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52 Days of Building the 2nd Wall through the Word and Wisdom The Law of Liberty Day 8 – May 21, 2013 We are in our 2nd week of Building the 2nd wall around our families, churches, communities and nations. We pray you are digging deeply into God’s Word and letting it ignite a passion to know more of His Word for yourselves and those you have been praying for. We spent last week focusing on Psalm 19:7-14, and now we will turn our focus to Psalm 119. This week we are to read Psalm 119:1-24. This is divided into three sections of 8 verses each. Please read and pray these scriptures every day. There is great power when we personalize the scriptures and pray them back to the Lord. Here is an example from verses 9-16: O Lord, how can I keep my way pure? You say by keeping it according to Your word. Help me Lord to seek you with all my heart; do not let me wander from Your commandments. Please help me to treasure Your Word in my heart, so I may not sin against You. Lord, I praise You, O LORD; please teach me Your statutes. Lord, I desire to be skilled in Your Word so that I may tell others of Your ordinances and testimonies that I have found great joy in. Your Word is a treasure to me. Lord, help me to take the time to focus my thoughts to meditate on Your precepts and to respect all Your ways. I long to delight in all of Your statutes. Come Holy Spirit and help me not forget Your Word. Our memory verse for this week is: Psalm 119:10 “With my whole heart I have sought You; Oh, let me not wander from Your commandments!” Yesterday we studied the royal law of love, and the Lord is still revealing His laws to us as perfect laws that convert the souls of men. Today we will look at the law of Liberty as it relates to the Royal Law of Love. James 2:12 “So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty.” Liberty - eleutheria - Freedom from slavery, independence, absence of eternal restraint. God’s love sets us free from the bondage of our pain and then as we love others with this same love, we can lead them out of their pain. Many times we have shared, “hurting people hurt people”. We must see the liberty that the Word and action of His love brings to the heart of man. The perfect law is to love, which causes us to have a free heart and soul that will freely love others under all conditions. Galatians 5:13 -14 "For you brethren, have been called to liberty (freedom from the flesh) only do not use liberty as an opportunity of the flesh, but through love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The love of God helps us set others free in their hearts, not to freedom to put others under the law of flesh. Too many times Christians read about God’s unfailing love and think in their minds that God will continue to forgive their fleshly desires and sins. But this wrong thinking leads to bondage. It is their wounded hearts of unforgiveness, past hurts, abuse, and many other emotional pains that cloud keep them from freedom. But the law is clear and perfect; it is in God’s LOVE and a deep and abiding relationship with Him that we are set free. Please read Romans 13:8-14 These scriptures make it very clear; we are to love one another, and love is the fulfillment of the law. Next time you wonder, “what does God want me to do”, remember this truth and choose to love. Ask God what that will look like and choose to walk in His love towards all men! We are in the 11th hour; the time is drawing near for our Savior Jesus Christ to return. It is high time that we awake out of our spiritual slumber and cast off all the deeds of darkness that still keep us in bondage. We must walk properly and make no provision for our flesh. The Lord wants us to walk in this law of liberty and that is love. When we live in the flesh and let it dictate our choices, we are in bondage to a cruel taskmaster, who will not let us keep the perfect law of love. Last week we saw where Psalm 19:7 speaks of this perfect law that converts the soul; that changes our life and the lives of those around us who do not know this love. This perfect law is carried out only through love. Galatians 6:2 “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” The law of Christ is to love one another. This was the true heart of Christ as He expressed His passion for loving one another with His disciples. John 13:34-35 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also have love for one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” A disciple is one who follows the teachings of another. In order to be a disciple of Christ, we must have a teachable heart. We must not be arrogant and think we know all we need to know about the Word of God. Even if we take all eternity, to study God’s Word, there will still be treasures He wants to reveal to us. There is an unfathomable depth to God’s Word that we must understand and appreciate. With our teachable heart we must remember that loving others often requires us to suffer and to be tested with various trials. We must constantly remind each other that the trials we are going through are to produce things of great value, like perseverance, character, hope, and love! Roman 5:3-5 "And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character, and character; hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. “ We cannot love without the Holy Spirit in our hearts! John 14:15-16 “If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever.” This love God gives us through the Holy Spirit to give out to others is a very special love. The Greek word for this kind of love is agape. Agape love is an undefeatable kindness and an unconquerable goodwill that always seeks the highest good of the other person, no matter what he does. The enemy cannot come between us and our brothers when God pours out His Agape love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. This love has been poured into our hearts during the times when we have persevered through in our prayers and difficult times of testing. Agape love is a self-giving love that gives freely without asking for anything in return. We can love this way because of the trust we have in God, the hope we have in Him, and His hope will never disappoint us. Jesus spent so much time sharing Divine Love with His disciples because it is the foundation of us coming to an intimate relationship with Him and then partnering with Him to bring this love to others. Divine love should be our ultimate standard of conduct. Please read Mark 12:28-34 Jesus is teaching a scribe about which commandments are the most important. He starts out by saying the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Father God has one heart and it is filled with love and unity. He is one with the Son and the Holy Spirit. He wants us to have the same love and unity with Them and with each other. In order to do this, we must love The Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves. I am truly that we cannot love God or anyone else until with let Him change our hearts through the healing power of the Holy Spirit. Only then will we be able to walk by God’s law of love, and to walk in unity with Him and each other. This scribe with all of his intellectual knowledge was finally getting this truth into his heart with understanding, as he repeats the commandments of the Lord. You can see him putting two and two together in his mind as remembers all the commandments he had been taught. The Old Testament commandments of obeying the LAW were colliding with the New Testament commandments of LOVE. He was finally seeing that LOVE is the fulfillment of the law and the covenant God made to us. His heart was being set free because of his understanding of the perfect law. This perfect law was changing (converting) His mind, will and emotions. The scribe realizes that loving God and loving others was more important than all the works of the burnt offerings and sacrifices. This story and commandments were repeated in Mathew 22:34-40. Remember, God repeats things that are very important for us to know. In Deuteronomy 6:4-9, God tells His people the same thing. The Jews were instructed to write these truths down and post them where they would be remembered each day, as they were to repeat them twice a day. This was part of the Shema, the oldest fixed prayers of the sons of Israel. As we repeat God’s word over and over again, it will get into our minds and into our hearts. We must not be like the scribes and Pharisees who studied and memorized the Word of God but never let it become a way of life. We must strive to walk out this perfect law, because nothing is more important than the perfect law of LOVE. DIGGING DEEPER: Please read and study James 1:22-25. Look at the two words that are contrasted in this passage of Scripture, being a doer or a hearer of the Word. What do these concepts mean? Think of times when you have done each of these things, and what were the results? If we are to be a doer of the Word, we are to look, continue, and remember (not forget) the Word. Let God search your heart as to what you need to change in your way of approaching God and His Word; so you can walk in the perfect law of love and be blessed. Personalize this scripture and pray it back to God, as a prayer of repentance and a prayer of declaring your changed heart to God.