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The Knitting of Our Hearts by David Nelson-BookletPosted: 2007-07-31 11:51:21 INTRODUCTION There is a great lack of love in the Church. People pretend they care about each other but the truth is when others are “out of sight, (they are) out of mind.” We don’t really care if others are close to God, love God, hear from God (unless we can use them to get “spiritual information” for our own advancement). Once we leave the church building or meeting place though we strongly pretend that we do care, do we really care if others live or die? Will we go to their funerals because we love them so much or because it is the expected social thing to do? If we will really be honest and admit the truth, we have walls between us that cause us to fear one another, be jealous and envious of one another, think negatively of other’s motives and actions, we are suspicious and skeptical of others, we don’t trust others, we don’t care if they are praising or loving God, and we don’t care if they are getting blessed. We don’t care what happens to them when they leave the church building or house meeting. Perfect love casts out (all) fear of one another. If we fear we have not yet been perfected in love. We fear when we are afraid to speak, pray, prophecy, share our hearts. We are not transparent, vulnerable, guileless, because we want to protect ourselves, we don’t want to be hurt by others. So we guard out hearts, we will not give our hearts to others (lest our hearts be broken by them). So, we wear masks and pretend, and say many words to others that we don’t really mean, even though we may have good intentions of following through, but because real love is not there we let our words, promises, and “love” fade with time. Hence, the phrase, “out of sight, out of mind.” If people were really in our hearts, “Absence would make the heart (and love) grow fonder and deeper.” We do not love each other as Jesus loved us, and we do not love each other (and we are not united in heart) as the Father loves the Son (and as they are one) (Jn. 13:34 and 17:26). The true, agape love (the Father’s heart) will have to come back into the true leaders (Mal. 4:6, the hearts of the fathers (true leaders and physical fathers) will turn to the children (the Church people and physical children). The leaders will then have true love and true hearts for the children of the Church and will persistently and methodically teach the Church true love. Or maybe it will be intercessors, or the least of the brethren, or anyone who will sit at the Lord’s feet and will learn of this love from God. And they will live it and teach it also. As wickedness increases and love decreases (grows colder) fear also increases. Fear of one another. People will be easily offended at what others do to them (or what they imagine others are doing to them) and so they will betray one another, talk behind one another’s backs, and allow wedges to be driven between themselves and others. (Friends, relatives, husbands and wives, parents and children, church splits, even divisions between Christians who at one time had very close relationships). The true Church, Remnant or Bride will be characterized by: agape (unconditional) love for each other and all people, sweetness of spirit, humility, transparency, acting without guile or pretense, openness, honesty, keeping their word, forbearing and forgiving of the faults and offenses of others, they will have generosity, hospitality, kindred spirits for the things of God, a sincere hunger for the things of God, desiring purity and holiness in their daily walks, welcoming strangers, befriending the lonely, unlovely, and those unwanted by others, kindness, gentleness, giving people the benefit of the doubt again and again and again, they will believe the best, hope for the best and endure all things done and said against them, they will not wish bad for anyone but will bless everyone, they will have oneness of heart with those who love God, never speaking negative about others, they will be lowly, teachable, tenderhearted, loyal friends (through all ups and downs), available, approachable, not in a hurry, easy to please, uncomplaining, fair, not a respecter of persons (favoring one over another), showing no partiality to rich or poor (popular or unpopular). PART I If you took a spiritual sewing needle with spiritual thread attached and pushed it through my heart and then took that same needle and put it through your heart and then put it through another person’s heart standing near us and pretty soon the Lord had about five or more people’s hearts tied together, then the Lord pulled on the needle and all the slack was taken out of the thread and he pulled our hearts and us together, this is what the Lord wants. And he wants to strengthen our ties, our relationships, and the knitting of our hearts. He wants all walls between our hearts to crumble and fall, he wants us to be honest and transparent with each other, with no guile or games or pretense. He wants no masks, no pretended love or saying we are “brothers and sisters” but really our blood relationships mean more to us than our spiritual relationships. Yes, the Lord loves it when each one of us is close to him on an individual level. He loves it when we worship him corporately and each of us becomes lost in him and in his ecstasy, but you know what he is longing for more than anything, not only individual love for him to grow deeper and deeper but our love for each other to grow deeper and deeper. Sometimes we are so selfish when we come to a church meeting or a big, spiritually hot conference with the best, most anointed speakers in the world and we want to learn something new or get a new revelation, and we want to be touched and we want a prophetic word for our lives and we want to fall on the ground in an ecstasy with the Lord, but then we get up, leave the room, go back to our private rooms not having interacted or really caring if others were touched or how close we were to them or how much deeper our love for them went. Jesus commanded and desired that we would love each other (Jn. 13:34), not with a shallow, superficial love but with the same love that he had for us. That is a big and deep love. “That you would love one another as I (Jesus) have loved you.” But the Church is in trouble in this area. There is not this kind of love in our Church services or in our daily lives. There are walls between us and the people we meet (even Christians). Yes, there are plenty of hugs and kisses and beautiful words but it is not the love that Jesus had for us. It also says in John, chapter 17 that as the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father that as they are one and united so we should be one with each other. It says in the last verse (vs 26) that as the Father loves the Son, that love should be in us for each other. (As the Father loves the Son?!) That we should be one or united is mentioned all through chapter 17 but love is only mentioned once in this chapter, only in verse 26. Both