This week in our morning revival we are enjoying the matter of, Knowing the Significance of Loving the Lord, Loving the Lord Jesus Christ in Incorruptibility, and Walking in Love and Light. Amen, we need to love the Lord!
We need to realise that living Christ requires that we love Him to the uttermost, and for this we need to be pure in heart, not being mixed but single, having only the Lord in sight as our unique goal.
We may have heard that we need to take Christ as our person, but what does it mean? We may know that in order for the church to come into existence as the one new man in a practical way we all need to take Christ as our person, but what does this mean practically?
Well, there are two books in the Bible – Song of Songs in the Old Testament and the gospel of John in the New Testament – which show us what it is to take someone as our person and thus live that person by loving that person.
In the book of Song of Songs we see a picture of a person who loves another to the extent that she loses her self and she becomes one with her lover, even one person with him, sharing a name with him.
The secret of this experience is that the atmosphere, condition, and context in which this takes place is a divine romance, a loving relationship, where she experiences the cross being applied to everything of her person until her person is fully incorporated with the person of her lover, and her name is changed to become the Shullamite, the feminine form of Solomon.
This story shows us that love is the only way for us to take another person as our person and thus live that person. We need to love another person so much more than ourselves so that we take him as our person, and then we can live that person.
In the gospel of John chs. 5-8 we see how Jesus lived another person – He lived the Father, He took the Father as His person, and He loved the Father more than He loved Himself. Then, He charged us to do the same – to take Christ as our person by loving Him, and then we will live Him, see John chs. 14-17.
He told us that, as the living Father sent Him and He lived because of the Father, so we can eat Christ and live because of Christ. Just as the Lord in His God-man living loved the Father to the uttermost, to the extent that He always denied His own person and took the Father as His person, so we need to love the Lord to the extent that we are willing to deny our own person and take Him as our person.
In John 21 the Lord asked Peter three times, Do you love Me? You can’t say that Peter didn’t love the Lord but he loved Him in a natural way, not in incorruptibility, but in corruption, because he loved the Lord in a natural way.
We need to love the Lord with our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind, and our whole strength (see Mark 12:30; Deut. 6:5); the love the Lord requires from us cannot be partial but it has to be our entire being.
No other love will satisfy the Lord and no other love will result in taking Christ as our person but loving Him to the uttermost.
Knowing and Seeing the Significance of Loving the Lord in our Daily Experience
We need to know the significance of loving the Lord; this sounds so simple, for we all love the Lord, and so there doesn’t seem to be any need to expound on this.
However, many times our love for the Lord is a natural love, like that of Peter, and it is not the love that the Lord requires from us. We cannot apply our common definition of love to the love that we have for the Lord.
To love God means to set our entire being – our spirit, our soul, our body, with our heart, soul, mind, and strength – absolutely on Him. This means that we need to let our entire being be occupied by Him and lost in Him, so that He becomes everything to us and we are one with Him practically in our daily life (see 1 Cor. 2:9 and footnote in the Recovery Version Bible).
What is our heart occupied with? To be pure in heart and to love the Lord, our heart must be occupied with the Person whom we love. This is not a partial love but an absolute love, a total love, a “whole love”.
Today we want to see two main definitions of what it is to love the Lord and now we can enter into this experience.
To Love the Lord is to Allow Him to Live in us for Him to have a Dwelling Place as His Expression
To love the Lord is to allow Him to live in us and for us to realize that He desires a dwelling place so that He can be expressed on earth (see Eph. 3:16-17). What God desires is to gain a dwelling place, a vessel through which He can be expressed.
Therefore, God became a man, and as a man the Lord Jesus asked us to do two things: receive Him by believing into Him, and to love Him (see John 1:12; 14:21, 23; 21:15-17).
When we hear the gospel and believe into the Lord, we receive Him into us; then, we need to love Him so that we may enjoy Him.
To receive something and to love something are not the same thing; we may receive a book but we may not enjoy it by reading it. Every believer has received the Lord Jesus, but does every believer love the Lord and therefore enjoys Him?
We need to love the Lord with our whole being, and we need to allow Him to live in us and for us. Allowing is a matter of our will, our consent; we need to allow the Lord to live in us and for us as He makes His home in our heart.
The Lord wants us to be His dwelling place – He wants to live as the person in our heart, and He wants to replace the self as the person who lives in our heart.
We can allow Christ to make His home in our heart as we are rooted and grounded in love; when we love the Lord to the uttermost, we will allow Him to replace the self, the person currently living in our heart.
Christ makes His home in our heart, we become His dwelling place, and all this is in love; when we love the Lord, He lives in us and for us, and we become His dwelling place.
