Love Is Giving Not Receiving

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Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God is Government called Your Daily Bread. Taken from Christ's teaching of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting scripture, but scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today's focus discussion will be on understanding love is giving, not receiving. Remember that love is giving, it is not receiving, it is not even offering, it is giving. When you love someone, you give time, attention, and all of yourself. To get a small glimpse of the Father's love, just imagine giving up your favorite child to die in the place of a heinous death row inmate. That is what he did for you. While you deserved to die for your sinful Torah breaking, the Father gave his only son to perish in your place. He also gave us his Torah and commandments so that we could love him and love other people. Ahava is actually the reason for the Torah. Love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments: do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet, and whatever other commandment, all are summed up by this love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law. Romans 13, verses 8 through 10. Ahava is the sum and goal of everything in the Bible. True Ahava is rooted in deep relationships. You cannot intimately love someone unless you intimately know them. We know Yahweh through his word. We connect with Yahweh through acting out his will. Our love for Yahweh is called obedience. Deuteronomy 11 1. Love Yahweh and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws, and his commands always. When you really love Yahweh, you give him every bit of your life. Your submission to the lifestyle of the Scriptures is the world's proof that we love him and are committed to Yahweh. This is how we are sure that we have come to know him, by keeping his commands. The one who says, I have come to know him, yet does not keep his commands, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, truly in him, the love of Yahweh is perfected. This is how we know we are in him. The one who says he remains in him should walk just as he walked. The Messiah said that we prove our love to Yahweh by obeying his commandments in John 14, verse 15. He also said that we show the world we are his disciples by our Ahava for one another. Acting kindly and showing goodness to other people is how unbelievers should be able to tell if we are righteous or not. James 2.8 says, If you really keep the royal law found in the scriptures, then love your neighbor as you love yourself. You are actually fulfilling the law of Yahweh when you carry someone's burdens. The Hebrew word for commandment is mitzvah. This term literally means good deed. When you obey the mitzvot, you are doing good deeds towards other people. When you are acting in love, just one simple small act of kindness is equal to all the sacrifices in the temple. Hear that again. When you are acting in love, just one simple small act of kindness is equal to all the sacrifices in the temple. Your gentleness to that special person in your family who drives you crazy is equal to perfectly observing the Sabbath, if love is your motivation. Keeping the commandments is how we walk in Yahweh's love in this dark world. If you keep my mitzvoth, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love, said Yeshua in John 15, verse 10. If you want to have the same oneness with Yahweh as the Messiah had, then you must love Yahweh by submitting to him. This is where love gets messy, though. There are literally thousands of mitzvoth commandments in the Bible. The sages of Judaism have counted 613 commands, Old Testament laws, just in the first five books of the Scriptures. A survey of the Newer Testament finds over 1,000 different and distinct directives, New Testament laws. With so much to do, where is a person to start? An answer to this important question can be found in Matthew 19. Here in this chapter, a man comes to Messiah and asks how he can inherit eternal life. The Savior tells him to keep the commandments and then specifically discusses the ten commandments with him. It seems that the big ten are a good starting place until you read a little further. The young man said that he was blameless in his observance. Yeshua said he lacked something. What could be wrong with a person who had not broken Yahweh's divine law? Well, Yeshua tested the man by telling him to sell all he had, show his love to the poor, and then become a disciple. The man went away sad. Even though he had perfect Torah observance, he lacked love. We never read of him again in the scriptures. Love must be our motivation for any Torah keeping. Our submission to the Ten Commandments has to start with a hava. Obedience without love is a lifeless religion that only leads to more death. Rules without relationships lead to rebellion. Indeed, if you keep the royal law prescribed in the Scripture, love your neighbour as yourself, you are doing well. But if you show favoritism, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the entire law, yet fails in one point, is guilty of breaking it all. For he who said, do not commit adultery also said, do not murder. So if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you are a lawbreaker. Speak and act as those who will be judged by the law of freedom. