Tag Archives: love

April 28, 2012 · 2:06 pm

“There’s Nothing in It for You”–It Is All for God, Who Is Love

There was an old saying at the mission that rings true now some 40 years later.  “There’s nothing in it for you.”

I didn’t really understand then just how profound that simple statement was.  But Time is a faithful teacher.  And as I look now in the mirror and see a much more wrinkled image with a head laden with a heavy hoary frost, I take more time to contemplate the increasing fragility of my physical state.  It seems that the reality of my own mortality crowds daily into my thoughts.

In that mirror I also see in my own eyes how the years have neutralized the piss and vinegar that I was so full of back then in my 20’s and 30’s.

As my earthly frame grows weaker, that old saying–how that there’s nothing in this walk with God for you–rings truer.  It is making so much more sense now as I am staring down the time when I just may have to depart this old earthly body before Christ returns to this earth to set up His kingdom.

For, you see, in those younger years I thought that surely I would be alive when the LORD would come back.  Christ did say that “whosoever lives and believes in Me shall never die” (John 11: 26).  And, that “there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Mt. 16: 28).  Those destined not to taste death would have to be the generation of believers alive when He returned to earth.  Anyway, I always thought that I would be one of them.

But now, as the years tick on, and my body creaks with age more every day, I must take this into real consideration–this “falling asleep,” this “shuffling off of this mortal coil.”

And, yet, I now realize that God has this death of the physical body hanging over us for a reason.  We know that He gives life and He takes life.  Our very breath is in His hand.  And it is this impending destiny with dust that helps us understand the futility of living for one’s self.  The self just cannot see us through, for our earthly bodies must betray us, for that is the very nature  of the physical body formed of the dust of this planet.  The house of dirt was made for us by God on purpose not to last.  It is temporary housing.

God fashioned our bodies to be as ephemeral as butterfly wings.  He deliberately formed them to be fragile in hope that we might sense someday our own vanity before death came knocking.  As we see our bodies decay and crumble with age, He hopes that we will see the futility of living for the self.

Our fragility betrays our pretentious egos that always seem to shout, “Hey, everybody, seriously, I really am something!”  But that self-centered imagination breeds the ultimate deception, for “when a man thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (Gal. 6: 3).

And we have all been guilty of that thought; it is in the spiritual genes of old man Adam and his offspring.  Yes, we are initially made that way by the Creator in hopes that we would see the purposelessness of selfish thinking and be humbled so that we could all realize one truth: Every man is created for only one thing, and it is not for self-glorification; it is for God-glorification.

And if we are blessed to be chosen by Him to reveal this truth to, then we are coming much closer to where we need to be in our walk on earth before our Creator.

There’s nothing in it for you.  For everything in the vastness of the universe and here on earth is for God and His pleasure.  This is the great sticking point with natural-minded man, who earnestly believes that he is the center of the cosmos.  Secular humanism is the new many-headed false god.  “Thou shalt not have any other gods before Me.”  Especially our self.

“For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11: 36).  Breaking it down, all things are of Him; they came from Him, and through His creative power all things (including us) exist.  And in the end, all things are created by Him for His pleasure and glory.

For instance, Him delivering us from utter degradation and destruction, and us returning and thanking Him and telling others about His saving love and power–He loves that and gets glory out of it.

“All things were created by Him, and for Him” (Col. 1: 16).  But God does not become a pompous little jerk like natural man when he gets power.  No.  God is LOVE.  He created us so that He could bring us to a place spiritually, where His essence and nature (which is Love) could be multiplied–eventually to fill the whole universe with LOVE!  Our gratitude toward Him for our deliverance from sin is the fertile soil where the seed of Love can grow.

And God-in-human-form is our example and showed us the way.  Jesus (Yahshua) tasted death for us all so that we would not be banished to the dusty tombs of oblivion.  “For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory” (Hebr. 2: 9-10).

That’s the plan.  It is all for Him, so that He may glorify those who realize that it is all for Him.  He will share Himself and all His glory with the overcomers, even to the point of sharing His throne with them (Rev. 3: 21).

