Does God want all of us?

How much of us does God want?

Mat 22:37  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with ALL THY HEART, AND WITH ALL THY SOUL, AND WITH ALL THY MIND. 

Mat 22:38  This is the first and great commandment. 

Deu 6:5  And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with ALL THINE HEART, AND WITH ALL THY SOULD, AND WITH ALL THY MIGHT. 

Deu 10:12  And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God WITH ALL THY HEART AND WITH ALL THY SOUL.

Deu 30:6  And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with ALL THINE HEART AND WITH ALL THY SOUL that thou mayest live. 

Mar 12:30  And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with ALL THY HEART AND WITH ALL THY SOUL AND WITH ALL THY MIND AND WITH ALL THY STRENGTH this is the first commandment. 

Luk 10:27  And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with ALL THY HEART AND WITH ALL THY SOULD AND WITH ALL THY STRENGTH AND WITH ALL THY MIND and thy neighbour as thyself. 

Rom 12:1  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye PRESENT YOUR BODIES a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 

Excerpt-

'I Consecrate My All

     I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Rom. 12:1  

     God calls for whole-souled consecration to His ways. Our highest powers are to be carefully cultivated. Our talents are lent us by God for use, not to be perverted or abused. They are to be improved by use, that they may do the work of God.  

     We are to give ourselves to the service of God, and we should seek to make the offering as nearly perfect as possible. God will not be pleased with anything less than the best we can offer. Those who love Him with all the heart will desire to give Him the best service of the life, and they will be constantly seeking to bring every power of their being into harmony with the laws that will promote their ability to do His will.  

     Personal consecration is necessary, and we cannot have this unless heart holiness is cultivated and cherished.  

     Let your prayer be, "Take me, O Lord, as wholly Thine. I lay all my plans at Thy feet. Use me today in Thy service. Abide with me, and let all my work be wrought in Thee." This is a daily matter.  

     The surrender of all our powers to God greatly simplifies the problem of life. It weakens and cuts short a thousand struggles with the passions of the natural heart.

Religion is as a golden cord that binds the souls of both youth and aged to Christ. Through it the willing and obedient are brought safely through dark and intricate paths to the city of God. . . .  

     How many times have the deep things of God been unfolded before us, and how highly should we prize these precious privileges. . . . The bright beams of Heaven's light are shining upon your pathway. . . . Receive and cherish every Heaven-sent ray, and your path will grow brighter and brighter unto the perfect day.'

EG WHITE

From My Life Today - Page 10

Love- Heaven Bound.

God doesn't mean when He says to love Him with ALL our heart that we have no heart left to love anyone else with. What He does mean is we must LOVE Him FIRST, and then we are capable of loving our neighbor.  If we love any other before Him we are not loving that person or persons with a true love, it's impossible. You can scoff at me if you wish, but it's truth, God's truth. The love we give to others from ourselves is a selfish love if it's not a love grounded first and foremost with concern for their salvation.  So many today think my saying this stuff is crazy. They know they love their family, their children, their husbands and wives, their friends and even if they don't believe in God they believe they love them, and I'm just plain nuts. It's called deception, not mine, but theirs. They DO love but not with a love that is eternal, their love is a version of emotion welling up in them that they've learned to associate with the idea of what love is.  How awful it is for a brand new mother to NOT experience that well-known 'mother's love' toward their newborn. Yet it happens more often that people like to believe. How awful it is to be a child (of any age) to not have a parent who loves them with that supposed love that should be there for all parents and children. How terrible for a parent to never receive the love they are expecting to get from their child-- again, it happens a lot.  We grow up with expectations of what love is and should be and when it goes awry we are left floundering. What happens all too often to the love of one spouse for another? It was there, wasn't it? It was real, right? So if this real, true love simply disappears how can it ever be true and real? Our ideas, our beliefs of love void of God is honestly a very tainted, corrupted sort of love we've been deceived into believing is real.

Love is the hope our SAVIOR came to earth to give to us- a future life with HIM. This is the hope we can give to all our children, to all our loved ones. We must love God first and He'll give us the love we need for all others, a true love void of all selfishness. 

God must be FIRST.

Our treasures- the things we love- must be in HEAVEN.

