For months now, Pastor Bryan Wright at Boomerang Church in the humble, little city of Albemarle, NC has labored to impart the absolute necessity of receiving God’s love first and foremost before ever stepping out in any effort to obey God. This emphasis is because it is only as the God who is love becomes our source that we are at all able to love Him back by keeping His commandments. And all of His injunctions are summed up in John 13:34-35, “ I give you a new commandment: that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you too should love one another. By this shall all [men] know that you are My disciples, if you love one another [if you keep on showing love among yourselves]. The Lord, the Vine, must be our source as obeying God is all by grace, God’s power and ability, and impossible by self-effort. We are lifeless corpses, fleshy souls, apart from Him. John 15:5 puts our state bluntly:  “I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever lives in Me and I in him bears much (abundant) fruit. However, apart from Me [cut off from vital union with Me] you can do nothing.“

But oh, what we, the very Body of Christ, can know, for the price of positioning ourselves to receive and letting Him pour His love into us. We are meant to experience the fire within of His unconditional love. We are meant to receive and receive and receive and only after that respond to Him. “We love Him, because He first loved us,” 1 John 4:19 explicitly says. And how we show we love Him is by obedience. John 14:15 is the acid test: ^“If you [really] love Me, you will keep (obey) My commands.” John 15:10 adds the word that to obey Him is to remain in His love: “If you keep My commandments [if you continue to obey My instructions], you will abide in My love and live on in it, just as I have obeyed My Father’s commandments and live on in His love.”

All these quotes have come from the Amplified Classic, but it’s The Passion Translation in Ephesians 3 that uses the term source in pointing us to the full riches we can receive. Ephesians 3:16 urges us to open ourselves up to God so that “the unlimited riches of His glory and favor” flood us. Faith is how we access the supernatural flow of the life of Christ. “Then by constantly using your faith, the life of Christ will be released deep inside you, and the resting place of His love will become the very source and root of your life,” verse 17 reveals. We must speak over ourselves: “I believe the God who is fiery love lives in me through the new birth, loves me unconditionally, has my best interests at heart, and fully loves through me as I yield to Him as my source.”

This said, we can increasingly know the love of God in all its dimensions. What the experience will be like for those who absolutely surrender to Christ as source, cooperating with Him by dying to the carnal self, is expressed in verses 19-20 of Ephesians 3: “How deeply intimate and far-reaching is His love! How enduring and inclusive it is! [How it takes us in in welcoming embrace.] Endless love beyond measurement that transcends our understanding—this extravagant love pours into you until you are filled to overflowing with the fullness of God.” It’s worth whatever interior work of deliverance is needed to stay open and receptive to these glorious riches.

Faith is our conduit. Faith is how we access these unseen realities.  “Never doubt God’s mighty power to work in you and accomplish all this. He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination. He will outdo them all, for His miraculous power constantly energizes you,” the passage concludes. All this is ours as a good gift if we will but receive from Him. The enemy knows the principle of reception from God and wars against a strong and open connection to the Vine. In Christ we can discern the work of evil spirits and defeat them.  

The Amplified Classic sums up beautifully what is ours if we’ll position ourselves in abandonment to the Lord: “[That you may really come] to know [practically, through experience for yourselves] the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge [without experience]; that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]! (Ephesians 3:19)

God just desires to give and give us of Himself. Let’s let Him have His way.

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Blessings in return—