It is all for the Creator.  When we turn that page in the book of our minds, then joy and serenity will overtake us, for we will have embraced the heart of God with arms of humility, born of His true nature, Love.

{For more on this subject, check out this article:  https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/gods-endgame-where-this-life-on-earth-is-leading-us/ }

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

1 Comment

Filed under death, eternal purpose, glorification, sons and daughters of God

Tagged as , , ,

January 5, 2012 · 3:07 am

“Forgive Us Our Debts”–Loving the Unloveable

We had a saying during the mission years–those years in the ’70’s when a small group of us had come out of the world system and had lived and worked together–all of us longing  to become more like Christ. 

It went like this: “Love Tom and save the world.”  Tom was our teacher and mentor.  He was also the one who did the correcting and the admonishing.  And we all at one time or another bristled at his rebukes, our egos being bruised.

Of course, the saying can contain anyone’s name–anyone, that is, that you are having a problem with.  “Love ______________and save the world.  You fill in the blank with the person that is the most difficult  for you to love today.  For if you can do that, then you will have arrived where God wants you in your Christian growth.  You will have in your vessel the Spirit of God Himself, who is Love.  And with the power that comes from His presence of Love inside of you, you can then save the world.  And, boy, does it need saving right now.

I am getting a fuller understanding of that old saying today, almost 40 years later.  If we can humble ourselves enough to ask God to grant to us His loving and forgiving nature to love that person who we are having trouble loving, then we will have manifested God in the flesh of our bodies.

In the normal everyday walk of our lives, certain people enter whose actions we despise.  They grate on us and both irritate and disgust us.  My earthly sister was such a person.  She was a drug addict–addicted to hydrocodone for 40 years.  She played my poor old mother, who was her enabler.  She stole from her–even my mom’s pain pills that her broken down 80 year old back needed.  Many times my sister left her without medication for two weeks.  This went on for decades.  My darling mother suffered greatly because of her. 

I tried to get my mom to forsake her, the tough love Bible way–to not let her use her, but Mom could not do it.  We buried Mom in June of last year.  And to this day, my sister has never apologized for all of the lies and thefts and shame she brought upon our family.

Now my sister lays up in an intensive care bed with tubes running out of her face.  And I visited her, and told her I loved her and prayed for her that God would comfort her.  And although she could not open her eyes, tears washed over her eyelids and began to fill the sockets.  I know that she is feeling bad about things she has done.  

My sister before this latest bout has really been trying, but because so much dirty water has passed under the bridge, it is difficult to love her.  I do love her with a earthly family love.  But I mean it is difficult to love her with a deep, resounding,  joyful love. 

And so the memory of that old saying from the mission clangs on my heart tonight.  ” Love her and save the world.”  I should be like that man who woke up from a dream and had the revelation that he should begin today to forgive everybody! 

We are told by our Master to pray, asking the Father, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”  What debts is He talking about?  A debt means that we owe something, but what do we owe?  “Owe no man anything but to love one another.”  To love each other–that is our debt!

So we ask God to forgive us when we don’t love each other, and He does this as we forgive those who don’t love us as they should.  This is us forgiving their debt of love to us. 

So we need to realize that, yes, other human beings owe us love, but most are in their selfish, carnal nature that prevents them.  So we should just pray, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”  They do not realize that they should love everyone.

Our debt, then, is to love one another.  We need to have an attitude of forgiveness to all who don’t love us.  And here is the kicker: This is what God does.  And if each Seed bears its own kind, we as His seed, His children, should do the same as He does, which is loving the unloveable.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

3 Comments

Filed under children of God, forgiveness, Love from Above, sons and daughters of God

Tagged as , ,

December 10, 2011 · 4:07 pm

Back to the Father’s Heart–The Eternal Purpose in a Bedtime Story

Chapter 25 of the Book Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality

 [I wrote the following bedtime story for my grandson Cody Hancock. I wanted him to know the truth about creation, about the Creator and His plan and purpose.]

 Long, long ago, before the earth or the heavens were, God, the Supreme Being, existed. He was and is the Self-existent One and needed nothing else to sustain His life, for He is Life itself. He was and is the great, wonderful, invisible Spirit. And in the beginning, He realized that even though He was great and all-powerful and magnificent, He was alone.