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has not shown mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. James 2, 8-13. How often do you look for opportunities to share the love of Yahweh with other people? Get this major point. When you love your neighbor, you are most like Yeshua. The Jewish Talmud tells of a man who came to a rabbi and said he would convert if the rabbi could teach him the whole Torah while he stood on one foot. The rabbi replied, Do to others what you want done unto you, for this is the whole of Torah. The man quickly converted, as he learned Torah from that one passage and that one foot. The letter of the law says, Do not murder, but the spirit of the Torah says, to not create any circumstances where another person could be harmed. This is loving your neighbor as you love yourself. We show our love to Yahweh through obedience to his commandments. Yahweh shows his love towards us through his grace. When a person is born again, they receive the Father's love through unmerited favor and mercy. Grace, or Shesed in Hebrew, is Yahweh's gift of love to us. We do not deserve it, and we cannot earn it. Like the love a mother shows to a newborn baby, Yahweh loves us, though we have done nothing but cause him pain. It is an unending love. The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness. When Israel sought for rest, Yahweh appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Jeremiah 31, verse 2-3. Yahweh's chesed should empower us to be faithful during the stress of life. He has said, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Again, Yahweh loves us by showering his grace upon us on good and bad days. Yahweh chose them and chose you because of his grace. Now you chose to love him daily by following his commandments. Deuteronomy 7 verses 7 through 9 tells us. Yahweh did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because Yahweh loved you and kept the oath. He swore to your forefathers, that he brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh King of Egypt. Know therefore that Yahweh is Elohim. He is faithful, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands. Accept the Torah as Yahweh's loving instructions for your life. Decide to love him by loving people and making Ahava your motivation. Do the mitzvoth to help others. An amazing Ahava story is found in Genesis 29, when Jacob worked for Rachel for many years. The years seemed to him but a few days, for the love he had for her. The Torah is not a burden when it is motivated by Ahava. Walking in faithful obedience should simply be the overflow of our love to Yahweh. In his book Mare Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, Do not waste your time bothering whether you love your neighbor, act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a favor, you will find yourself disliking him less. Love isn't about getting some feeling or fix, it is about giving devotion and time. It is better to give than receive. And when true love is found, a person is never the same. However, do you consider Yahweh as your true love? And now, Israel, what does Yahweh your Elohim require of you, but to fear Yahweh your Elohim, to have your walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve Yahweh your Elohim with all your lev and all your being, to guard the mitzvah of Yahweh and his rulings, which I commanded you this day for your good. Deuteronomy 10 verses 12 and 13. Moshe is saying that all Yahweh wants from Israel is love. He wants Israel to be devoted to him alone, he wants you. Think about it, just how many sermons have you heard on the subject of loving Yahweh? How many Messianic Bible studies have you attended when you discussed how to properly love the Creator? People will talk about tithing or church attendance, but truly little is studied on the issue of loving Yahweh. Ahava is the commandment that is most important in Yahweh's eyes. Yahweh wants his children to love him properly, and you shall Ahava the Master Yahweh with all your heart, and with all your being, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment, said Messiah Yeshua in Mark 12, verses 29 through 31. How do you love Yahweh? How exactly can you love someone you cannot see or touch? What does it mean to love him with all of your heart, being, and resources? To answer these questions, let us return again to the word love and better understand what Yahweh desires. First, take to mind that Yeshua never told us to love Yahweh. This is because he never spoke English. The Jewish Messiah spoke Hebrew and said to Ahta Yahweh. The puppy love of today's English is much different than the devotion Yeshua called for when he spoke in Hebrew. In modern thought, love is an emotion. The Hebrew concept of love is hugely different. Therefore, Ahafta Yahweh, your Elohim, and guard his charge, Deuteronomy 11, verse 1. In the Hebrew, love is connected directly with action and obedience. Again, the primitive root word ahav means to have affection, sexually or otherwise, love, like, to befriend, to be intimate. It brings to mind the idea of longing for or breathing for the Creator. Hebraically, ahava is a verb, it is an act of doing something, it is not just a feeling. Ahava is also connected to appetite. To ahava Yahweh is to crave him and his word. All throughout the Bible, Ahava is related directly to Torah. Obedience to what the Torah commands is the way mankind loves Yahweh. If you love me, obey my mitzvoth. If a man loves me, he will guard my words, and my Abba will love him, and we will come to him, and make our stay with him. Said Messiah Yeshua in John 14, verses 15 and 23. To Ahafta Yahweh, you must walk in submission to Yahweh's will and crave that your life is pleasing unto him. Torah study is the way to discover this path of meaning. Torah Chaim, literally the book Instructions for Living, is Yahweh's communication to the world. It is the ultimate repository for wisdom on how to succeed at marriage, parenting and community building, and fixing the world. That is because Torah is the mind of Elohim, how God thinks. The sign of successful Torah study is when it becomes an insatiable addiction. If something does not make sense, you will rack your brains to figure it out. And every time you succeed in working it out, the pleasure makes you want more and more. This level is called Ahavat Torah, true love of Torah. You become so overwhelmed that Torah study becomes your very essence and you want to absorb as much as you can. Torah study ingrains in us the idea that Elohim is the infinite source of all wisdom and defines the ultimate in meaning. Therefore, personal goals and desires cannot compare, and you will drop anything which is not consistent with the will of Yahweh, wrote one teacher. Our Torah says, You shall love Yahweh your Elohim with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your possessions. When you love Yahweh with all of your heart or lev, you are basically losing self to Torah. This is when your will is totally compliant to divine will in all areas of