Positioned to Love

“When the Spirit fell, the world was transformed…

The church as God intended it is marked with love and care for God and man… Love means caring for one another… even when it’s hard… and caring well for one another means having hearts that are ready to care… Positioned to love one another…

To be truly spiritual doesn’t simply mean to be emotional… emotions are good, but to truly be spiritual we need to be about the mission of Christ…

The Lord is calling people to reach out to His fallen children… to those who have transgressed… to restore the broken, tattered lives of those whom Jesus died for…

Those who walk in the Spirit put others ahead of themselves…

On the cross, Jesus bore “another’s burden…” He bore our sins, He cried our tears, He carried our weaknesses, and He bleed for our diseases…

We imitate Christ as we bear the burdens of others…

It’s easy to say I want to reach out, I want others to know about Him… it’s another thing altogether to place ourselves in a position to minister…

And the Lord has given three ways for us to position our hearts to express the Law of Christ, to be positioned to love well…

1 – We need to have a history of crucifying (5:24) “the flesh and its passions and desires…”

• If we want to help drowning people, it’s best if we ourselves are not drowning…

• The idea is this… that after waging a lifelong war with our sinful desires… and although we’ve lost many of those battles we have refused to quit fighting… and we’ve come to a point in our daily lives that our lives are lived for God… and though the enemy may catch us at times, we are not habitually bound as we were in our earlier walk with Christ…

• To be able to help others in spiritual battles we must first undergo the process of brokenness, humility, and giving ourselves over to the lordship of Christ within our own lives…

2 – We need to be led by the Holy Spirit…

• We cannot win spiritual battles through natural means, if we are not led by the Spirit, we are reduced to simply disseminating facts…

3 – We need to have the (5:22-23)“Fruit of the Spirit” active within our lives…

• Without “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” we are toast in trying to minister to the needs of others…

• Because in ministry to others our character is tested, and when anything but the character of God is expressed it becomes a hurdle…

If someone thinks they are spiritual, but believes they are above restoring the fallen and broken, spiritually proud, then they are missing it, and are not truly spiritual…

If you are a believer here today the Spirit of God dwells within you! And you were left on this planet for a reason…

• God’s desire is, at that time when our works are being exposed by fire, that we would have gold on the other side…

• Today I believe the Spirit is calling you to restore somebody… to bear the burdens of a brother… to express the fruit of the Spirit in a world consumed by the flesh… to reach to your “Jerusalem and… Judea and Samaria, and the end of the earth…”

Today we looked back and remember that first Pentecost… The purpose of Pentecost is equip us to express the love of God to a world that is fallen, and skeptical, and in need of the transforming work of Jesus Christ…”

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