Jesus said, “Therefore [because He was leaving this world] you too now have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one takes your joy away from you. And in that day you will ask Me no question. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you shall ask the Father for anything, He will give it to you in My name. Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be made full. These things I have spoken to you in figurative language; an hour is coming when I will speak no more in figurative language, but will tell you plainly of the Father. In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will request the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from the Father. I came forth from the Father, and have come into the world; I am leaving the world again, and going to the Father,” John 16:22-28.
What a Wonderful Counselor Jesus now is to us, telling us plainly of the Father, that we may know Him and worship Him with complete trust in His love for us. And what a Wonderful Father we have who sent Jesus to atone for our sins, and raised us up with Him into His holy kingdom, giving us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them we might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.
Our gratitude alone should propel us to keep our focus on His beloved son Jesus, and not allow differences of opinions, or doctrines, or any other such thing to take the eyes of our hearts off of Him. He, like His Father, is love; pure, unadulterated love. As we continually keep our focus on Jesus, the love of our Father flows in and through us like a river, saturating our hearts and spilling out to others, like streams winding and reaching all with whom we come into contact.
Walking this way our love for one another also grows; and as our love for one another grows, we will one day find that we have attained to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ.
As a result, we will no longer be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but we will all speak the truth in love, and grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. We must abide in Jesus to accomplish this. Our focus must remain on Him.
“No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.”
“But now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
Jon David Banks, God’s most unworthy servant
jondavidbanks.com 