Loving God Loving Each Other

The cry for revival must begin with a deep appreciation and understanding of God's unlimited love for us. Do we truly grasp the depth of God's love? How deep is a love that manifests itself in the sacrificial giving of one's son for sinful humanity? Until we realize that God does not love us because we are good or because we are worthy, or because we please Him; but because He is God and He chooses to love us in spite of oursleves; we will never be able to take the initial steps to experience revival. We are depraved. We are sin-sick. We are hopeless failures outside of the grace of God. There is nothing in any of us that screams out to God that we are worthy of His love. Like the lepers of the New Testament, we should be crying out UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN! when Jesus looks our way, such is our depravity apart from Christ.


Yet, to a people so hopelessly lost in their sin, Jesus give 2 Foundational Commandments: "...You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets" (Matt. 22:36-40). Because you and I have experienced the great love of our Awesome God we know what an ubounded love feels like. We know what its like to fail miserably and still have God love us. We have experienced the mercy of God and the grace of God and its because of this that we seek Him passionately today. We seek Him with our whole hearts because no one or nothing else is worth the pursuit. In order to experience the outpouring of revival in our lives we must make God our one magnificent obsession. He must be first place in our hearts and lives. As long as He is being crowded out by others, we will not experience revival.

Not only must we seek God with our whole heart and love Him surpemely, but we must also love our neighbor as ourself. This means that before revival can come to us personally, we must be reconciled to one another. God calls us to love one another. We must put to death our pride and unforgiveness. We must crucify the bitterness and apathy that rests in our heart. We cannot seek God supremely until we first seek to love one another. When God gave the Ten Commandments He gave us four that dealt with our relationship with Him and 6 that dealt with our relationship with our fellowman. My friends your relationships with one another are of vital importance to God. In fact John tells us in his epistles that if we say that we love God and yet hate our brother the truth is not in us! (1 John 4:20). If we truly want to pursue revival then we must heed our Lord's command and focus on Loving God and Loving Each Other.