most before God. At the Judgment Seat of Christ, the primary question that the Lord will ask us is, "Did you learn to love?"
V. The highest goal of our faith is to walk in love: success in God's sight
The purpose (goal, NIV) of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, 6 from which some, having strayed, have turned to idle talk, 7 desiring to be teachersunderstanding neither what they say nor the things they affirm. (1 Tim. 1:5-7)
A. Pure heart: This is the motive to enrich others without guaranteeing, through natural processes, that blessing will return to us. It is the open handedness that we see in King David's life.
B. Good conscience: Freedom from guilt. We walk in confidence with God because of what Jesus did for us.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. (Rom. 8:1)
C. Sincere faith: This is the faith that functions under the pressure of difficult circumstances and the attacks of the enemy. Faith causes prophecy to operate and moves mountains (1 Cor. 13:2).
Setting Priorities in the Spirit: Values Clarification
Published by:
B & H Ministries Media Communications a Division of NCR Publishing, New Millennium Ministries
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