Your Love Is Too Pure

Today’s teaching is inspired by a song I received way back on November 12, 1987. That song is called Your Love Is Too Pure.

One of the foundational truths I build and live my life upon is my absolute belief that God loves me massively…and that He likes me…and that He likes being with me. In fact, I don’t get to decide whether our not God loves me. The simple truth of the matter is that God IS love. That is His nature. My free will gives me the choice as to whether or not I believe that or not. My encouragement to you is to choose to believe God loves you.

When God set me free by the healing power of His love, I began leading others in times of corporate worship. Most people could not get enough of these intimate times of connecting to Father God with every ounce of our entire being, but there were a few who got caught off guard by the outward and boisterous and emotional expression of that worship - that expression of our love for God.

On more than one occasion I had someone tell me, “You can’t make me love God,” which took me by surprise. What they were really saying was, “I don’t have to outwardly, emotionally express my love for God. He knows I love Him.” My response was simple. “Is love that is not expressed really love at all?” As they stood there in stunned silence I simply said, “For God so loved the world that He GAVE,” meaning God expressed His love for us with the entirety of His being.

Once they had regained their composure, they said, “I don’t have to express my love for God the way you do…and besides, you can’t make me love God! What if I was a quadriplegic and could not bodily express my love for God?”

My response? “I am not trying to make you love God and I am not saying my expressions of worship are the only expressions of worship…and I am certainly not trying to MAKE you love God. That’s up to you. Concerning your remark about ‘what if I was a quadriplegic?’…that’s not even anything I have to deal with, but I can tell you this. If I was unable to physically move - unable to physically express my love for God - I would find a way. Because of the way God expresses His love for me, I would breathe out as loudly as possible in praise to my God…I would blink my eyes as a means of physically expressing my love for Him.”

I then asked another question. “When your favorite football team scores a touchdown on a despised rival team, how do you respond?” They said, “I pump my fists in the air and I jump up and down for joy!” I replied, “You have no problem expressing your love outwardly for a team and a score that means nothing in the grand scheme of eternity, yet you balk at doing the same for the One Who gave His only Son to save you and set you free from your sin. God does not demand that you love Him. He loves you whether or not you express your love back to Him or not.” They got the point.

My personal belief is that Father God would never force me to love Him. This of course only makes me want to love Him more because of the sense of freedom this truth brings. What’s more, I realize that my human reasoning only gets in the way of loving Him and that if I am a new creation then my truest and deepest desire is to love Him in an uncontrollable manner – the way He loves me – totally consumed in His love for me!

For this reason I bend my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner self, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; [and] that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him [be] the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:14-21 NASB

When we boast in the greatness of our God and His love for us we actually encourage our own soul. Take time to boast in our God - especially when being bombarded by the lies of the enemy - and then let’s let go of the heavy burdensome weight of wondering whether or not God loves us. We don’t get to decide whether or not He loves us. That’s been settled. He loves us no matter what. Our choice is simple. We either believe it or we don’t. Believe it and receive it as often as needed. God is love and He loves you with His own life.

Dennis Jernigan

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, we also are in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. 1 John 4:15-19 NASB

To hear more on this subject and to hear a song inspired by the truth that God does not force us to love Him, listen to The Dennis Jernigan Podcast at http://podcast.dennisjernigan.com/e/your-love-is-too-pure-1655821799/

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