 He knew that He could be any way He wanted to be and make happen anything He wanted to see happen. He could create things only to destroy them and watch the fires consume them, or He could create beautiful things, things with meaning, things that would endure forever. So He had to make a choice whether to be a mean, selfish destructive creator/destroyer or to be a sharing, compassionate, kind and loving creator/sustainer. So He looked inside the core of His Spirit and heart and recognized immediately that there was nothing but Love inside. All He wanted was to share and give and spread around this goodness and peace that was His essence. His nature was Love.

 And because He was and is Love, He wanted to share His essence with someone else. That is the nature of true love—sharing and giving. Having all power and able to do anything that His nature of love could dictate, He began His creative power by making the Original Form.

 Now this Original Form was a body composed of spirit. Our bodies are made of earth, dust, and clay. His was a body that could not die, for it was made of His essence, which is Life. It was an immortal, spiritual body through which He could speak and listen and make Himself known. He could speak the Word now that would show and express what was His essence. This was the form that He chose to express Himself through.

 Through the mouth of His spiritual body He could express in a word what was inside Him. And this word that He could now express was “Love.” In the beginning was the Word and that Word is Love. He could now speak through His own mouth the things in His heart. He could speak into existence the heavens and the earth.

 He would create magnificent stars set in a universal expanse so vast and wonderful. He would create a home called Heaven for Himself and the helpers He would create. He would create a special star of undying energy and warmth, a star we call the Sun. He would create on a plane of physical existence a planet that would revolve around that warmth, a planet perfect for a special life He would soon create for His own purposes.

 And so He said, “Let the galaxies with their stars and planets appear.” And it happened! And as He framed the worlds and created the heavens and the earth He kept in mind His ultimate purpose for making all things. He wanted to reproduce Himself. He wanted to multiply Himself. He desired to multiply Himself as the seeds of the earth produce their own kind of fruit.

 And so He thought and thought about ways in which to express and demonstrate just what was inside His heart. He asked, “How do I show just what I, Love, am about?”

 So He looked around at the absolutely astounding heavens that He had created. And He said, “They are good. They are beautiful, but yet, they cannot appreciate who made them and the love wherewith they were made. For they cannot feel, think or love in return.”

 And so He thought and thought some more and came up with a plan. “I will create a living creature, a human being out of the dust of one of my planets called earth. I will create him with the mental and spiritual sensibilities and capabilities to be able to comprehend just who I am and what I am about–which is Love.”

 And He said, “But I will need helpers, emissaries, and messengers to help me carry out my plan to reproduce Myself. I will create immortal angels, composed of spirit, and they will assist me in ministering to the needs of the human beings.” And so He created the heavenly hosts and instructed them and assigned a third of them to the planet earth to prepare it for His crowning creation. And He called His crowning creation Adam, meaning in His original Hebrew tongue, “to show blood in the face, to flush or turn rosy, to be made red or ruddy.” In our language he is called “Man.”

 Over this third part of the angels He sent one of His arch-angels whose name has come down to us as Lucifer. Lucifer knew that God had a plan to reproduce Himself and that the earth was the place for this reproduction. But the archangel said in his heart, “I will ascend and be like the most high God. I want to be like God. I’m already immortal, I’m beautiful, and I don’t see why it can’t be us, who are doing all the work during the heat and length of the day. It is not fair.”

And so Lucifer became Satan and led the angels that were with him into rebelling against the Creator who had brought them into existence and had included them in His plan. These angels made a choice to rebel and so sin entered into the universe. Pride goes before a fall. But God knew beforehand what would happen.

And so they ascended up from earth to heaven to try to overthrow the Creator. Lucifer and his angels fought against Michael and His angels. After the greatest battle the galaxies will ever see, the faithful angels overcame the evil ones, who were cast out of heaven back to the earth.

After the heavenly dust had settled, the Creator went on to the next step of His master plan. He still, however, did not have in place what He needed to express Himself and multiply Himself.

So He thought and thought some more, and He continued His plan. He said, “In order to reproduce my nature of Love, I must testify as to what the greatest Love can be. Now there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends. But I am a Spirit dwelling in a spiritual body, and I cannot die in this form, for I am immortal.

