Living Word Windhoek

THE POWER OF GOD'S LOVE (part 1)
The power of the gospel message is about God's love.

God's love is an inner and hidden power that changes lives. A power that moves a person from a state of sin, fear, rejection, and hurt to a place of peace, joy, and hope. Often we are so focussed on trying to see God's power works of signs, wonders, and miracles but we neglect that the real most powerful force in the spiritual realm, is love...

God's eternal love is more powerful than anything else and supersedes every other form of power, without physical force!

It is THE FOUNDATION we need to build our lives upon, God's love for us. We need to not only have head knowledge about His love but we need to experience it for ourselves.

1. GOD IS LOVE
Love is not something God does, it's who He is.
Jesus came to show us the Father, His character, who He is.

Our relation to God the Father often stems from our experience and relationship with our earthly father.

If my earthly father abandoned me, I may feel that God abandoned me and He is far. If my earthly father abused me or was very strict, I may have a view of God the Father as an angry God who just punishes.

2. GOD PURSUES US WITH LOVE
God's heart for humanity is full restoration and reconciliation of the perfect fellowship and relationship between God and man that was broken through sin (Adam & Eve).
So He made a plan of love through Jesus Christ.

Different types of love:
a) Storge love: affection or familial love, family, parental love.
b) Eros love: romantic, love we have in relationships/marriage.
c) Philia love: friendship love, occurs from bonding over similar interests, caring for each other.
d) AGAPE LOVE: Greek word for love, 1 John 4:8, Romans 5:5, a love that comes from God, undeserved, gracious, sacrificial. A choice, deliberate striving for another's interest, demonstrated through action. A supernatural love.

This type of agape love is also a fruit of the Spirit, that God Himself produces in us as we receive from Him.

God has been pursuing us with His love since before the foundations of the world, when we still rejected Him, ignored Him, living for ourselves, He was pursuing us in love...

His plan was always for you and I to be restored to Him as His children.

3. GOD'S LOVE HAS THE POWER TO:

a) HEAL US
Jesus dedicated much of His ministry to healing people emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
Every human's most basic need is to be loved and accepted.
When we never experience that type of love, we can grow up with tremendous wounds in our souls and it often becomes the root of most of our problems and behaviours in life.

b) FREE US
2 Timothy 1:7 says God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, LOVE and a sound mind.
We can allow the enemy legal entrance into our thoughts and life through sin, causing us to be empty of God's love and looking for love in the wrong places.
We can become bound by so many things including a spirit of rejection, spirit of fear, spirit of abandonment and more but God's love is powerful to break the hold of any bondage over our lives.
The root of many people's biggest addictions and problems, come from a lack of love by the Father who created them.

c) TRANSFORMS US
God's love transforms our hearts from the inside out, melts the hardest of hearts.
Once we experience the love of the Father, it changes how we view God, ourselves, others and our purpose.
Looking-glass theory: we become what the most important person in our life thinks of us (parent, spouse, teacher etc).
We were created for love...

Have you received and experienced the unconditional, undeserved love of the Father for you?

If we don't have a revelation of the Father's love for us, we will often:

- Live lives of religious duty and rules;
- Never understand our identity as a child of God and hence our authority;
- Feel a constant need to perform, to earn God's love and favor and that of people;
- Struggle with fear, insecurities, addictions, soul wounds, emotional and spiritual bondage;
- Never reach our full potential of why were created and our purpose on earth.

Banking details:

Living Word Namibia
Account name: Living Word Namibia Trust
Bank: First National Bank Namibia
Branch code: 280172
Account number: 62268973916

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