Stairway to Heaven - 2

It begins with Love

Part 2 of the series “Stairway to Heaven”

Previous posts are published in this blog.

With question, you may be thinking that this doesn’t make sense. You may be pondering, mulling over in your mind, Love? I felt love, and I gave love before salvation. Pause for a moment. This love that you experienced, was it unconditional, given with nothing expected in return, love given not only to those to whom you are attracted but also, to those you disliked, even your enemies?11 Questions may be running through your mind. Enemies? Love my enemies? Why would I love my enemies? Why should I love them?

In return for loving others, you will experience God blessing you with more of His love, love as great as the love He has for His only Son, Jesus the Christ. Yes, it is hard to imagine receiving the same love from God as that He has for His only begotten Son, but this is what God promises all of us who love Jesus—God’s love, in return for loving His Son.

“Those who obey my commandments are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them, and I will love them. And I will reveal myself to each one of them. All those who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and live with them”12

However, as straightforward as it may sound, your heart and spirit are incapable of experiencing His love without belief in His Son through faith in Christ as your Savior, faith in His assurance of your eternal life in heaven with Him. When you trust in Jesus for salvation from your sins, you become, through adoption into His family, a child of God, fully inheriting access to all of the fruits of a life in heaven during your earthly sojourn.13

You should behave instead like God’s very own children, adopted into his family—calling him “Father, dear Father.” For his Holy Spirit speaks to us deep in our hearts and tells us that we are God’s children. And since we are his children, we will share his treasures—for everything God gives to his Son, Christ, is ours, too. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.14

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Praise to Our Father for the words He has given me. ~Jeff Cambridge

Written June 10, 2004
Copyright © 2004, 2005, 2016 by Jeff Cambridge, Stellar Rhema Ministry

Footnotes
All Scripture quotations unless otherwise noted are from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers.

Verses marked NLT are Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Verses marked NIV are Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of International Bible Society. “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark office by International Bible Society.

Stairway to Heaven - 2
11. Luke 6:27-36, 1 John 5:1-3, John 13:34-35, 15:12
12. John 14:21,23 NLT
13. 1 John 3:1-3, John 14:19-20, Romans 8:15-17, Ephesians 1:3-6, 1 Peter 1:3-5
14. Romans 8:15-17 NLT