EXCEEDING LOVING GOD By: Dr. Ife Bamidele

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Love can be taught, you can learn love. Love is an act, and it is a gift from God. Love can be difficult. In spite of our weaknesses and incompleteness, God still loves. Jeremiah 31:3, “The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” The exceeding loving of God transcends what you feel about yourself or what you are going through currently. God loves you. 1 John3:1, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.” 1 John 4:16, “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” God loves you. Whatever you are going through now, whatever you are feeling now, God loves you. I am sure that is why our father in the lord, Bishop Mike Bamidele has asked me to speak on this topic. I am one of those people who God loves. Because if you know me, you know that I am a very, very, very troublesome. If you have someone troublesome in your life, just picture me and that person and God will bring that person to his knees, and show him His love. If God can show me love, He will show you love, no matter the circumstances around your life. His love transcends.

So you cannot doubt that God loves you because that is who He is. That is His nature, it cannot be anything else.

WHAT EXCEEDING LOVE OF GOD CAN DO?

1. God’s love will give you exceeding greatness. Genesis 37:3-4, “3Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours. 4And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.”
2. God’s love will bring exceeding greatness and sometimes adversaries. Genesis 42:5-7, “5And the sons of Israel came to buy corn among those that came: for the famine was in the land of Canaan. 6And Joseph was the governor over the land, and he it was that sold to all the people of the land: and Joseph’s brethren came, and bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the earth. 7And Joseph saw his brethren, and he knew them, but made himself strange unto them, and spake roughly unto them; and he said unto them, Whence come ye? And they said, From the land of Canaan to buy food.” It may not look like it today. Your current situation may not show God loves you. But just know that God loves you, no matter what you are going through now. Joseph was sold in slavery by his brothers. In Genesis 39:20, his master put in prison for the offence he did not commit. How did you feel Joseph will feel when he was sold into slavery and cast into prison? No love, just hatred. Exceeding great people have oppositions. Jesus Christ, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph Daniel and the three Hebrew men faced oppositions.
3. The exceeding love of God gives us greatness beyond things. Many times when we talk about exceeding greatness, one of the challenges we have is that our minds go to: my clothes, my shoes, my car, my house etc. The exceeding greatness goes beyond material things, because many times those are our prayer points. The exceeding greatness of God exceeds things. Luke 9:38-43, “38And, behold, a man of the company cried out, saying, Master, I beseech thee, look upon my son: for he is mine only child. 39And, lo, a spirit taketh him, and he suddenly crieth out; and it teareth him that he foameth again, and bruising him hardly departeth from him. 40And I besought thy disciples to cast him out; and they could not. 41And Jesus answering said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you, and suffer you? Bring thy son hither. 42And as he was yet a coming, the devil threw him down, and tare him. And Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and healed the child, and delivered him again to his father. 43And they were all amazed at the mighty power of God. But while they wondered everyone at all things which Jesus did, he said unto his disciples,”

God loves you and He wants you to love Him back with all your strength and might.

Matthew 18:1-4, “1At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 2And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, 3And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. 4Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

God wants us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves Job 42:10-16, “10And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. 11Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and everyone an earring of gold. 12So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. 13He had also seven sons and three daughters. 14And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Kerenhappuch. 15And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren. 16After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, even four generations.”

Prayer:

1. Lord Jesus, we thank you for this day. We thank You because of Your mercies that never fail. We thank You because of Your peace in our hearts. We thank You because of Your love, the exceedingly great love towards us.
2. I thank You for Your exceeding great love to me.
3. Oh Lord, I trust Your exceeding great love, show me Your exceeding great love in the name of Jesus Christ.