Topic: Equipped to Love

Breakfast volunteers: Ron & Audrey Vanderveen

Video presentation (Norm Wakefield, Spirit of Elijah Ministries)

Here is the outline for the video, as downloaded from Elijah Ministries.

Equipped to Love

1. What difference do you think it would have made in your marriage and family if you had been equipped to love before you took on the responsibilities of a wife and children?
2. Love is arguably the most important quality needed by any human being.
   • We may overlook the importance of this quality in a person's life, and put the emphasis on education and knowledge, service, skill, or experience.
   • The gifts of communication, knowledge, miracles, and sacrificial service are nothing without love (I Cor 13:1-3).
3. Not only has love been an overlooked quality, it is one of the most abused and perhaps overused words in our vocabulary.
   • We may apply the word love to almost anything:
   • Satan is an expert counterfeiter who floods the market with cheap imitations.
4. Three suggestions regarding love:
   • Learn to distinguish between God's love and the world's love.
   • Learn the love principle.
     • The love principle is: Love can only take place where a relationship is free from idolatry and a person recognizes God as the source of everything.
     • Love comes from God, and one can only be equipped to love by looking to God as the source of all things.
   • Learn to recognize the spirit of idolatry and its antithesis to Jesus Christ. "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me" (Deut. 5:6-7).
     • The spirit of idolatry does not believe all things come from one God, but that there is more than one source of supply.
       • There is no other god (Isaiah 45:5).
       • The spirit of idolatry does not believe that God is the only source of supply (Isaiah 45:7,9; Job 2:10; Amos 3:6; I Cor. 5:5).
       • The spirit of idolatry affects our view of God and scales Him down to something we can comprehend.
       • But if there are no other gods (and there aren't), then what we have is what God has seen that we need -- not so that you and I can be happy and comfortable, but so Jesus Christ may be glorified!
       • Jesus' love for His Father was based on such a faith. If we are to love, we must recognize and repent of not worshipping God as the only God and Father from whom are all things.
     • The spirit of idolatry manipulates or controls people and situations. "You shall not make for yourself an idol…" (Deut. 5:8a).
       • Someone under the influence of the spirit of idolatry seeks to fashion the person or situation to supply self-centered desires and expectations.
       • The spirit of idolatry has an assortment of carving tools.
         1. Positive tools: smile and look cute, compliments, service, gifts
         2. Negative tools: anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive speech, lying (Col. 3:5-9). We use these when our idols don't supply what we want when we want it.
     • One area the spirit of idolatry most affects is our love relationship to God. The spirit of idolatry takes the good things of God and carves with them, turning them into positive carving tools.
     • The Bible teaches us that we are all born sinners with hearts which pervert the truth of God until God's Spirit converts our hearts.
     • What does an idolater conclude when he hears, "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?" God has the same vision in life as I do -- making me comfortable and happy.
     • When the preacher asks him to pray a prayer of invitation to Christ to enter his life so that he can begin to experience this wonderful plan, what is occurring if the Holy Spirit isn't at work? Carving on God.
     • How does he now try to live the Christian life? Why does he read his Bible, pray, serve, reform bad habits? Same as he did before -- he expects God to reward his efforts and to work for him.
     • What happens when life doesn't become happy and comfortable (which it doesn't -- Christian or not)?
     • Jesus never carved on anyone because He trusted His Father. Every relationship was an opportunity to love and every situation an opportunity to trust.
5. The spirit of idolatry makes an idol for self. "You shall not make for yourself an idol…" (Deut. 5:8a).
6. The spirit of idolatry looks to the creature rather than the Creator to supply happiness which only God can supply. "You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth" (Deut. 5:8).
7. The spirit of idolatry worships and serves many idols. "You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me," (Deut. 5:9).
   • When you worship something or someone as an idol, you serve it or them.
   • For instance, when a husband serves or worships his wife, he does it because he wants something from her.
   • In serving or worshipping her, you actually give her the power to make you miserable--you give her the power to aggravate hatred and bitterness.
   • This spirit also worships and serves many idols. Ourselves, parents, peers, friends, girlfriends, wife, children, job, a god of our own making, etc.
   • Jesus when tempted to look to Satan to supply his inheritance responded, "You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only."
8. The spirit of idolatry reproduces itself. "…visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations…" (Deut. 5:9).
   • The iniquity of idolatry is that iniquity which has passed down through every seed and offspring of Adam.
   • The spirit of idolatry also reproduces itself by example.
   • Jesus was not of the seed of Adam. He was of the seed of God.
9. The spirit of idolatry produces the fruit of a hate/love relationship. "You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate me," (Deut. 5:9).
   • When you look for someone to be more than what God has made them to be at any given time, you cannot love them -- you'll hate them.

Application

• Questions
  1. Do you recognize the world's kind of love in your life?
  2. Do you have idolatry in your relationships?
  3. Do you recognize any of the seven characteristics of the spirit of idolatry in your relationship with God or others? If so, the truth is plain: You are an idolater and you are suffering the curse of the iniquity --you cannot love God and others.
  4. Have you realized the seriousness of the sin of idolatry?
     • Psalm 44:20-21 "If we had forgotten the name of our God, or extended our hands to a strange god, would not God find this out? For He knows the secrets of the heart."
     • Rev. 21:8 "But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."
     • I Cor. 6:9-11,14 "Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God......Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry."
     • I Thess. 1:9 "For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God..."
• If God has revealed the destruction of the spirit and sin of idolatry, then may I encourage you with how you may be equipped to love.
  • Love comes from God.
  • If you are to be equipped to love, look to God as the source of all things through Jesus Christ.
  • "Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are My servant; I have formed you, you are My servant, O Israel, you will not be forgotten by Me. I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud, and your sins like a heavy mist. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you" (Is. 44:21-22).
  • Receive God's forgiveness and look to Him to show you how to walk out your repentance before God and those you've hurt and hated because of idolatry. May God give you a clear view of your idol trail so that you may confess your sin, restore relationships, and glorify His name.