life. To love Elohim is not an emotional feeling. To love Elohim the way he desires us to love him means to totally give ourselves over to him, to surrender, to relinquish and to abandon ourselves to him, regardless of how we feel, what we think, or what we desire. It means to set aside our life so that his life can come forth from our hearts. A perfect scripture that sums up what it means to Ahava Yahweh is Matthew 16, verse 24. If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his execution stake and follow me, wrote Chuck Misler in his book The Way of Agape. Ahava means to give. When you love you give to others. Yahweh so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. This type of ahava changed the world. When you love in the same way, your world can change too. When you love Yahweh with all of your soul, you are reconnecting to the original intention of Torah. Yahweh created man to be in direct communication and following the mitzvot restores this fellowship. To love Yahweh is to obey Torah and therefore bridge the gap between man and the Almighty. When your actions line up with Yahweh's word, it is like your soul is returning to the Gan Eden. Compliance with the commandments or mitzvoth creates an attachment to the eternal. In fact, according to Strong's exhaustive dictionary, the root word to the term mitzvot or commandments is tsvah, which literally means to constitute or enjoin. The mitzvot of Torah enjoin Israel back to Yahweh. But if this is true, then the opposite is also true. Sin or Torah breaking separates humanity from the holy. Torahlessness reveals a lack of love for Yahweh. Don't miss this. Torahlessness reveals a lack of love for Yahweh. Sin is really an expression of love of self more than love for Yahweh. Loving Yahweh with all of your soul is returning to the ancient paths and living the word. It is becoming like Yeshua and being the word made flesh. This also means coming to grips with the issue of satisfaction. Remember that the word ahava suggests craving. People have an inward craving and desire to love, but they fill this void with love of stuff, or people, or self. When your soul is devoted to Yahweh, you accept the emet that Yahweh has not cheated us. The world only has an appearance of satisfaction, having money, fitting in, eating anything, and carefree living will never satiate your inner craving to love Yahweh and receive his love. Finally, to love Yahweh with all of your resources or possessions is to serve him with all that you have and all that you are. This type of ahava is deep. Yeshua once came in contact with a rich man who kept many of the mitzvot but did not fully devote himself to Yahweh. And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Tov master, what shall I do to inherit eternal Chaim? And Yeshua said unto him, Why do you call me Tov? No one is Tov except one that is Yahweh. You know the commandments, do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honour your Rubba and your mother. And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up. Now when Yeshua heard these things, he said to him, Yet you lack one thing, sell all that you have, and distribute unit to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me. And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful, for he was very rich. Luke 18, 18-23. The man had to do something, to sell all he had and follow Yeshua to prove his love for Yahweh. The proof is the actions, not just the words. Let us look again to a quote from Deuteronomy. Therefore, Ahavta Yahweh, your Elohim, and guard his charge and his commandments always. Deuteronomy, Devereum 11, verse 1. Here the Yemet, the truth is truly clear. To Ahavta Yahweh, you will obey his commandments, mitzvot always, no matter what it cost. If you really love Yahweh, you will obey him. Have you accepted a counterfeit in place of loving Yahweh? Are there areas in your life that you need to fully turn over to Yahweh? Do you wish to really love him, to really obey him? Paul wrote that these three remain Imuna, faith, hope, tikvah, and love ahava, and the greatest of these is Ahava. The main point of life is Ahava. You have been granted breath to love others and to love Yahweh. The word Ahava helps us to finally understand Yahweh's true plan of love. And though we have learned much, there is so much more in the Bible about Ahava. Do a word study on love from the Older and the Newer Testament, and find the real truth regarding this issue. Your life may never be the same. For Yahweh so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3 16. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of Yahweh, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2.20. Know therefore that Yahweh your Elohim is Elohim, he is the faithful Elohim, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands. Deuteronomy 7, 9. For Yahweh loves the just and will not forsake his faithful ones. Psalm 37, 28. I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me. Proverbs 8:17. This is how Yahweh showed his love among us. He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since Yahweh so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 1 John 4 verses 9-11. And so we know and rely on the love Yahweh has for us. Yahweh is love. Whoever lives in love, lives in Yahweh, and Elohim in him. 1 John 4 16. We love each other because he first loved us. If anyone says, I love Yahweh, yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love Yahweh, whom he has not seen. 1 John 4 verses 19 and 20. This is how we know who the children of Yahweh are, and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right, is not a child of Yahweh, nor is anyone who does not love his brother. 1 John 3.10. So be incredibly careful to love Yahweh your Elohim. Joshua 23, 11. Based upon our review of love, these last two days of the Hebrew word love, we find that love is not only the glue in humanity, but it is the embodiment of what makes up the entire universe. With the understanding from that review, let us now look at Scripture and see what it tells us. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of understanding. Love is giving, not receiving. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way.