The Fourth Sunday in Advent is upon us, and this week’s
candle represents Love. The love that God had for humanity is
demonstrated in His Son who came to redeem mankind. God’s plan to save
humankind from death and restoring our fellowship with Him is written
throughout the pages of the Holy Writ—the Old Testament is the foundation for
the New. Thousands of years before the Messiah arrived in a manger on a quiet
night in Bethlehem, another miraculous birth occurred; a promised son; the one
from whom the Messiah would come.
Christ is the fulfillment of the promise that God made to
him, that all the families of the earth will be blessed through Abraham’s seed:
I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make
nations of you, and kings will come forth from you. I will
establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you
throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God
to you and to your descendants after you {Gen. 17:6-7 NASB}.
The King of Kings came through his descendants, to barren
parent’s pregnant with God’s promise beginning with Isaac and Jacob’s twelve sons’;
the Messiah through the line of Judah.
God Loves humanity this much. Though we don’t deserve the
Love; He gave. I pray that you feel and know the Love of God in a new, fresh,
deep way this week; nothing can separate you from His Love:
Can a woman forget
her nursing child And have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even
these may forget, but I will not forget you. “Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands;
Your walls are continually before Me {Is.
49:15-16 NASB}.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal
life {John
3:16 NASB}.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart
from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines
in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it {Jn.
1: 1-5 NASB}.
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth {Jn.
1: 14 NASB}.
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death
all day long; We were considered as sheep to be
slaughtered.” But in all these things
we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any
other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord {Rom.
8:37-39
NASB}.
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes
all things, endures all things. Love never fails; {1 Cor.13:4-8 NASB}.
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His
Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our
hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God {Gal.
4:4-7 NASB}.
We have come to know and have believed the love
which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in
him {1 Jn. 4:16 NASB}.
For this reason I bow 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 man, 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 breadth and length
and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses
knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God {Eph. 3:16-19 NASB}.
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