We are but strangers and pilgrims here upon earth. Our friends and family- our 'loved ones' must be heaven bound- we must place them with God to protect and lead to His kingdom and eternity- and all other love we give to them must come second to the hope of their salvation.

These are FACTS that are so incredibly easy to forget, we push them aside when they don't suit our desires.

Mat 22:37  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 

Mat 22:38  This is the first and great commandment. 

Deu 6:5  And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. 

Deu 10:12  And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul

Deu 30:6  And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. 

Mar 12:30  And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. 

Luk 10:27  And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. 

True Love.

Can we truly LOVE anyone at all without God being our source of love?  Seriously? Can we? Think about it, most of our ideas of love is a self-serving love. Even when we sacrifice to love there can be self-serving because of the pride towards self for sacrificing.  You say you have no pride in sacrificing? Praise God! It's not for me to judge anyone, God will do that- He knows the heart.

I do know from personal experience that my comprehension of love is very limited. I say I love others, I tell others I love them. What am I really saying to them when I say I love them? They are a part of my life that I don't want to live without. I care for them, even though I might not be perfect at caring for them. My love is flawed at best.

When others tell me they love me, I know they care for me, I know they want me in some part of their life and I know they would miss me should I go away.  I know they are choosing to love me, because they are capable of choosing not to love me, yes, even family can choose not to love other family members- love is always a choice.

God chose to love us even at our worst as evidence in the sacrifice He made in allowing God with Him to become His declared Son and to be made flesh. He allowed His declared Son to become human and in becoming human He took on the suffering of humans, the temptations of humans, the death of humans.   

God created us out of His love for us, and His love for us has kept Him from destroying us. God's love for us has created what we long to give to those we love- a pain free, happy existence.  We can't give that to those we love, it's not in our power to do so. God can do this, and He has done this and it is a PROMISE for all who love Him, for all who choose HIM.  We are PROMISED a pain free, happy existence. The promise is future beyond this world, the promise is heaven, the promise is eternity in love. This is the hope, this is the good news that our SAVIOR came to give to us, and to show us the way through Him.

God does want something in return- something from us, God wants us to love Him, to choose to believe in Him in all things. We must believe that God is the source of all real love, not our made up, imagined, very flawed love. We must comprehend that we are NOT able to love any others- not our mothers, our fathers, our husbands, our wives, our children, we are not able to love ANY others as He can love them. When we choose to love HIM we choose to give over to Him all we are. We give Him all our loved ones knowing He can love them more than we ever could.  We give our 'all' to God and God takes care of our 'all' in HIS way, not our way. 

More on this later, all by the GRACE and MERCY of our LORD and SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST! Now and forever… AMEN.

'Affection

God’s Demand

Yielding one’s affection to the lord may be viewed by the Christian to be a most difficult task, yet the Lord is concerned with One’s affection more than with any Other matter.

 He demands him to present his affection wholly to Him and let Him lord over it. The Lord asks for first place in our affection. We Often hear people talk about consecration, but this act is simply the first step in one’s spiritual walk. Consecration is not the destination of spirituality, it is but its beginning. It leads a Christian to a sanctified position.

In a word, without consecration there can be no spiritual life.

Even so, nothing is more paramount in one’s consecration than is his affection. Whether or not this has been yielded determines the truth or falsity of consecration. Its acid test is affection. Relatively easy is it for us to hand over our time, money, power, and countless other items; but to offer our affection is exceedingly difficult. This is not to imply we do not love Christ; perhaps we love our Lord very much. Nevertheless, if we grant first place in our affection to another and relegate Christ to second place, or if we love someone else while loving the Lord, or if we ourselves direct our affection, then what we have offered is not considered consecration for we have not yielded our affection.

Every spiritual believer appreciates the necessity for affection to be offered first. For without that, nothing really is offered. God the Father demands absolute love from His children. He is unwilling to share Our heart with anyone or anything else: even a He should receive the bigger share, He is still not pleased. God demands all our love. Naturally this strikes a fatal blow to One’s soul life. The Lord bids us part with what we Ourselves cling to, for it divides Our heart. He asks us to love Him totally and to utterly follow Him in love: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with

438 The Spiritual Man

all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22.37). “All” denotes every ounce of it for the Lord. He enjoins us to reserve not one tiny particle of affection which we ourselves can direct. He calls for all. He is a jealous God (Ex. 20.5), therefore He does not allow anybody to steal the love of His children. Yet how many dearly beloved ones have their claim on the believer’s affections besides God!

