loving god

from an article by kenneth copeland "let the world see jesus"


I was too scripturally illiterate to realize it at the time, but I had actually stepped out on a promise of the Word of God. By choosing to love the Lord and saying it on purpose by faith, I'd activated the spiritual principle Jesus revealed in John 14:21: "He who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him" (New King James Version). The moment I confessed my love for Jesus, I experienced the love of the Father and Jesus manifest Himself to me. That same thing will happen to you! So if you want to develop your love for the Lord, begin by telling Him over and over again, all day long, "Lord, I love You with all my heart. I love You with all my soul, with all my will, my mind and my strength." When you wake up in the morning say, "Oh Jesus, I love You so much today. I commit everything I am and everything I have to You. How can I serve You today, Lord? What can I do for You?" I dare you (or as we say in Texas, I double-dog dare you) to do that for the next 30 days and see what happens in your life. If you'll start every day like that, you'll get a revelation of the love of God beyond anything you've ever known before. You may not get all emotional like I did…or you may. But either way, the love of God will respond in you and the tide of it will rise higher and higher. If you continue to do that, eventually, when the devil tries to throw some fearful, wicked thought at you, you'll just laugh at him. You'll say, "Ha, ha, ha.Satan you can't scare me with that stuff. I know how much God loves me. He loves me just as much as He does Jesus. He takes good care of me. So you might as well get out of here and go peddle that fear somewhere else because I'm not going to buy it anymore!" When you start talking like that the devil flees the scene. Why? Because he knows perfected love casts out fear and fear is the only weapon he has. When fear is eliminated, it's over for him. He's finished. First the Father—Then the Children
Once you start loving the Lord and receiving His love that way, you are going to love others. It's inevitable! First John 5:1 leaves no doubt about that. It says plainly, "Every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him." In other words, every one who loves the Father also loves the children! We start off loving God because He first loved us. We practice our love on Him and we end up falling in love with everybody around us. As His love begins to flush the fear out of us, suddenly we can drop the barriers that have separated us from other people. We aren't afraid to love them anymore because we know they can't hurt us. We are safe in the love of God. As a result, we can abandon ourselves to each other. We can forget about our own protection and preservation and just lose ourselves in helping meet the needs of those around us. We can draw on the ministry of Jesus—not just to meet our own needs or to prove we're spiritual hotshots—but because we need His power to take care of others. We need it to help them and heal them and get them free! It doesn't make any difference how impossible a situation might be, when we have that attitude and that heart of love, the gifts of the Spirit are going to operate. Signs and wonders, healings and miracles are going to break forth. People all over the world—spiritually hungry people—will finally get what they need. They get to see Jesus. They'll see His love. They'll see His life. And they'll see His power. As we grow up in love, we will walk in the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ. We will reveal Him just as He revealed the Father.and the world will see Jesus again!