Returning To Love

By Ron McGatlin

The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. If I am experiencing something else such as strife, frustration, or depression, there is something else at work. Jesus brings freedom; it is someone else that brings bondage. The love of God produces in us His righteous way of being and doing, His peace that passes natural understanding, and His joy full of glory that is not tied to natural circumstances.

God resists the proud but gives more grace to the humble. Often adversity and our failures are used of God to bring us into a place of pure love and humility. Real love and humility are always worth all we went through to get there. Pure love from God and for God brings us to a brokenness of humility and a love for everyone, including those who act as enemies toward us. Real love for those who persecute us or spitefully use us is a part of the kingdom of God lifestyle.

Mat 43-44: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.

It is easy to get so busy seeking to carry out the call of God that we lose contact with the intimate love life with God in our own lives. While seeking to help others out of religious bondages, we can be again entangled in bondage ourselves. Our intimate love relationship can be sacrificed in the complexity of trying to bring freedom to God’s people entangled under religious order of the passing church systems of hierarchical order of rule.

We must come back to the pure love of God expressed in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit. The real kingdom of God is love in action. It is established by love, operates by love, and is held together by love. Without the love of God there is no kingdom of Heaven on earth. Most of us reading this know these things. Yet, it is possible to connect into religious systems seeking to bring a new order of love and one day awaken to realize that we have begun to act and react in opposition to the existing systems and actually become part of the thing we sought to change.

This is somewhat like law enforcement officers dealing with underworld criminal activities so long that they drift into the same types of practices. They may begin to use illegal or at least immoral methods to accomplish the enforcing of the law. Crooked or abusive policemen are often a product of their environmental influence over a period of time.

Paul wrote in Galatians 6:1:  Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted.

Galatians 5:1: Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.

For me it is time to return to walking in the pure love of oneness with Christ and lay aside all else, to live in and demonstrate to others the pure love life of the kingdom of heaven on earth. Jesus did not first teach and preach the kingdom. He demonstrated it in love and power first and then taught the disciples who were ready to hear and understand. First demonstrate the kingdom, and then preach and teach the kingdom of God.

Keep on pursuing love. It never fails
and His kingdom never ends.
Ron McGatlin