Pray to Love, So You Can Be Free to Love

This message is hot off the press! The FORREAL radio broadcast "Pray to Love" that airs this Saturday morning on Heaven 98.3 contains the remedy, the antidote, the vaccine needed to combat the current condition that is destroying not only the world and this country, but our families, homes, churches, and our hearts. And that solution would be LOVE.

Chief Apostle HC Gunn started the broadcast off reminding us of the once-popular song that said: "What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It's the only thing that there's just too little of." Sadly this song, which is from 1965, is not only true for the present World but it's true for the Church, it's true for the Body of Christ, it's true for marriages, it's true for sisters and brothers, parents and children. Whereever we turn, we will find that we are deficient in love. Our love has gone cold and is distant. But love is the super vitamin we need for true healing and change to take place. We can't be saved or serve God without love. We can't have consistent faith with out love. We can't love others without loving God first, and we can't know how to love people without learning to love God first.

While people are caught up in proclaiming their rights to free speech, religion, assembly, petitioning the government, and equality, we are forgetting about the most important freedom -- the freedom to love.

How free are you? What areas can you truly say that you are all the way free in when it comes to your soul, your spirit, your conscience, your heart-mind? Earthly freedoms don't matter, if we are living in spiritual bondage. Oftentimes we are bound in invisible chains by our lack of love. It shackles us. Bitterness, unforgiveness, ungratefulness, unfaithfulness, unloveliness, and the lack of care, sincerity, and giving are really what's stripping us away from the true freedom God has prepared for us.

Think about how much joy you feel when you know you are loving your children, your spouse, your siblings, the saints, your pastor, and even your enemies at the highest, most unselfish level -- loving others the way God loves you. That joy is only found in the freedom to love.

But here's the truth that we all need to know and accept from this very moment until eternity --- Love is not an option. It's a commandment from God! To belong to God, we must love him and love others. There are no alternatives. You can go to church every Sunday or give food to the poor every Saturday, you can go to every one of your child's sports games and plays or visit the sick and shut-in every chance you get, but if you lack love in your heart - unconditional and consistent love - for the Lord, for your neighbor, and for your enemy and for those who are unlovely toward you at times, then it means nothing.

The word tell us that it is by our love that people will know we are disciples and followers of God. The world is going out of its way to spread false, surface love through gifts and overspending on christmas, but we fail to show warmth, care, love and compassion every day of the week throughout the year. So how free are we?

It appears we are bound by the appearance or mask of showing love through mere words and material things instead of being set free by our covenant with God to put unyielding, selfless, obedient and sacrificial love into action. Where would we be if Jesus never put his love and obedience into action on that cross? It was through this example that God showed us that it's one thing to say you love someone, but it's another to act with love no matter what you may face or feel.

John 13:34-35: A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one to another.
1 Corinthians 13:2: And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

So how do we get the love that God is talking about in these verses? WE PRAY! The only way to obtain the love that God desires from us is to receive it directly from him by cleaning and pouring our hearts out before him and fervently asking him to fill us with his kind of LOVE. As we do so with sincerity, he will pour his love and his spirit into us. We must pursue LOVE. We must study it in his Word. We must be committed to keeping his commandment.

One reason we have not allowed God to pour his love into our hearts is that we are too busy pointing the finger at others. We spend time blaming our spouses, the saints, our pasts, our bosses, our parents, our children, our finances, and bloodlines for so many things, but don't spend time searching with God to see where we are the blame. Accept the blame. Accept where you've been wrong so you can forgive, so you can repent and so you can have room to love.

We are leaky vessels, we often get carried away by our thoughts and decisions and the ways of this world on a daily basis, so in order to maintain love we must continue to pray with everything in us so that we can love God with all our hearts, minds and souls and in turn love others as he has instructed us to do.

We must pray to love like God and make a decision to no longer do lip service -- walking around proclaiming our love and praise for God, but standing ready to stab one another in the back or heart because we don't like what someone says or does or don't want to be held accountable. We must ask God to teach us how to love, for the help and grace to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. In the early days of the church, the saints had all things in common. They exemplified loving one another as themselves. God wants us to get back to the ways of the early church, and it's possible, if we fervently ask for it and make room for it in our hearts.

Ok, I'm going to stop here because I implore you to listen to the broadcast and get the full message and receive it in your hearts. It’s available NOW below on our Listen In page.

I will leave you with some scriptures about love:

1 Peter 1:22: Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.
1 Corinthians 13:13: So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Colossians 3:14: And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
1 Peter 4:8: Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.
John 15:13: Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
Romans 8:39: Neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.