14 Oct Growing In Our Passion For Jesus

I don’t know about you, but just like 2 Cor. 3:18 says, I want to move from glory to glory. I want more of Jesus today than I had yesterday! And I don’t mean more power or more anointing or more of the gifts operating in my life…no I mean I am hungry to know Jesus and fall in love with Him and lean in closer to His heart, more than I ever have.

One of the scariest verses in the Bible is found in Matthew 7:21-23, “““Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”

These people used the name of Jesus but never had His heart. And you can’t ever do ministry without the heart of Jesus. Knowing Jesus intimately is the foundation of ALL ministry. He is everything that we need. EVERYTHING. And by drawing closer to His heart and away from this world, our whole lives will be turned upside down in the presence and glory of the Lord.

Beloved, do you know what it’s time for? To grow and go deeper in our relationship with Jesus. “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” 1 Corinthians 13:11 NIV

Matthew 22:35-38 says, ““One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.”

It has always been this way, but like never before, the Holy Spirit’s first agenda is to restore the first commandment to first place in the Church. Father wants us to love Him with all of our heart and mind, because He loves us with all of His heart and mind. Jesus wants us to love Him the way that He loves us. Father will supernaturally empower us to love Him. It “takes God to love God.” The anointing to receive God’s love and to love Him in return is the greatest gift the Spirit imparts to us.

The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. (Rom. 5:5) Jesus wants us to love Him in a way that gives Him full leadership over our lives. A core issue in the end times is how we define love. We must define it on God’s terms, not by our culture that seeks love without obedience to God’s Word. There are many definitions and interpretations of love in Christianity today. But again as in Matthew 22, it has not changed, we are to love Him with every ounce of who we are.

There is no such thing as loving God without seeking to obey Him. If you love Me, keep My commandments…21 He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me…23 If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. (Jn. 14:15-23) Again, Father’s first priority and the Spirit’s first emphasis is that we would cultivate love for Jesus every single day…drawing closer to His heart…hearing His voice…falling deeper and deeper in love with Him…while at the same time loosening are grip from ALL those things that are holding us back.

You see, Jesus did not call it the first option, but the first command. Jesus makes it clear that cultivating love for Him is the first emphasis of the Holy Spirit. God has everything, yet He is searching for something that He still wants first. What does God search for? What does He want most and first? It is love that He is after. He is after our heart. The mystery of our life is found in this truth! Cultivating love for God has the greatest impact on God’s heart and our heart. Anyone who loves Jesus will love others much more. It is the greatest calling.

Some who seek to know God’s will for their life focus on knowing what they are supposed to do instead of what they are supposed to become. When they speak of wanting the greatest calling, they refer to the size of their ministry instead of the size of their heart.

Here are the four main areas of how we love Jesus.

Number 1: Love with all our heart: We are to engage our emotions in our love for God. God wants more than service. And more than lip service. Love comes from the heart, not our lips. We can “set” our love or affections on anything that we choose. Our emotions eventually follow whatever we set ourselves to pursue. The Bible says that where your treasure is (those things that you value) there will your heart (your time, affection, where you put your money, etc) be also.

Our emotions are a very important and powerful part of our life. Therefore, God wants to be loved from this part of our life. The heart must be kept focused and clean and pure if we are to grow in our passion for Jesus. We keep our heart by refusing to allow our emotions to be inappropriately connected to money, positions of honor, wrong relationships, sinful addictions, bitterness, offenses, etc.

Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. (Prov. 4:23) Christianity is an ONGOING encounter of love with a Person. Our hearts were designed in such a way to long for love and this love is experienced to its depth and height and width and breadth when it is experienced in the love of Jesus. And we can do that every single day. Our love comes from our hearts not from our heads…it flows from my heart to His heart and then back to my heart and that’s how I encounter His love…it’s amazing.

Number 2: Love with all our mind: We fill our mind with that which inspires love for God instead of that which diminishes it. What we do with our mind greatly affects our capacity to love. If we fill our mind with the right things, our capacity to love Jesus increases; if we fill our mind with wrong things, our capacity to love Jesus diminishes. Our mind is the doorway to our inner man and greatly affects our capacity to love. Much of our life occurs in our mind. Our mind is a vast universe within us that will never, ever be turned off. We cannot shut down the images in our mind, but we can redirect them. We can replace any dark thoughts with new ones.

We love Him with all of our mind by reading and meditating on, or praying over, God’s Word on a regular basis and thinking on whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Philippians 4:8 NIV Our mind has such glorious potential and vast power, yet many believers are so casual about what they do with their minds. What do you fill your mind with? How much space does Jesus occupy there?

We grow in our passion for Jesus in our mind by taking the time to fill our mind with the Word, so that we come into agreement with the truth about Him.

Number 3: Love with all our strength: We are to love God with our natural resources (time, money, energy, talents, words, and influence). God cares about the love we show Him when we invest our strength into our relationship with Him and in helping others to love Him.

We express our love for Jesus by sharing Him with others that we meet each day, by doing selfless deeds for others…it’s not being so preoccupied with self and me, me ,me. Jesus lived selflessly as our example.

Number 4: Love with all our soul: That sacred, hidden, sensitive place within each of us…the core of who we are must be healed and yielded to Jesus if we are to grow in our passion for Him. Many are held back by the wounded and offended soul because of the past and this too must be surrendered to Him and replaced by His love if we are going to encounter the DEPTHS of His love.

Again it’s a command to love Him with our soul…we have to take care of business with that deep place within us. Because for many, many Believers, this is holding them back from growing in passion for Jesus.

How do I know if there are areas that have not been yielded or healed in my soul? Ask Jesus. Many times it is found in the emotional responses to the things we go through in life. If unforgiveness is there, if anger is there, if offense is there, or bitterness, shame, regret, low self-worth, rejection, trauma, abuse, and the like it will eventually come out in one way or the other.

You are loved!