And then it came to Him. He would give up His life on His throne in heaven and would come to earth and dwell with his crowning creation, man, in a human body like theirs! He would walk among them and love them and care for them and show them how to do what He does and show them by His life what He is, which is Love.

He would heal their sick and raise their dead, and He would give them the example they needed in order for them to love like Him. He would be clothed in flesh for a time. He would walk humbly, knowing that it was the Great Spirit of Love within Him that was doing the works of love. And then He would do the ultimate act that would show Love; He would die for his creation; He would give up that human life He was walking in and then three days later, He would raise it from the dead. He would do this willingly and lovingly.

In doing this He would accomplish many things. It would set an example for man to follow. It would provide a perfect sacrifice to atone for man’s sins. And it would defeat His arch-enemy Satan on earth. And God would defeat Satan when God was at His weakest, in a human death. And He would show His most excellent power in raising His body from the dead. And then He would glorify that body that He had walked in and had laid down in death. He would change it into a spiritual body, an immortal body. And He would promise man that if they followed Him in spiritually laying down their lives for others, they would receive immortality also.

Yet the most astounding, beautiful, wonderful thing about this is that this glorified spiritual body of His that He raised from the dead, that body now is the same body that He originally made for Himself in the heavens before the worlds ever were created!

For He is the Beginning and the Ending, the first and the last, the root and offspring of David, the Alpha and the Omega. He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.    Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Adam and Eve, elect, eternal purpose, immortality, perfection

Tagged as , , , , ,

June 25, 2011 · 5:56 pm

Chapter 10 “Miracles, Protection, and Love–Lessons in His Name–YAH IS SAVIOR: THE ROAD TO IMMORTALITY

Knowing His Hebrew name opens up many wonderful realms to us.  The power to perform miracles and do mighty works, the ability to show forth His astounding love, the unifying factor for the whole body of true believers–all these things and more open to us with the key of the knowledge of His name.

In John 10: 22-39, Yahshua said that the works (the miracles) that He was doing in His Father’s name testify as to His Messiahship.  The Jews approached Him in winter during Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication.  The Messiah was walking in Solomon’s porch.  They were accusing Him of making them to doubt as to whether He was the Messiah or not.  “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”

He then said that He had already told them, and they had not believed him.  “My deeds done in my Father’s name are my credentials” (NEB).  The miracles that I do in My Father’s name, He was saying, speak for Me, testify on My behalf that I am the Messiah.

And then He explained why they did not believe Him.  “But you do not believe because you are not of my sheep, as I said to you.  My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (v. 26-27, NKJV).  They were not the people “whom He foreknew and had predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son.”  It was not given to them from heaven to believe in the Messiah.  Their names were not written in heaven–(“Rejoice not that the devils are subject to you, but rather rejoice that your names are written in heaven…”).  The Pharisees could not believe Him, for they were not of His sheepfold.  But his sheep believe Him and He gives them “eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.  My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand.  I and My Father are one” (v. 28-30, NKJV).  Messiah’s hand was the Father’s hand, for they are one.

That did it for the Jews.  They just could not see it that the Messiah and the Father are one.  They picked up stones to kill Him.  Messiah said to them, “I’ve done many miracles in you midst.   Which one are you stoning Me for?”

“We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”  They just could not see that God was inside of the man, the mortal shell, and was doing the miracles.

Under great stress Yahshua continued to rain love upon the unjust.  Look, He was saying, “is not it written in your law, in the book of Psalms, ‘I have said, You are gods.’  If He called them gods unto whom the word of God came, what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world?  Why then do you me of blasphemy because I said, I am God’s Son?  Don’t believe Me unless I do what my Father does.  But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (v. 34-38, NIV).  By believing the miracles, we may know and understand that the Father is in the Son doing those miracles.  The Son can only do what He sees the Father do.

