Love Makes the World Go Round


Fellow	ship > Love Makes the World Go Round

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Popular music and the Bible do not often agree, but both seem to consent that love makes the world go round. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have Everlasting Life" (John 3:16). "God is Love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him" (1John 4:16). It is amazing that the Truth that love makes the world go round should find such a common expression in the popular songs of the world without a measurable increase in goodwill towards humankind and without a perceptible decrease in hatred and war. "5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the Earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And it repented the LORD that He had made man on the Earth, and it grieved Him at His heart" (Genesis 6:5-6). The simple solution to the seeming agreement between popular music and the Bible is that each means something different when they say that love makes the world go round. "Woe unto them that call evil Good, and Good evil; that put darkness for Light, and Light for darkness; that put bitter for Sweet, and Sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5:20).

An honest analysis of popular music would conclude that though its lyrics generally advocate love and not hatred, they most often have conspicuously omitted reference to the Author of Love, which is God alone. "10 Herein is Love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the Propitiation for our sins... 19 We love Him, because He first loved us" (1John 4:10,19). The failure of popular music to bring about the love that makes the world go round means that its love does not affect beyond the level of physical attraction or ordinary self-interest. "No man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it" (Ephesians 5:29). We know that Love is God sending His Son to die for us, and we also know that Repentance (turning away from sin) and Faith (confiding in God) yields the Gift of Eternal Life. But, what is our way of saying to God that we love Him? "15 If ye love Me, keep My Commandments... 21 He that hath My Commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him" (John 14:15, 21). Obedience to God is not a drudge, but our happy duty! "26 A New Heart also will I give you, and a New Spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. 27 And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My Statutes, and ye shall keep My Judgments, and do them" (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

More often than admitted, the Professed Church has practically omitted obedience to God from its working definition of the love that makes the world go round and has justifiably brought upon itself the condemnation, "Thou hast left thy First Love" (Revelation 2:4). Rather than fretting over the ignorance of the world to the Crucified Saviour, the Professed Church must "repent, and do the first works" (2:5). Only then will we "see clearly to cast out the mote out of [our] brother's eye" (Matthew 7:5). True, the world may never admit the Truth of the priority of God in the Love that makes the world go round, but Jesus already advised us of the fact that most would never listen. "13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: 14 because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matthew 7:13-14). We must instead be resolute like Jacob, i.e., "I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me" (Genesis 32:26), to be blessed with a life of the Love that makes the world go round. Seeking after Jesus, Who is the Expression of God's Love, we must stedfastly ignore anything and everything that draws us away from our necessity of personally following in "His steps" (1Peter 2:21). Laying hold of the empowering "Exceeding Great and Precious Promises" (2Peter 1:4), we will live by the Grace of God a life that communicates the Love that makes the world go round, 'til He calls us Home to Heaven.

"35 Who shall separate us from the Love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written, For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. 37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. 38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the Love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our LORD" (Romans 8:35-39).

Maranatha!

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