A Misunderstanding of God’s Love

A Misunderstanding of God’s Love
The basis for our eager embrace is a misunderstanding of the love of God which passes knowledge. We equate unconditional love and acceptance with the fact that God’s love is vast, unfathomable, and unmerited. Then we follow that with the idea that if God loves and accepts people unconditionally, we should also love and accept themselves unconditionally. While this may sound like a logical progression, there are some serious problems with the basic assumptions. Therefore, we must address the question: Is God’s love unconditional? Are there any conditions that must be met to become a recipient of His love?
Paul prayed that the believers in Ephesus would be able to comprehend the breadth, length, depth and height of God’s love. He desired that they know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge, so that they would be filled with the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:16-19). The wide expanse of God’s love has been the theme of the gospel throughout the ages, for to know His love is to know Him. Therefore, any consideration of His love is highly important and must be based upon His revelation of Himself rather than upon the imagination of men.

What is the spiritual heart?
The spiritual heart is a heart of a spirit born child of God who has come to be converted by having a humble and contrite mind. This conversion continues to take place by a believer, who has repented of breaking God's commandments, who has accepted Christ's sacrifice to cover and forgive his sins and who has made the desire of his heart through the helping power of God's Spirit to always obey God and His commandments and to always be led by God's Spirit. It is a heart that fears God and His judgment against sin. It is a heart that has a faithful and trusting attitude in God and His Word, along with an uncompromising and commandment guided strong conscience, and understands that this all produces in him a Christ-like behavior of the heart that will always bear the fruit of God's love.
This is the spiritual heart that has grown to be patterned after the heart of God the Father, and Jesus Christ, in every aspect of one's relationships with God and man, because it is inspired, motivated, and powered by the leading and directing of God's Holy Spirit that was made available in a powerful way on the Day of Pentecost. Is your heart being led and powered by God's Holy Spirit or are you denying the power of God's Holy Spirit and saying that no one can live his life without continuing to sin? A true born again saint has grown in the Spirit of God to come to have a spiritual heart? God says -- "O, that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them and their children---," Deut. 5:29.
Bitterness is the root of many problems. A bitter heart spawns all sorts of evil reactions. Wrath, anger, clamor, slander and malice are all means by which resentment expresses itself. Bitterness cannot stay in the heart by itself. It is true, bitterness can stay dormant for a long period until its storm arises, but it will come
The reason bitterness is so devastating is that it provides the justification for being mean, cold, short-tempered or unpleasant to others. Bitterness nurtures itself through its self-appointed privilege. Most people know that it is wrong to hate others. Our conscience tells us that it is wrong to do evil to others. This limits the expression of our hatred towards others. If people are going to persist in their meanness toward someone, they need some way to override the guilt function of their conscience. Otherwise the guilt would pile on so thick that they would have to stop being mean. They feel bad (guilty) about it. Bitterness provides the needed short circuit that allows them to bypass the work of their consciences not only to do evil to others but even to feel smug and self-righteous about it.
How does bitterness do this? Bitterness fools the person by tricking his conscience. The person only needs to dwell upon the way someone offended him, and he becomes free from the protection of his conscience. A biological parallel might be the effect of drugs or alcohol on a person’s body. The nerve connections become dulled so that he is able, in his drunken stupor, to do things that he would never otherwise do. Bitterness is a soul drug. It allows people to do evil things that they would not otherwise think themselves capable of doing.