His Name brings unity

In the Son of God’s prayer of intercession in John 17, He stresses the importance of the name of His Father.  He says in v. 6: “I have revealed You Name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world.  They were Yours, and You gave them to Me, and they have guarded Your Word.”  He made known the name of His Father, Yahweh, to His called-out ones.  And in verse 11, the Messiah asks that the Father “guard them in Your Name which You have given Me, so that they might be one, as We are.”  We see that the name of Yahweh is a shield and protection needed so that they, the disciples, the children of God, might be one, as the Father and Son are one!  Guard them in Your Name.  His name has protective powers for us.  Us being under the banner of the name of Yahweh preserves us until we all are one as the Father and Son are one–“till we all come to the unity of the faith, unto a perfect man.”

And in verse 26, Christ says, “And I have made Your name known to them, and shall make it known, so that the love with which You love Me might be in them, and I in them.”  At least three major points are made here.  First, the Son reveals the Father to whomsoever He will by revealing the Father’s name to them.  He told them that Yahweh was the name of the Father.

He then said, “And shall make it known…”  He is giving prophecy here.  He will make the Father’s name known once again to His followers–to a select people to whom it is given in these last days.

Third point: I have made your name known “so that the love with which You love Me might be in them, and I in them.”  The revealing of the Father’s true name is so important that it is a pre-requisite; it is a necessary thing that must take place before that same love with which the Father had loved the Son might be in us.  Making His name known is necessary to others so that the Spirit of the Son will come down and be in His followers!  “So that the love with which You love Me might be in them, and I in them.”  That is why knowing and declaring His name Yahweh is so important!  [And yet, no preacher stands in the tens of thousands of pulpits across this world and teaches this!  Why?]

What we have here then is the key to the Father’s love that He loved the Son with!  He’ll make his Father’s name known to His disciples and show them how it is a “strong tower” and a keeper and a guard for us, allowing us to eventually tap into the Father’s unfathomable love.  “Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.”

All this then would indicate that our Father’s name Yahweh is our unifying attribute.  Our Father’s name is now our name; children are given their father’s surname.  We then look forward to the time when we by the thousands walk with Him in white and He in us and we in Him, and the Father in you all.  The Holy Spirit will someday fill us, His temple, when we have no sensation that we are there anymore, and He will dwell in us fully.  All of our ego foibles and mortal earthly thoughts will be at last swept from His temple, which is our bodies, and something greater than the temple will be here, and we will no longer glory in that we are the temple of God.  We will not think and strive as a blade of grass and as the potsherd we are today.  We will sit still and know that He is the great Yahweh of old, and He will move mightily through His temple.  And many will look on us and think that we have done something grand, and we will say, “Someone much greater that I is here.”

How were the miracles done?  How will the unity come?  In the Father’s name, Yahweh.

Leave a comment

Filed under love, Sacred Names, sons of God, Yahshua, Yahweh

Tagged as , ,

February 20, 2011 · 12:19 pm

“God Is Love”–Our Aching Need to Be Loved

Love is the great magnet that attracts us, that draws us to others.  We need only to look back in our lives to see that we are drawn to and “like” those who take an interest in us, who approve of us, who make us feel special.  We are drawn to people who we believe like us. 

We love God because He, who is Love, “first loved us.”  When a person comes to the knowledge of His Love for us, then we are drawn like a magnet to Him, even though we cannot literally see Him.

The Universal Need

To be loved by another, then, is the universal need.  “Nobody gets too much love anymore,” someone once sang truly.  And so it is.  To be loved is the need that equalizes mankind.  It does not matter if you are rich or poor, black or white, or anything in between–that aching need deep down in our hearts to be loved still throbs and longs to be quieted.

Of course, we speak of the higher love, the divine love, the unselfish love that negates mere earthly lust/love and religates it to the ash dumps of the lowly earth.  Many marriages and relationships go out like fading embers because the original fire which ignited it  was the false flames of lustful passion, and never did it transcend the “weak and beggarly elements” of those carnal desires. 

“Youthful lusts” can never satisfy the spiritual man in the end.  And so we continue to look for this divine love, this love from above, which is the only satisfying kind.

God has placed into our hearts this need to be truly loved, and so we seek for it.  Realizing that this divine, agape love is God Himself is a life-changing revelation.  For we then will see that the love we crave from everyone we see can only be satisfied by Him who is Love itself.  We seek love from God’s image–human beings–instead of from the source of Love–God Himself.