Therefore, we need to practice daily to tell the Lord that we love Him; when we wake up in the morning we need to tell Him, Lord Jesus, I love you! I love You more today than yesterday!
Then, as we do this and that during the day, even though we may not have anything to ask the Lord, we should often say, Lord Jesus, I love you! I still love You! I love You more than ever! You are so lovable!
Then, before we go to bed, at the end of the day, even as we lie in bed, we should tell Him, Lord Jesus, at the end of this day, I confess that I still love You! I love You more than anything!
The more we tell the Lord that we love Him, the more He will show us how lovely He is until we realize that He’s altogether lovely.
Lord Jesus, we love You. You are the most lovable One. We open our whole being to You, Lord, that we may love You not only with our emotion but with our enter being. Lord, we love You with our heart, our soul, our strength, our mind, and our whole being. Remind us to open to You and tell You how much we love You all throughout the day. Keep our heart loving You and burning brightly for You. Lord Jesus, thank You for coming into us and for being such a wonderful Person living in us. We love You, Lord!
To Love the Lord is to be Stopped from our Doing and Let Him take full Possession of our being
Although working for the Lord is quite necessary, there are times – and there should be many such times – when we need to stop all our doing and love the Lord! We need to forget about doing this or that for the Lord and just love Him, letting Him take full possession of our being.
To love the Lord is to be stopped from our doing and to let Him take full possession of our being. Our problem, however, is to we don’t love the Lord enough, or if we love Him, we try to do many things for Him.
This is the problem that Martha had; Mary knew how to stop and love the Lord, but Martha had difficulty stopping. No doubt, her service was because she loved the Lord, but she couldn’t stop working for Him to just love Him.
Similarly, in Rev. 2 we see that the church in Ephesus was excelling in works for God, but they lost their first love for the Lord. This is a warning to us.
We all work for the Lord in some way, serving in the church, and we may excel and do very well in our work, yet we may miss the most important thing: we may not love the Lord with our first love.
Therefore, we need to repent! We need to repent of being zealous to work for the Lord yet being lukewarm in our love for Him! The Lord doesn’t want us to do anything other than love Him and give Him the ground for Him to live in us, for us, and out of us.
We need to be stopped from our doing and let the Lord take full possession of our being. We need to tell the Lord,
Lord, it is no longer I who live but it is Christ who lives in me! Lord, live in me and live for me today! I repent for so many years that I didn’t give You the opportunity to live in me and for me. Lord, I stop my being, I give myself to You, and I let You have the ground in me to live in me and for me!
The best way to love the Lord and experience Him as our love is simply to pray and tell Him again and again, Lord Jesus, I love You! I open to You! Come and take full possession of me! The best way to express our love toward the Lord is to say,
Lord Jesus, I open to You. Take full possession of me. Lord, I love You. I present myself to You. I am open to You. Possess me more and more until You reach every part of my being and make Your home in me.
On the one hand we need to repent for not loving the Lord enough and for not letting Him live in us; on the other, in a positive way, we need to tell Him,
Lord Jesus, we open to You. Come and take full possession of our being. Lord, we love You! We present ourselves to You. We are open to You. Possess us, Lord, until You reach every part of our being and make Your home in us. We stop our being and our working, and we just want to love You more. Oh Lord Jesus, we have been crucified with You and it is no longer us who live – but You live in us! We love You, Lord, we take You as our person, we let You make Your home in our heart, and we want to let You live in us and for us!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message given by Mark Raabe for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1973-1974, vol. 2, pp. 445-453, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Taking Christ as our Person and Living Him in and for the Church Life (2018 spring ITERO), week 5, Knowing the Significance of Loving the Lord, Loving the Lord Jesus Christ in Incorruptibility, and Walking in Love and Light.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Jesus, precious Jesus, / How my heart longs for You. / I have been drawn by Your love, / Attracted by Your sweetness, too. / Lord, I love You. / You’re the only One I want. / Now I make my choice, Lord Jesus, / To just, just love You; / To just love You. (Song on, Jesus, precious Jesus)
# I give my life to You Lord, / For You alone are worthy. / There’s nothing and there’s no one / That I desire but You. / May all my days be Yours, Lord, / My heart be given to love You, / To treasure and to serve You / By Your sufficient grace. (Song on, Lord Jesus, You’re lovely)
# How I love Thee, precious Jesus, / That Thy love laid hold of me; / Thou hast drawn and wooed and kissed me / That a lover I may be! / Our Beloved, how we love Him, / So attractive, our delight. / We are captivated wholly / And are comely in His sight. (Hymns #1155)
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