Seven Things God Loves Part 5

Seven things God Loves - Part 5

Walking in Covenant Relationship

There are seven things God loves:

1. A people who are Presence Led

2. Those who live in Settled Confidence

3. People who fulfill their call to His purposes in ministry

4. Those who walk together in freedom as children of God

5. Those who walk with God

and each other in covenant relationship

6. Those who respond to the mandate

to change the world for Christ

7. Those who raise the next generation to live for the Lord.

“The truest thing in the universe is that God loves us.

The Scriptures say, ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8b)

he truth of God’s love was nailed to the cross and put on display for the world to see.

His love is real.”
Pastor Thom Gardner
Healing the Wounded Heart pg. 41
Destiny Image, Shippensburg, Pa.

God’s great desire is to see us:

1. Walk in covenant relationship with Him, and one another.
Covenant relationships are sacred to God.

In Old Testament times covenants were established by the shedding of blood.
The sacrificed animal was cut apart and the pieces were laid side by side.

The parties involved with the covenant walked through the pieces of the slayed animal.
In doing so the parties were proclaiming before God,

“If I break my covenant then may this (death) happen to me.”

Covenants with God are serious and binding:
“When you make a vow to God, do not delay in fulfilling it.
He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow.”
Ecclesiastes 5:4 NIV

Covenants with men are equally serious.
When the Gibeonites lied to the children of Israel they made a covenant with them.

Notice how they reacted after discovering that the covenant was made

while they had been deceived:

“Three days after they made the treaty with the Gibeonites,
the Israelites heard that they were neighbors, living near them.
So the Israelites set out and on the third day came to their cities:
Gibeon, Kephirah, Beeroth and Kiriath Jearim.
But the Israelites did not attack them, because the leaders of the assembly
had sworn an oath to them by the LORD, the God of Israel. The whole assembly grumbled against the leaders, but all the leaders answered,

‘We have given them our oath by the LORD, the God of Israel,

and we cannot touch them now.’”
Joshua 9:16-19 NIV (my emphasis bold)

2. Believers need to have a long term view and commitment
to God’s kingdom principles and to His children

“Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the LORD and honored his name.”
Malachi 3:16 NIV

We live in an instant mashed-potato world that thinks all problems can be solved in an hour,

like they are on so many television shows.

The truth of the matter is that we are an impatient people.

I have been praising God this year that my right knee is virtually pain-free. For eight years I struggled with pain every day, walking much of the time with a pronounced limp Iwas virtually handicapped when it came to walking up and down steps. Many a day I cried out to God for an instantaneous creative miracle, and it seemed to many that I waited in vain. In faith I persisted, and today I have my miracle – pain free! Now I didn’t get the kind of miracle I was seeking, but God will be God.
About a year ago my senior pastor came to me with a Word from the Lord. He said that he had been praying for me and the Lord said to tell me that “With perseverance and patients comes Godly character.”

To be quite honest, that wasn’t the Word I was hoping to hear, yet in retrospect I am so glad that I walked it out in faith… knowing that God’s ways and thoughts are higher than my own desires.

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:9 NIV (my emphasis bold)

We need to be willing to wait on God. “He is seldom early, but He is never late!”

(I don’t remember to whom goes the credit for this quote.)

Likewise we need to be patient with one another as we all mature from grace to grace into the fullness of Christ. None of us have arrived as Ephesians 4 Christians! So when we see each other falling short we need to apply Galatians 6:1

“It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
Ephesians 4:11-13 NIV (my emphasis bold)

“Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.
Galatians 6:1 NIV (my emphasis bold)

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