And how does this God, who is Love, reach down and touch us and give us the wonderful feeling of being truly loved?   How does an invisible Spirit (Love) reach down through the ether and show us His heart of Love? 

He does it through His visible Son.   The greatest  love that one can show is to give up his life for others.  Does it not touch our hearts, bringing tears to our eyes, to see reports of firefighters, policemen, and soldiers laying down their lives in efforts to save another? These we call heroes.  “Everybody’s looking for a hero.”

But the ultimate Hero is God-in-human-form, God’s Son, called Jesus in English and Yahshua in His original Hebrew language.  God loved us so much that He yielded up His son, the only perfect man, so that we could feel what true love is and respond by doing likewise.  Christ is our example.  He provided the way at the cross for us to get rid of our selfish little heart and receive His heart of love.  And that same Spirit of Love now is shown through us.  God wants us now to give up our selfish lives in service to the King and to His subjects, our fellow human beings.

This is it.  This is the answer that mankind is seeking for.  For we all seek to be loved.  Now we must realize that we are loved by God, who is Love.  And now we share this love.  Mankind must channel God (Love) through their actions to others.

Tapping into this Love transforms us into the loving and the loveable.  The change is astounding.  We become that fountain of loving waters that quenches other people’s thirst to be loved.  In so doing, God is multiplied and magnified by Love’s very transformational spiritual properties. 

Perhaps you have already started this change.  We now are left the challenge to “go onto perfection,” perfecting His love within us.  We do this by loving.  For Love is an action verb, not just an idea/noun.  Now let Him give His gifts to others through us.  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

 

1 Comment

Filed under agape, faith, gifts of the Spirit, love, Love from Above, Yahshua

Tagged as ,

April 22, 2009 · 12:48 pm

It’s Just Your Great Love That Helps Us–A Poem/Prayer

It is just Your great love that helps us–

That reaches down through the ether,

Invisibly touching our hidden center of being,

That calmly holds us from the precarious perches

That we force ourselves onto.

Your love holds us close–

Now safe from falling,

Now safe from sliding back

Into the mire of mud-soaked sin.

You, who hold the key to our safety,

Have now transported us

On Your very own wings,

On which we now ride

Into the pastures of heaven.

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

Leave a comment

Filed under agape, love, Love from Above, poetry, sin

Tagged as , , ,

November 24, 2008 · 10:00 pm

Apples of Gold–Missing the Wife of My Youth

I am like an ancient apple tree

That knows innately April is nigh.

The sap still wants to rise,

But no white blossoms smile at passersby,

Enticing them to breathe our joy

And taste the promise of our love.

The sun still frowns, begrudging a ray or two.

So come back soon and with you bring the latter rain,

That the  storehouse of every heart

May overflow with  apples of gold.

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

Leave a comment

Filed under husbands and wives, love, marriage, poetry

Tagged as , , , ,

November 22, 2008 · 4:09 pm

You Just Can’t Fight the Love*–My Testimony in Song

I once was a lost and bitter young man

Till Christ showed me He’s the way.

The way for a man to be like God is

Doing what He did.

And what did He do but give up His life

That other people might live.

And compassion like that is from above,

And I couldn’t fight the love.

So I gave up my life, and He gave me His.

Now I don’t sin anymore,

For “he that is dead is freed from sin.”

There’s only love now within.

And God and His love obeys all His laws

Inside me, loving neighbor as self.

And action like this is from above,

And you just can’t fight the love.

Until that day you hear the Master say,

“I want to make you my son.”

And, oh, that light from up above,

And you just can’t fight the–

You’d better not fight the–

You just can’t fight the love.     Kenneth Wayne Hancock

 

* {I wrote this song back in 1973.  Someday I’ll record it on You Tube and share it.}

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Love from Above, poetry, sons of God

Tagged as , , , ,

July 12, 2008 · 5:12 pm

“Forgive Us Our Debts”–Love Is All We Owe

     We owe mankind only one thing–love.  In the “Lord’s Prayer,” Christ is teaching us that loving others is all that we should owe anyone.  As the princes and princesses of the King, we are held to that high standard.  Owe no man any thing, but to love one another (Romans 13:8).

