In part 3 (click here to read part 3), we looked at God's love in contrast to our love. Here we look at walking in God's love within the context of the new covenant.

The key lies in the way things work in the new covenant

1. "Now Christ has been appointed to serve as a priest in a much better way, and he has given us much assurance of a better agreement. If the first agreement with God had been all right, there would not have been any need for another one. But the Lord found fault with it and said, "I tell you the time will come, when I will make a new agreement with the people of Israel and the people of Judah. It won't be like the agreement that I made with their ancestors, when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt. They broke their agreement with me, and I stopped caring about them! "But now I tell the people of Israel this is my new agreement: 'The time will come when I, the Lord, will write my laws on their minds and hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. Not one of them will have to teach another to know me, their Lord.' "All of them will know me, no matter who they are. I will treat them with kindness, even though they are wicked. I will forget their sins." When the Lord talks about a new agreement, he means that the first one is out of date. And anything that is old and useless will soon disappear." (Hebrews 8:6-13 CEV)

2. "With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death. God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us. Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them--living and breathing God!" (Romans 8:1-5 MSG)

The long and short of it is that we are no longer to try and conform to Gods standard of love by our own effort, but let God’s love express itself through us.

1. "..God has given us the Holy Spirit, who fills our hearts with his love."(Romans 5:5 CEV)

2. "Live full lives, full in the fullness of God. God can do anything, you know--far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us." (Ephesians 3:19-20 MSG)

We are not trying to conjure up His love; it is already in us waiting for us to give up trying and let Him Jesus love through us.

1. "I have died, but Christ lives in me. And I now live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave his life for me." (Galatians 2:20 CEV)

2. "if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ--that's where the action is. See things from his perspective. Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life--even though invisible to spectators--is with Christ in God. He is your life." (Colossians 3:1-3 MSG)

Feeling low, not done so well

Thought I finally had it "sussed"

Upward ever, I expected it to go

What happened to all that good work?

Back down to earth with a bump

I wonder what He thinks of me now?

How can I receive His blessings?

Turning in a performance like this?

Your fall from dizzy heights

A blessing in disguise

A gift of a lesson

To show to you

The limitations of self

With it's many ups and down

Don't keep hitting up against the wall

You in yourself, will never be good enough

Give up self for dead

Give in to the Christ life

Rest in Him

Living His life through you

A life tried and tested

Full of love

Ever triumphant

Tempted without sin

Accepted in the beloved

Righteous as ever can be

Blessed with every blessing

Life evermore

In the next installment we will look at how to manifest His love.

Every Blessing

(To be continued...)

Breadoflife

click here to read part 5

To view others instalments in the series, click here