2. REFOCUS ON OUR LOVE
2 Thessalonians 3:5a May the Lord lead your hearts into a full understanding and expression of the love of God

3. MATTHEW 22
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, they met together to question him again. 35 One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”

4. MATTHEW 22
37 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment.

5. THE FIRST AND GREATEST COMMANDMENT

6. THE FIRST AND GREATEST COMMANDMENT
God’s ultimate eternal purpose for creation is to provide a family for Himself that includes faithful children for Himself and an equally yoked Bride for Jesus as His eternal companion. God promised to give Jesus an inheritance consisting of a people whom He fully possesses in love.

7. MATTHEW 22
39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

8. REFOCUS ON LOVE
Revelation 2:4 (NKJV) “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love”
Revelation 2:4 (NLT)
“But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first”

9. REFOCUS ON LOVE
1 John 4:16 (NLT) We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.

10. GROWING IN LOVE: FOUR STAGES OF LOVE

11. Stage 1: Receiving increased revelation of the love that God has for us (Eph. 3:18-19).
1 John 4:19 We love Him because He first loved us. The foundational truth that equips us to love God is to know and feel His affection for us. God loves us in the way that God loves God. Jesus (Bridegroom God) feels
the same intensity of love for us that the Father feels for Him. This is the ultimate revelation of our worth.

12. Stage 1: Receiving increased revelation of the love that God has for us (Eph. 3:18-19).
This truth gives us the right to stand before God with confidence as one of His favorites. John 15:9 As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.

13. Stage 2: Receiving the Father’s love for Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.
John 17:26 I declared Your name... that the love with which You loved Me may be in them *It takes God to love God. The anointing (supernatural ability) to receive God’s love and then to return it back
to Him is the greatest gift that the Spirit imparts to our heart.

14. Stage 2: Receiving the Father’s love for Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 5:5 The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit

15. REFOCUS ON LOVE
“We were created with a longing to be wholehearted and abandoned, and thus to know the joy of love. There is nothing more satisfying than having the power to give the deepest affection of our heart to God and to be loyal in love. We soar in the joy of holy love. We long to possess the power to be abandoned instead of being
stuck in boredom, passivity, disloyalty, and compromise which leave us broken and discontented.” ~Mike Bickle

16. Stage 3: Loving ourselves in the grace of God
Matthew 22:39 The second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
To love who we are in the grace of God is to be in agreement with God, which is very different from loving ourselves in a fleshly and selfish way.

17. Loving ourselves in the grace of God
By loving ourselves, I refer to knowing what we “look like” to God, or knowing who we are in Christ as His inheritance (Eph. 1:18; 2 Cor. 5:17), along with valuing and even rejoicing in who God made us to be physically and in our personality and gifting.

18. Loving ourselves in the grace of God
Psalm 139:13-17
13 You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. 15 My frame was not
hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts...

19. Loving ourselves in the grace of God
Psalm 139:13-17
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed How precious are Your thoughts to me

20. Loving ourselves in the grace of God
We must not secretly wish we were someone else, as if God made a mistake with us. This is to charge God with error. As we get our eyes off of others (envy) and off our failures (despising ourselves) and put them on His grace, then we will love who God made us.

21. Stage 4: Loving others is the visible measurement of our invisible love for God.
This has become the most important focus of Western Christianity… but only by being energized by receiving God’s love for us, by loving God back with that love, and by loving ourselves are we able to consistently overflow in love for other.

22. Loving others is the visible measurement of our invisible love for God.
John 13:34-35
34 That you love one another By this all will know that you are My disciples
1 John 3:18-19
18 Let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. 19 And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him.

23. Loving others is the visible measurement of our invisible love for God.
People who love Jesus will love others much more. It is impossible to love Jesus and not love people more. The greatest anointing of the Spirit is to walk in the two great commandments by loving Jesus with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves.

24. GROWING IN LOVE: FOUR STAGES OF LOVE
receiving love from God
giving it back to God
which overflows to ourselves and
then to others

25. MATTHEW 22
37 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

26. REFOCUS ON OUR LOVE