In the book of Jude, verses 20 and 21 are fantastic and could well be read every morning and every night, when you are in trouble, whenever you are alone, or even when you are with someone.
But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith; praying in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. Jude 20–21. It is wonderful to keep yourself in the love of God. Just keep yourself there. People get themselves away from the love of God in so many ways. There should be ways of learning how to keep the love of God fresh in our hearts and eliminate those things that will cause it to wax cold.
What can cause our love to wane? Overexposure to the world will do it. We must find seasons for solitude and withdrawal somewhere from this world because iniquity will abound and the love of many will wax cold (Matthew 24:12). We will see all around us a new style of living. It is being brought forth by satanic forces trying to teach the world how to live. I do not know whether you can believe the statistics or not, but I read there are fourteen million “swingers” and mate-swappers in the United States. This is an indication of a trend where people become involved sexually, but without love. Sex, without any commitment or any responsibility, and without love, is Satan’s answer.
The truth is at the opposite extreme. If you have love, it can sustain you. Elizabeth Barret Browning and Robert Browning shared a beautiful love even though she was an invalid most of her life and not a glamour girl. Because they loved each other that did not make any difference. People can have love when everything else is going wrong. Love can dwell in some very shoddy circumstances.
We need to open our hearts and say, “Lord, I am going to keep myself in the love of God. Show me the things that would affect my love, and let nothing cause it to diminish the least bit in its fervor.”
Remember what Peter said: See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently. I Peter 1:22. “Fervently” is an adverb relating to heat. One way we could translate it is, “See that you love each other with red-hot love.” Something must be within you that causes you to open your hearts to each other—fervently!
The spirit of the age is this: “Do not express your feelings; bottle them up. Do not let on that you are vulnerable; build up a wall. Withdraw. Do not commit yourself. Do not get involved. Above all, do not play the good Samaritan act, because you do not know what will happen to you.”
This is an age in which crimes and murders can take place while witnesses stand by without even bothering to call the police, because they do not want to get involved. People drive away quickly if there is a terrible automobile accident which they actually witness, because they might have their day in court. The spirit of this age is not to get involved, not to put yourself out for anyone; to just live for yourself.
When people go into marriage, they go into it selfishly, only for what they can get out of it. In fact, marriage among the more selfish people is becoming something to be avoided because it would tie them down and commit them.
In our major cities there is a booming new industry—swingers’ apartments for singles only. They have a social program oriented only towards sexual involvement without any commitment. They sometimes build hundreds of units for young single people to rent. It is big business now. Attractive young single girls can even get a special rental rate. The spirit of the age is preying upon sex and lust, without any real love. People are learning to live without love.
The teaching of atheism in Communist Russia, beginning shortly after the revolution, was planned around breaking up the home and the natural forces of love, for if real love is taken away from an individual he can be controlled like a machine to do exactly as commanded. This is what the government in Russia wanted. Their system is to take away the children and put them in nurseries. The liberal, satanic propaganda that children should not be raised in their homes by their parents is still making the rounds. They say the best way is to raise children in nurseries, with nurses taking care of hundreds of them. That way they never know loyalty to a father and mother; therefore, when they reach a certain age and join their parents, they will very quickly betray their parents if they see them reading a Bible or praying. This is the history of Communism with its emphasis on getting children away from the home and from love.
God tells us the one thing in the book of Jude which is describing the end-time. Keep yourselves in the love of God. Stay right in there. God is bringing back real, total discipleship with complete love. Loving the brethren is the way that all will know we are His disciples (John 13:35). Satan’s disciples cannot imitate that. They can try to make substitutes for it, but nothing will take the place of true, genuine love. Everything Satan does is to undermine love, because real love is the key. It is not circumcision nor uncircumcision, but it is faith that works by love (Galatians 5:6). The only way to get the job done is by believers who are filled with God’s love. That alone will bring success in all the objectives God has set before us in our walk with Him.
We love. We open our hearts to that flow of love. We learn how to be a body with love flowing. The body makes increase of itself in love (Ephesians 4:16). We are to be the contradiction. The world grows darker, but the Body of Christ begins to glow with a greater glory. As the days go past, the contrast will be there. The love-starved people will seek us out, not because of our doctrines or our teachings, but because there is a flow of love. Many will come and be bonded together in the Body because they will feel the love in the services. They will sense it. Do not sell it short.
When an anointed word is filled with love, it is not like a shotgun blast that hits nothing. The moment you love, you are bringing the old cannon down and aiming it right at the objective. When love is there, a word from God reaches its goal. The person who speaks a word from God can relate to people when he loves them. If he does not have love, or does not understand how to give and receive love, he is not able to bless the people. He misses the goal of trying to reach them.
We are going to move in love. Open your heart to it because we must have it. If personal revelation comes over a person, we also want to have a flow of love to that person continually. We will not just give them the direction of what they are to do, but we will follow them wherever they go, all over the world. Our love will reach out, making a bond with them in the Spirit, and ministering to them the fullness of the Lord.
We also read in I John, The one who loves his brother abides in light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But the one who hates his brother abides in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. I John 2:10–11. The opposite of revelation is darkness. When you hate or have bitterness, revelation is cut off. That is why persecutors of our walk with God will be so opposite from us. Because we love, we will move in the light of revelation. Because they hate, they will move in darkness and not know where they are going. Everything will be dried up for them.
The one who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. “No cause for stumbling”—this is so important. People will find occasion to stumble at everything unless we love them. They will look for a stumbling block or try to find something to criticize, a reason to reject. When they come against you, and you do nothing except return love to them, they cannot find any real cause for stumbling no matter how hard they look for it. That is good to remember.
In the eyes of the world we are way out in left-field. When a church is moving in a pure New Testament pattern, people visiting for the first time experience something almost traumatic. They hear prophecy, revelation, worship—everything but a formally ordered religious service. They see spiritual intensity and discipleship coming up like a strange contradiction against the tide of the age and wonder what is going on. They may not be able to relate to it, thinking it is some religious sect. But when they see the love, it is their undoing.
Lord, give us that love.
“When people open their hearts to the love that is in the Body, then they are open to worship and an understanding of the other revelations of the Holy Spirit.”
“In the New Testament you can read how the Church moved in deep love, like Stephen and others when they were bringing the Word of the Lord, and in that love they magnified the Lord. Love is actually the source that brings, like snakes out of the bushes, the demon powers to be judged. The great power of God’s love smokes them out. It is the day of great judgment and the great release of the Lord. Love is the key to it. Love brings the vision of submission unto the Lord and unto the divine will of God in the earth. The other comes out to oppose it.”