“Love from above–down and through” has turned into my motto or credo. Some may wonder where I got it from.
Human beings have one major need: to be loved, especially someone who can give them sincere, pure “love from above.” The love I’m talking about is agape love, or God’s love. And so we humans are looking, looking incessantly for someone that can love us with the love from above.
You take a group of people sitting around over there; they are a microcosm of the entire human race and its condition of “not being loved.” And so we wait and wait–sometimes impatiently–for someone to love us. Some wait their whole life for someone to really love them. And I’m not talking about just romantic love here. I’m talking about the loneliness and the longing solitude and the sadness it can entail. I’m referring to the utter frustration of a friendless existence.
But that is not how it works. Someone in the circle must break out; they must break the cycle of self-centered-ness. Someone must step out and stand up and not expect someone else to love them first! Someone must start reaching out and loving others! Someone must be that channel of love and appreciation that comes flowing down from above and comes on through them out to others. Someone must believe and step out on the water and break the currently accepted law that “everyone should wait for someone to love them first before they give love to others.”
The old adage is true: “Give and it shall be given.” In order to really be loved, we must love them first. Give love to others, and love will be given to you.
Why is that so universally difficult for humans to do? Because the “love” we are talking about–the kind of love everyone is craving, is a spiritual thing that is not in a person’s natural state of existence. Humans cannot love the way they want to be loved because their old nature is selfish. And herein lies the frustration. Mankind is subjected to this by their Creator in hopes that they will return to God for an operation (Romans 8:20).
God is hoping that we will check ourselves into His spiritual hospital and get a heart transplant. Humans in their original earthly state have an old selfish heart and mind. It must be taken out and a new heart and a new spirit from must take its place.
The Great Physician has a stark operating table for this spiritual procedure. And just like our hesitance to go “under the knife” in a physical surgery, so we are hesitant to submit to this spiritual procedure. The operating table is the cross of Christ. It is there that we die with Him, are buried with Him, and through belief in His resurrection, we receive a new heart and new spirit that keeps His laws.
This is how to get that “love from above” flowing on “down and through” us to others. Every thing that blocks His love from flowing through us–every negative aspect like hatred, bitterness, revenge, fear, selfishness, greed, ungratefulness, desiring other people’s things–all these things must die out and be replaced with His Spirit. In fact, in God’s eyes they already have died out. “Knowing this that our old man is crucified with Christ” (Romans 6:6). And God is raising up His sons and daughters, His princes and princesses, to be the channels of the “Love from above” for these last days–to be the channels of Himself, His very essence.
Kenneth Wayne Hancock
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Immortality Road 