Love One Another for Revival to Come

Last Wednesday I wrote about Love as it relates to revival. I searched so many documents from the great revivalists, but something was missing. Most of them stated that we must have love for God to see revival happen, but what they all failed to mention was love for my neighbor. I’m not speaking of the love that expresses itself in my delivering a casserole in times of grief; this is kindness, but love? Maybe not. What I’m speaking about is the Love of God that expresses itself horizontally—His Love reaching through me to others.

Love One Another

Dear friends, we must love each other because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born from God and knows God. The person who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, because God is love.
1 John 4:7-8 GW

I’ve had a hard enough time receiving and responding to the LOVE that comes to me from my Creator, but unfortunately, this is not the only love I need. I must love others with His love, too. Yes, that Love must reach out to the unlovely, unlovable, and unloving. I must be LOVE for revival to come. I must risk my heart, my life, and my self to Love God and others.

Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:37-40 NLT

Love for God and Love One Another

Love is the only force that can bring in true lasting change and revival. But it’s not only loving God with His Love, it’s also loving others with that same Love! I’m not allowed to live in a little “love bubble” where God and I are in love. I’m not afforded some place where I go to remain unsullied by love and involvement with other sinners. No, Love is my mandate and unless it is from, through, and about Love for God and His children, my revival is just impotence masking itself as importance. Revival comes to the ground zero of Love.

In my research, the great revivalists of history at best failed to speak about love for one another, or worst, missed the clear mandate to LOVE one another at all. His true Love must come through us in order for us to see revival. It must exude from our lives and be directed towards our God and His world.

Yet a problem arises that prevents us from experiencing true revival. It’s an onslaught against Love and revival. Matthew 24 speaks about it.

“And because lawlessness will abound, the love of most will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved.”
Matthew 24:12-13

Revival is the only hope for us to see our corrupt world change. But it’s that very corruption which tempts us to enter into revival’s antithesis—cold love. In my next post, I will show what cold love is and how we resist becoming one of the “most” whose love has grown cold.