Perhaps an Isaac, a Jonathan, or a Rachel. Wherefore God insists we lay our beloved ones on the altar.

He cannot tolerate any competition. Our all must be on the altar. This is the Christian’s way to spiritual power. And shortly after the sacrifice is laid on the altar—nay, after the last sacrifice is duly placed thereon—fire will come down from heaven. Without the altar, there can be no heavenly fire. How, then, will one ever have the power of the Holy Spirit if he does not take up his cross and offer everyone whom he loves to the Lord? This is not an empty altar, for fire consumes the sacrifice on it. What can the fire consume if there is no sacrifice?

 Brethren, neither our mental understanding of the cross nor our endless talk about it will give us the power of the Holy Spirit; only our laying everything on the altar will.

If we continue to harbor some secret rope uncut, if our heart secretly retains some oxen and sheep and an Agag, we will still not experience the manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s power in our lives.

 How much the work of God has suffered because of our failure to let the Lord be the Lord of our affections. Many parents cling to their children for themselves and permit the kingdom of God to incur loss. Countless husbands or wives are unwilling to make sacrifice and thus the harvest is left ungathered. Numerous Christians are so attached to their friends that they sit back and let their brethren fight at the front alone. It is deplorable how many think they can love their dear ones and the Lord simultaneously, not comprehending that by loving these, they cannot love the Lord.

We persist in living in the soul if we cannot say with Asaph: “Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides thee” (Ps. 73.25).

We cannot but stress the significance of our loving the Lord with our whole heart. Nothing satisfies His heart as does our love. The Lord looks not for our laboring for Him but for our loving Him. '

Excerpt - The Spiritual Man by Watchman Nee

Where is your affection?

'Affection

God’s Demand Yielding one’s affection to the lord may be viewed by the Christian to be a most difficult task, yet the Lord is concerned with One’s affection more than with any Other matter.

 He demands him to present his affection wholly to Him and let Him lord over it. The Lord asks for first place in our affection. We Often hear people talk about consecration, but this act is simply the first step in one’s spiritual walk. Consecration is not the destination of spirituality, it is but its beginning. It leads a Christian to a sanctified position.

In a word, without consecration there can be no spiritual life.

Even so, nothing is more paramount in one’s consecration than is his affection. Whether or not this has been yielded determines the truth or falsity of consecration. Its acid test is affection. Relatively easy is it for us to hand over our time, money, power, and countless other items; but to offer our affection is exceedingly difficult. This is not to imply we do not love Christ; perhaps we love our Lord very much. Nevertheless, if we grant first place in our affection to another and relegate Christ to second place, or if we love someone else while loving the Lord, or if we ourselves direct our affection, then what we have offered is not considered consecration for we have not yielded our affection.

Every spiritual believer appreciates the necessity for affection to be offered first. For without that, nothing really is offered. God the Father demands absolute love from His children. He is unwilling to share Our heart with anyone or anything else: even a He should receive the bigger share, He is still not pleased. God demands all our love. Naturally this strikes a fatal blow to One’s soul life. The Lord bids us part with what we Ourselves cling to, for it divides Our heart. He asks us to love Him totally and to utterly follow Him in love: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with

438 The Spiritual Man

all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22.37). “All” denotes every ounce of it for the Lord. He enjoins us to reserve not one tiny particle of affection which we ourselves can direct. He calls for all. He is a jealous God (Ex. 20.5), therefore He does not allow anybody to steal the love of His children. Yet how many dearly beloved ones have their claim on the believer’s affections besides God!

Perhaps an Isaac, a Jonathan, or a Rachel. Wherefore God insists we lay our beloved ones on the altar.

He cannot tolerate any competition. Our all must be on the altar. This is the Christian’s way to spiritual power. And shortly after the sacrifice is laid on the altar—nay, after the last sacrifice is duly placed thereon—fire will come down from heaven. Without the altar, there can be no heavenly fire. How, then, will one ever have the power of the Holy Spirit if he does not take up his cross and offer everyone whom he loves to the Lord? This is not an empty altar, for fire consumes the sacrifice on it. What can the fire consume if there is no sacrifice?

