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Bill Stockham | PentecostalTheology.com
“WHOEVER LOVES PLEASURE WILL BECOME POOR; whoever loves wine and olive oil will NEVER BE RICH.” (Prov. 21:17) [What is it that captures our heart? What are we devoted to? What do we spend most of our time doing? Do we know that our Abba Father wants to be THE MAIN FOCUS IN OUR LIVES?] “Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. DELIGHT YOURSELF IN THE LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psa. 37:3, 4) [What we desire, is to simply have what we want that is a normal reaction to any of our needs in this life; love, food and a safe place to live. What about our delights? A Delight: is something that brings EXTREME SATISFACTION and GREAT PLEASURE! That’s the place the Lord wants in our relationship with Him! When the Lord is the source of our extreme satisfaction and great pleasure, he will give us the desires of our heart!!] “Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your RIGHTEOUS REWARD shine like the dawn, your VINDICATION like the noonday sun.” (Psa. 37:5-6) [The Lord wants to be the source of our delight he wants us to commit our lives to Him and to trust in Him! What is His reaction to this kind of dedication to Him? He will give us the desires of our heart, He will bless us with righteous rewards and He will vindicate (justify) us: to show that we should not be blamed for our sin. To show that we ARE NOT GUILTY! From the very beginning we have been instructed to:] “Love the LORD your God with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul and with ALL your strength.” (Deut. 6:5) [Jesus wanted to make this commandment perfectly clear!] “One of the teachers of the law came and…asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is THE MOST IMPORTANT?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with ALL YOUR HEART and with ALL YOUR SOUL and with ALL YOUR MIND and with ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’ (Mark 12:28-30) [Love is the foremost affection of the soul; the love of God is the foremost grace in the transformed soul! Love is the first and GREAT THING that God demands from us, and therefore the first and great thing that we should DEVOTE to him. It must be a singular and unmatched love, we must love him more than anything else; this way the “stream” of our affections must entirely run. The heart must be united in love to God, not divided. Notice that Jesus adds: with ALL YOUR MIND, so our “thinking” will change as well!] “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And THAT IS WHAT WE ARE! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” (1 John 3:1)