     God the King is Love, and we His children are born of His nature, which is love (I John 4:8, 16).  Loving others, then, is how we pay our debts. 

     So when the Savior, in teaching us to pray, tells us to say, “And forgive us our debts,” He want us to mean this: Forgive us Father, for the times we didn’t love others the way You love them.  And when Christ instructs us to say, “As we forgive our debtors,” He wants us to mean this: Father, grant us a forgiving heart to all who do not love us as You love us.  He did tell us, “Forgive and it shall be forgiven you” (Luke 6:37).

     To love one another–this is one of the “new commandments” Christ gave us.  “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34).

     Loving one another is the sign that God resides in us.  “If we love one another, God dwells in us, and His love is perfected in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (I John 4:12).  The caveat: we cannot love one another with the agape “love from above” if we do not have His Spirit within us.  Human love will only stretch so far and then it snaps ugly on somebody. 

     Love is the fruit produced from the sap (Holy Spirit) within us, the branches.  And we cannot be grafted in to the vine (Christ) until we go through the death, burial, and resurrection experience with Him {Read more on this in my book The Unveiling of the Sons of God at   http://www.yahwehisthesavior.com/sonsintro.htm }.  We must be “raised to walk in a newness of life” through faith in God’s promise to give us a new heart and a new spirit if we put to death our old sinful self on the cross with Christ (6:1-6).  When we receive His Spirit into our hearts, then the love will start flowing down and through us to others (See post, “Love From Above, Down and Through” at https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/love-from-above-down-and-through/ ).

     The “debts” spoken of in the “Lord’s Prayer” is much more than money or material things.  It is spiritual love that we owe each other.  We owe mankind a heart of love in gratitude to God for the love He showed us by providing the Sacrifice, the Lamb of God, and thereby giving us a way to escape sin and corruption.  It is now about Him channeling Himself (Love) through us on out to others. 

     These things should be in mind when we pray to our Father, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

2 Comments

Filed under agape, children of God, cross, crucified with Christ, death of self, love, Love from Above, prayer, princes and princesses of God, resurrection, sons and daughters of God, The Lord's Prayer

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

April 27, 2008 · 12:48 pm

Unrequited Love–The Ultimate Heartbreak

     I have a confession to make.  I cried today.  Unrequited love–life’s great theme seen in our literature, arts, and song.  It gets you every time, this “loving someone and that love not returned in kind.”

     I was listening to Jose Luis Perales and Alejandro Fernandez sing Perales’s “Por que’ esta soledad” (Why This Loneliness?).  I was galloping with the country rock rhythm, at once soaring with the music and yet saddened by the lyrics.  A rough translation of some of the words:

     WHEN I SEE YOU LEAVE AT HIS SIDE/ Cuando te veo ir a su lado/

SMILING SO HAPPY, CARESSING HIM/ sonriendo tan feliz, acariciandolo,

HANGING SHAMELESSLY FROM HIS WAIST/ colgada sin pudor de su cintura…

AND ME, SO IN LOVE WITH YOU/ Y yo enamorado de ti

IN LOVE JUST LIKE THE FIRST DAY WHEN I DIDN’T KNOW THE MOST BITTER SIDE OF LOVE/ AND I ASK MYSELF, WHAT HAPPENED TO US?  ALL THE TENDERNESS I GAVE YOU/

WHY THIS LONELINESS?/  Por que’ esta soledad?

     And at that instant, I thought of the greatest of unrequited loves the world has ever known–God loving mankind, and it not returned in kind.  And that’s what took the catharsis to the next level where my eyes got wet, the tears fell, and the heart broke.

     These words came to mind.  He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not…He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not…(John 1-10-11; Isaiah 53:3). 

     I needed this type of catharsis.  It hurts when our halting overtures of love are not returned in kind.  If we will multiply that pain by one thousand, then perhaps we might get a glimpse into the heart of God, into the ultimate heartbreak.  And that is a good place for us to be.     Kenneth Wayne Hancock     

    

.

 

 

2 Comments

Filed under Christ, love, Love from Above, mind of Christ

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,