 Brethren, neither our mental understanding of the cross nor our endless talk about it will give us the power of the Holy Spirit; only our laying everything on the altar will.

If we continue to harbor some secret rope uncut, if our heart secretly retains some oxen and sheep and an Agag, we will still not experience the manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s power in our lives.

 How much the work of God has suffered because of our failure to let the Lord be the Lord of our affections. Many parents cling to their children for themselves and permit the kingdom of God to incur loss. Countless husbands or wives are unwilling to make sacrifice and thus the harvest is left ungathered. Numerous Christians are so attached to their friends that they sit back and let their brethren fight at the front alone. It is deplorable how many think they can love their dear ones and the Lord simultaneously, not comprehending that by loving these, they cannot love the Lord.

We persist in living in the soul if we cannot say with Asaph: “Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides thee” (Ps. 73.25).

We cannot but stress the significance of our loving the Lord with our whole heart. Nothing satisfies His heart as does our love. The Lord looks not for our laboring for Him but for our loving Him. '

Excerpt - The Spiritual Man by Watchman Nee

God Ruled Emotions.

1Co_1:18  For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

The preaching of the CROSS is the POWER OF GOD.  Power of God.  Why have power if you don't use the power? Seriously.  Power is useless when it isn't wielded. You might as well not have power if you don't use the power you possess. There is POWER in the CROSS of our Savior. It's a REAL power, a LIFE GIVING power. It has the power to give new life, it has the power to forgive all our sins, it has the power to give us all we need to live for our Savior and it's a REAL power not a supposed power, not a fictional power, not a hidden power but a very real power.  We need to recognize the power, believe in the reality of the power our Savior and the cross He died on, possesses. When we preach the cross we are preaching the truth of SALVATION found in our SAVIOR.  The POWER TO SAVE.

Gal_6:14  But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

1Co 2:2  For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 

Rom 1:16  For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. 

2Pe_1:3  According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue

When Watchman Nee talks about the CROSS dealing with our natural life in our emotion he truly isn't saying that our emotions have died, he's saying they've been changed by the power of God.  We are changed! The Holy Spirit works with our spirit through the cross!

A Spiritual man's emotions will REFLECT the divine life in us.

Col_1:27  To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory

Christ in US!  There is divine life in us and it's only Christ in us through the power of the Holy Spirit that can change us, we cannot change ourselves, we yield to the Spirit. 

Our emotions are evil things in and of themselves. Controlled by our Savior, controlled by the Holy Spirit our emotions can be used by Him for His glory!

All through His love, now and forever! Amen.

*******

(The Proper Use of Emotion

 If God’s children permit the cross to operate deeply upon their emotion they shall find afterwards that it no longer obstructs, but rather cooperates with, their spirit.

The cross has dealt with the natural life in the emotion, has renewed it, and has made it a channel for the spirit. A spiritual man we have said before is not a spirit, but neither is he a person devoid of emotion; on the contrary, the spiritual man will use his feeling to express the divine life in him. )  Excerpt from The Spiritual Man by Watchman Nee

Spiritual Emotion.

Please read the following excerpt from the book we are studying, constantly using the Word of God for the guide to ALL truth.

Tomorrow by the will and grace of God we will study this more thoroughly searching for only truth as found in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

Excerpt from - The Spiritual Man by Watchman Nee

'The Proper Use of Emotion

 If God’s children permit the cross to operate deeply upon their emotion they shall find afterwards that it no longer obstructs, but rather cooperates with, their spirit.

The cross has dealt with the natural life in the emotion, has renewed it, and has made it a channel for the spirit. A spiritual man we have said before is not a spirit, but neither is he a person devoid of emotion; on the contrary, the spiritual man will use his feeling to express the divine life in him.

Before it is touched by God emotion follows its own whim. And hence it habitually fails to be an instrument of the spirit. But once it is purified it can serve as the means of the spirit’s expression.

 The inner man needs emotion to express its life: it needs emotion to declare its love and its sympathy towards man’s suffering: and it also needs emotion to make man sense the movement of its intuition.

Spiritual sensing is usually made known through the feeling of a quiet and pliable emotion. If emotion is pliably subject to the spirit the latter, through the emotion, will love or hate exactly as God wishes.

