“I’d say for me it’s a special blessing and special joy to be here with you! I’m thankful to our Heavenly Father who made it possible.” With this words, the Chief Apostle began his service as well as expressing his gratitude for being able to experience fellowship in the divine service together with the children of God in Bali and all the congregations connected through streaming divine service in the regional church of Southeast Asia.
He based the service from the passage out of Philippians 1:9 “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment”.
Apostle Paul had a special relationship to the congregation of the Church of the Philippians. Actually he was the one who founded this congregation. And they also had a strong fellowship with the Apostle. They prayed a lot for him, and they supported him, they gave him even money for his trips. So there’s obviously a lot of love between them. And so it’s really surprising that he writes, especially to this congregation, asking God to increase their love. Because obviously the Philippians, they loved God and they loved the Apostle.
Godly love
Paul pray for their love to increase because he wanted them to understand that you can always love more and better. Our model is Jesus Christ who had a perfect love for God and for His neighbor. Our goal is to become like Jesus Christ.
God wants us to have another love, a godly love. What does it mean to love God? To love God means:
- We decided, The Lord is my God, I trust him and I do not need to ask another God to help me.
- Doing His will. We love Him as Jesus loved Him and being obedient
- We have strong desire to have eternal fellowship with Him
the Holy Spirit who helps us to understand how God loves us. For the sending of his Son, his sacrifice, for his grace, and his patience and his love. And this knowledge tells us what we have to do to love God.
We have the knowledge, now we need to have the discernment. That means you have to know what you have to do now.
- The Holy Spirit teaches us, don’t measure the love of God looking at the conditions you are living in.
- We have understood that God loves us because He gives us eternal life.
- The Holy Spirit helps us also to recognize, to discern the spirits and always be focused on our relationship with God.
- We are aware that we need grace because we are still imperfect
- The one who knows the love of God knows also how to behave. We don’t love God by interest because we want something back, but because we are grateful to Him.
- The one who loves God wants also to please Him. And contributes to the unity of the people of God
Love for our neighbor
The second chapter, love your neighbor. And the same prayer applies. We are talking here from Godly love. We love them as God love them, and love our neighbor as yourself.
The Holy Spirit doesn’t tell us about our neighbor. He tells us how God loves our neighbor. He tells us what God did and does and wants to do for our neighbor. And he tells us love your neighbor as I love him.
He tells us the needs of our neighbor. And he tells us, our neighbor needs to be saved. Maybe, his behavior is the wrong one. But only because he’s a prison of sin. He needs to be delivered. That’s the true need of your neighbor. And to be delivered he needs to know Jesus Christ and to follow him.
So the discernment consists in knowing, do not answer evil with evil. Do not answer curse with curse. Be a source of blessing an try to behave as Jesus would behave in this case to help them today or later on to discover and to understand the love of God, not just love with words, but love with deeds.
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