Self-love and God-love can’t coexist. Now you might say, “Wait a minute John you recently were calling us to love ourselves?!” There’s a big difference in a loving of ourselves in respect, honor and grace and the exclusive self-focus that isn’t love at all. That false self-love is selfish, entitled and exclusive. In actuality, these two expressions are polar opposites. And in the end-times the love of MOST will become cold and we will become false lovers of self.
Our temptation in seeing the wickedness of the world is to self-protect, which is cold love. The funny thing about false self-love is that when I indulge it, I become a part of the wickedness I’m trying to avoid. I think about it like this: cold love is a cold heart that has cut itself off from the Source of ALL love, which is God.
The Love Of Most Will Become Self Love
If we don’t have the presence of Love in our lives, we’ll begin to compensate ourselves with false self-love. Because self-love isn’t love, we believe love has failed us, making us bitter, angry, and aggressive. This concoction of fury is a cauldron of wickedness, and more and more this is what we’re finding in our world—cold hearted, self-protective, selfish people. This is cold love!
At times I’ve lived loveless, and it’s miserable for me and for everyone I encounter. What promises to be securing only makes me vulnerable to the enemy. A heart is required to stay open in order for it not to grow cold. There are masses of cold hearts retreating to save themselves in the face of this loveless world. Yet if I close my heart, I join the source of the problem—the love of most growing cold!
Catastrophes, false prophets, loveless angry people, and the increase of lawlessness will precede Christ’s return. With this in mind, I can’t meet our loveless world with loveless self-protection. Revival will come before Jesus’ return and those in His Love will recognize and receive Him. Jesus comes for those who have Love for God, true love of self and Love for others.
Cold Love of Most Versus Christ’s Love
Christ came as the Lamb—vulnerable, unguarded, and sacrificial. Christ loved in the face of vehement hatred. This didn’t make Him a doormat; He was just dependent on the Father. Christ was indwelt by the Father’s agape love towards a hateful world. Jesus now wishes to indwell me with the very same love for my world.
As people become self-consumed and self-serving, entitled and violent, His Spirit in me can be different. I’m dependent on His life to express His love towards the unlovely, but he who endures shall be saved. His love and joy makes this world delightful, not only for me, but also for those who encounter Him through me.
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. As I have loved you, you should also love one another.”
John 13:34
Revival is found in LOVE! It is when I come out of my self-protective shell to love a loveless world that I become part of the wave of revival. In the end, the love of most will grow cold. But in the face of this self-protective wickedness, there will be a company of lovers who will live openhearted and safe in the Father’s will. I choose to be one of their company!
I Don’t Love
Note: My self-life produces only self-love. John can’t love! Love for self is the only thing that comes out of me. But as I live dependent on God, I’ll see His Life and Love expressed through me. I’m literally to be a dead man walking (Galatians 2:20) in order to see the Life and Love of Christ. His Love and Life is the power of our end-time revival not mine!
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Galatians 2:20
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4:9-11