 Some Christians, upon discerning the truth of not living by feeling, mistake spiritual life as one without it. They accordingly try to destroy it and to render themselves as insensate as wood and stone. Because of their ignorance of the meaning of the death of the cross, they do not understand what is meant by handing over one’s emotion to death and living by the spirit. We do not say that, in order to be spiritual, a Christian must become exceedingly hard and void of affection like inanimate objects—as though the term spiritual man means for him to be emptied of feeling. Quite the contrary. The most tender, merciful, loving, and sympathetic of persons is a spiritual man.

To be entirely spiritual by delivering his emotion to the cross does not denote that henceforth he is stripped of his feeling. We have observed numerous spiritual saints and have noticed that their love is greater than that of others, which demonstrates that a spiritual man is not without emotion and additionally that it differs from that of the ordinary man.

In committing our soul to the cross we must remember that what is lost is the soul life, not its function.

Were its function nailed to the cross we then could no longer think, choose, or feel. We must therefore remember this basic fact: to lose soul life means to doggedly, resolutely, and continuously deny the natural power and to walk exclusively by the power of God; it means to live no longer after self and its desires but to submit unexceptionally to the will of God.

Moreover, the cross and resurrection are two inseparable facts: “for if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection” (Rom. 6.5 ASV).

The death of the cross does not connote annihilation; hence the emotion, mind and will of the soul are not extinguished upon passing through the cross. They only relinquish their natural life in the death of the Lord and are raised again in His resurrection life. Such death and resurrection cause the various operating organs of the soul to lose their life, to be renewed, and to be used by the Lord.

Consequently a spiritual man is not emotionally deprived; rather, his emotion is the most perfect and the most noble, as though newly created out of God’s hand. In short, if anyone has trouble here, the trouble lies with his theory and not with his experience, for the latter will bear out the truth. Emotion must go through the cross (Matt. 10.38-39) in order to destroy its fiery nature, with its confusion, and to subject it totally to the spirit. The cross aims to accord the spirit authority to rule over every activity of emotion.

Mat 10:38  And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. 

Mat 10:39  He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. '

Emotional Reactions or Spiritually Ruled?

1Co_2:14  But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Jud 1:17  But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; 

Jud 1:18  How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. 

Jud 1:19  These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit. 

Jud 1:20  But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, 

Jud 1:21  Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. 

Joh 3:5  Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 

Joh 3:6  That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 

Joh 3:7  Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

Truly the word of God NEVER tells us to rely upon our feelings, to count on our sensations, to use our emotions as a guide. The NATURAL man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God. We MUST have the Spirit and the Spirit communes with our spirit.

Rom_8:16  The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God

The Spirit with our spirit! This is God's word!

We are told by Jesus Himself that we have to be born of the Spirit or else we cannot enter the kingdom of God.  We are NOT told to be born of our emotions, our feelings, our senses, our natural man. A change MUST take place in us. Our spirit MUST be alive in us! Our spirit must RULE over all else in us. Emotions will trip us up at every turn.

I read a thing on facebook recently that pertained to this…

'You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you…'

The truth in this message is so blatant. How many of us truly have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to us?  Think about it before you simply answer.  By the grace of God pay attention throughout the day as you are spoken to by others- is your response emotional?  Are feelings in you roused - happy, sad, angry, disgusted, you name the emotion.  How rare is it for you not to feel anything at all?

I've been called 'over' sensitive throughout my life and it's only now that I am realize just how much emotions rule my life.  May God please help me to understand more and more of His truth. May the Spirit rule in my spirit, not my emotions.

Another excerpt --

The Spiritual man- By Watchman Nee - Excerpt

'What are the servants of the Lord seeking today? Countless ones aspire to spiritual power. But this power is obtained solely by paying a price. Should a Christian die to his emotion he will possess spiritual might.

It is because he leans too much on his emotion and is bound too strongly to his desire, affection and feeling that the Christian forfeits real power.

Only a deeper operation of the cross can fill us with spiritual dynamite; other than that there is no way to it. When the cross works upon our desire enabling us to live completely for God, spiritual power will naturally be evidenced in us. A believer’s emotion, if not overcome, will additionally hamper him in spiritual work.

As long as its influence obtains, his spirit is impotent to control it and consequently unqualified to fulfill the highest will of God. '