The Goal Is Love

 

The Righteous Requirement

Derek begins this study on revival by looking at some statements of Jesus relating to the importance of the law and how to fulfill it. What is “the righteous requirement of the law” written about in Scripture? It is love—to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. Are you prepared to fulfill the law?

 

A New Commandment

Today we will look at this command to love and the example Jesus gave His disciples. They were charged to love each other just as He had loved them. This is how the world will know that we are truly Christians. Derek then speaks to Christians who are called to teach or to preach, as he stresses that the biblical goal of their instruction should be love.

 

Faith, Works, and Love

Derek looks at the importance of love in the exercise of our faith and through the operation of spiritual gifts. If we are not using these gifts in an attitude of love, we are operating out of our flesh. This will not be profitable for us personally. We all must make love our aim.

 

Love Brought to Perfection

In today’s study, Derek relates an experience of the love of God that was poured out on him through prayer for a group of people in the Sudan. Then he begins to provide a list of steps that will bring God’s love to perfection in us. This he will do over the next few days in a succession of seven stages of character development.

 

Love Perfected and Unconfessed Sin

Finishing this week’s study, Derek goes over the last three stages of the “love walk.” He then confesses to having not loved as he ought to have many times, and leads us in a prayer asking forgiveness for failure to love one another as Jesus has loved us.