in John 13 and John 17 the love and the oneness and the unity and the closeness of our brother and sister relationships are to show the world that we are of God. But the world doesn’t see this love because we are not close enough to the Lord to have that kind of love birthed in us as yet (see the book, “Leaving Earth’s Gravity” for how to get close to God so that we can get this kind of love). (Also, see the book “Without Love We are Nothing.” Also, see the Lord and see His Word, and ask him to guide you). Here is what is going to happen. As you get closer and closer to the Lord he will transform your heart, and he will give you His love for others as never before (his heart and yearnings), and your heart will be enlarged and expanded to receive people and love them deeply. Then, get ready to enter the fellowship of his sufferings. Why sufferings? Because now you will enter his sufferings, the one who loves us so much and we do not love Him as He deserves or desires, the lover of our souls that longs and yearns over us for a deep relationship and we go day after day and even year after year in our shallow desire of Him. He is a wounded lover who longs for deep intimacy from every one of his children and even every person on the earth but his heart is broken as we don’t have the capacity to love him as he loves us. And so, as he changes us to love him and love others with a new fervor we will learn that others don’t understand our love and don’t have the same capacity to love us as we love them. In the 100+ prophecies from 1999-2003, the Lord has spoken about our love for one another and how our relationships with one another need to go deeper. The following 8 prophecies will help you understand how the Lord wants our hearts to be knit: (all prophecies available upon request) 01-22-99 In defense of the “Flaky” 03-11-99 The Kind and Lowly 03-26-99 Behold you God I 06-06-00 I Want You all to be One 07-23-01 Behold your God II 08-06-01 Revival of Love (pgs 3-5) 08-22-01 Friendship and Covenant So, here we are with a deep love for others that God has created in us, welcoming them into our hearts but feeling still rejected. Well, you have entered in and now will live in the fellowship of his sufferings, for all that you are feeling and experiencing is what God has felt from the beginning of man’s creation till now for everyone. You will be greatly anointed of the Lord when you have this kind of love and keep growing deeper in it. But this is God’s way, it is what the world needs to see, God never meant for us to be a bunch of separate, happy, people close to him only, but He loves it when we are all close to Him and to each other. It is his highest and best goal that we would be one, big, happy family together. This will require a supernatural change and transformation in your life, to love all people with the deep love of the Lord, but he wants this, and will form it in you and in his Church, and the world will see the glory of the Lord on us and many will be drawn to Him. Let us embrace our Lord and His love and learn this kind of love from Him and let us learn to welcome and embrace everyone, the good and the bad, the lovely and the unlovely, the beautiful and the ugly, as the “Church of the Open Arms.” This is the Lord’s desire and plan for his Bride and for theIn Col. 2:1, 2 Paul says, “That all of our hearts (even ones I haven’t met face to face as yet) might be knit together in love….” In I Chron. 12:17, 18 it says that David went out to meet the men who came to join with him, as an army of defense against Saul as David hid in the caves. And David said to them, “If you have come with “good intent” unto me to help me, my heart shall be knit unto you but if you have come to betray me the Lord will see it and rebuke you.” They answered him (by the Spirit), “We are yours, David, we are on your side, peace, peace be to you, and peace be to your helpers; for your God helps you.” The Apostle Paul had such a love for the churches and each individual of the church that his heart was enlarged as even the heart of God. He had a very loving heart like the heart of the Father. He said in II Cor. 7:3, “You (Corinthian church) are (nested) in our hearts (and you will remain there) whether we live or die, we will be together.” In II Cor. 6:11-13 (Amplified version) Paul says of the (Corinthian church), “Our heart is expanded wide (for you). There is no lack of room for you in (our hearts) but you lack room in your own hearts (affections) (for us). “As a fair exchange, do this for me—I speak as to children, open wide your hearts also (to us).” In I Thess. 2:8 it says, “So, being affectionately desirous of you we were willing to impart to you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, for you have become so very dear to us.” There is here a picture of giving someone your heart, even if you think they might break your heart, you give your heart to someone, by opening your heart up and having them come into your heart, to love them. On the other side, they may not accept you into their heart, which means you are loving them, you have become vulnerable to be hurt by them, and you are taking a risk that they might not love you in return. This is the heart of the Father in heaven. To love with a great love, to long for a close, intimate relationship with us and yet for us to love him in return with a shallow love that has not the capacity yet to love Him in return with the love that He loves us. When we begin to have our hearts transformed to love others with the love that he has, our hearts will be broken too, for people will not love us back with the love that we love and hence we will walk in the fellowship of the Father’s sufferings, when we love others as He does. This is how Paul loved the Corinthian church and even others that he had never met. This is why he longed to see the faces of people that he had not been with for some time, he longed to see their faces and fellowship with them again. He missed them. Absence from them made his heart grow fonder and he missed them more as time passed. Let me conclude this booklet with these verses from I John which sum up the key nature of our love for one another, as this is a word from the Lord. Almost every chapter of I John talks about love toward one another. I John 2:10 says, “He that loveth his brother abideth in the light.” I John 3:10, “If you love not your brother you are not of God.” I John 3:14, “We know we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren. If you do not love, you abide in death.” I John 4:7, “Let us love one another, for love is of God, everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.” I John 4:12, “No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” I John 4:16, “God is love, he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” I John 4:17, “Herein is our love made perfect,…because as he is, so are we in this world (loving others and loving Him). I John 4:20, “If you say, I love God, but you don’t love your brother who you can see, how can you love God whom you have not seen.” |