The Following is an excerpt from Bishop Quintin Moore’s Book “Love the Heartbeat of Christianity” and and excerpt from Bishop Moore’s current sermon series “BreakOut”
Modern Christianity has elevated the written word so high that it has removed the need for people to have an encounter with God. Modern Christians replaced relationship with for rules and regulations. Jesus said, “You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want.”
The scriptures are given to reveal, to led us to the Christ. The One who was and is God’s Love revealed to us. If the Church is to recover her role within society and fulfill her assignment to witness to the world, she must have heart surgery and remove the blockages that have hindered her from receiving the love of God and from loving the Lord and each other. Paul had his heart jump started on the road to
Listen to these words: “If I acted crazy, I did it for God; if I acted overly serious, I did it for you. Christ’s love has moved me to such extremes. His love has the first and last word in everything we do.” He admits that his world was totally overcome with the love of Christ.
Love took complete control of his living. It was the driving force of his life. Love was the energy of all that Paul said and did throughout the journey of his life. He very clearly states that the heart of a Christian is to be filled with love: “…the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
Nearly all of the other Apostles have similar things to say about the subject. Peter says, “Above all things have fervent love for each other.”
ABOVE ALL THINGS!
Peter made it very clear. It is not your doctrine, your denomination, or your degrees that will give you the life that you seek; it is love! Peter says to make love your first priority. Focus on it. Don’t let anything take its place. HAVE FERVENT LOVE!
Wow! Do not just love, but have fervent, unceasing love. Never take a break from loving each other. Why? “… Love covers a multitude of sins.” Lord knows we all need a covering. Peter is very clear; nothing else even comes close to love. The world has offered counterfeits. Even religion has bowed to the demand for new fads and fashions, for the latest and the newest. But Peter and Paul were moved with passion by the love the Master revealed to them. Love is our passion. It stirs and controls us to live beyond the status quo of the culture. It drives us to be reckless and radical. It forces us to love those whom the world and religious people reject and neglect.
Love demands justice for dying children. Love does not just feed the hungry but redistributes the wealth of the world by forgetting the debts of all and restoring the land to the original owners. (the essence of the year of Jubilee)
Remember the last question that Jesus asked Peter? “Do you love me?” Jesus knew that Peter knew He was the Christ, but the question now is, do you love Me?’ Not once but three times Jesus asks this question. Why? I think He was driving the point home, deep into Peter’s heart.
No wonder Peter says, “ABOVE ALL THINGS HAVE LOVE.”
John the Beloved, goes even further: “He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.” Very simply, to know God is to know love. If you don’t love, then you don’t know God. Only those who love know God. The one who laid his head on the chest of the Lord, the one who had listened to the beating heart of the Master, says very clearly God is Love. God does not have love, no, His very nature is love and Jesus is the revelation of the Father’s nature. John challenges us to step out of our reasoning and step into relationship.
The very heartbeat of the Christian life is Love.
Without real God-love, our hearts can never beat with the Life of God. That is why each of the apostles goes to such extremes about the love of God. They heard the Lord’s answer to the question. “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” His reply was very direct and every one of the Apostles heard His answer.
“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
All the Law and the Prophets rely upon these two commandments. In other words, all the other commandments are built upon or spring from these two. Over the last five hundred years the church at large has focused on everything but these two. The Body of Christ is separated and weak because of the differences of opinions about everything from music style to baptism. Rather than loving God and each other we have majored on methods and interpretations.
In Christ’s day men were working their way to Heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments, and the hundreds of others that they had manufactured out of them. It is not much different today. People are still searching for the right doctrine or denomination. These arguments have separated the very family that Jesus died to create. Today people are looking for the right Christian formula that will guarantee success and heaven to them. Unaware that heaven is within and that success cannot be measured except within the heart of ones soul, humanity continually seeks to acquire by human effort that which can only be received as a gift from God.
Into this world of rules and regulations, an unlearned rabbi from
Any attempt to become righteous without love is futile. However, I want to quickly caution you, your behavior alone will not open up the doors of heaven for you. (How many people do you know who perform all the right things but don’t really love people?). This little book is a cry in the wilderness for a return to Love. But in no way do I want you to interpret it as a call for merely behavioral change. The change that is needed must be the results of a heart change that has been and continues to be the work of the Holy Spirit. You and I can do nothing on our own, but empowered by the Father’s Spirit we can be and do all things.
We are created by “love,” for “love.” Only the reception of unconditional love will bring us into our fullness as a created being. The enemy does not want any of us to receive that “love.” So he established “strongholds,” in our minds that keep us from being able to believe or receive the “love that is God.” Those false perceptions of who we are and who God is are to be destroyed by the “truth,” of who God is and who we are. He desires to reveal His love to us.
God desires to break into our lives that He might break us out of the limitations that has held us back for generations, I believe that His love is going to break through all the barriers that have been erected in our lives and in our regions. There is a revolution of love that is breaking out right now. So join the revolution and start loving yourself and others and God.
