Every nation on the planet has its own culture and every culture differs one from the other.  But there is a culture that supercedes them all.  It’s the culture of the Kingdom of Heaven where its primary attribute is the LOVE OF GOD.  If we desire for all of us to be united as one, there is only one way.  It cannot be found nor solved through political or religious strategies, but it can only be supernaturally rectified by acknowledging the great LOVE OF GOD for His people personified and powerfully demonstrated by Jesus Christ and us responding back to Him that floods out through our love relationship with one another.

How do we do it?  How do we start? It begins personally with us.

Jeremiah 24:7 “I will give them a heart to know that I AM THE LORD, and they shall be My people and I will be their God for they shall return to Me with their whole heart.”

The Lord our God is the initiator of all.  He initiated the creation of the world.  In fact, before the beginning, He already WAS, then the beginning began.  He created you and I on the sixth day after He lavished the earth with provision by creating everything else before us.  He completely created it that there will always be enough for everyone to partake and to be a part of.  He made sure that when we came into this world, everything was set that the first day of man, the seventh day, was a day of REST.  What an awesome Daddy God we have Who loves and cares for us deeply.

All of His creation was meant to have a “Creator-creation” love relationship.  But, sin came in.  Could it be that when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, they chose knowledge over relationship?  They chose to be overtaken by what they’ve seen, the fruit of the forbidden tree that was desirable to make one wise.  Knowledge apart from the Holy Spirit breathing in it wouldn’t take us to the fullness of what it was originally meant for.  “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds.  If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.” (1 Corinthians 8:1-2 ESV)  No wonder God’s word says … “Wisdom is the principal thing; Therefore get wisdom.  And in all your getting, get understanding.”  (Proverbs 4:7 NKJV)  Mere knowledge without personal experience is a platform that equips us to argue but knowledge revealed with God encounters takes us further and makes us understand that results in us choosing to love over anything else, choosing peace over having to have an argument.

BUT GOD, Who is rich in mercy and abounding in love, already provided a redemptive solution on how to save us I believe even before the fall.  Nothing takes Him by surprise. He knows the end from the beginning.  He knows you and I inside out.  After all He created us.  Yet His love for us wasn’t diminished by what had happened.  His love is steadfast.  His love is strong.  HE IS LOVE therefore there is nothing Adam and Eve did, nothing that we did, nothing that we are doing and not even nothing that we are still about to do can make Him stop loving us.

“How EXQUISITE Your love, O God!
    How eager we are to run under Your wings,
To eat our fill at the banquet You spread
    as You fill our tankards with Eden spring water.
You’re a fountain of cascading light,
    and You open our eyes to light.”  Psalm 36:7-9 MSG

Exquisite means FINALLY DONE or MADE!  Perfected, accomplished, accurate, explosive, intense, heavy, almighty, profound, heavy-duty, deep.

God’s love is unshakable and will forever be unshakable.   But at that point in time in the garden, it was Adam and Eve who distant themselves from Him when they sinned and the same mindset has been handed down from generation to generation until today.

Mind you, after the fall, God was still looking for Adam and Eve.  “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9)  This didn’t mean that He didn’t know where they were location-wise but it just meant one thing, that both Adam and Eve missed their position in Him where they used to be, CONFIDENTLY walking with Him and talking to Him in the cool of the day.  The relationship was tarnished from their own point of view but never from His.  From then on, God has been in pursuit of us that the great signs and wonders in favor of His people were displayed for Him to always say …  “that you may KNOW that I AM YOUR GOD and YOU ARE MY PEOPLE.” To add to that, for me, He always make affirmations to say … “I’m on your side and will always be, so worry not!”

There were a few people in the olden times whom He chose to reveal Himself to who responded to Him wholeheartedly.  If you come to think of it, they were demonstrations of what kind of love relationship God desires for His people.

Moses was one.   Though he was a murderer at one point in his life, it didn’t stop God from pursuing him.  At the burning bush God called him and said, “I am the God of your father – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  God introduced Himself to Moses.  He believed and God powerfully used him to deliver the Israelites from Egypt.  That’s love flowing not just TO Moses but THROUGH him for the whole nation of Israel.

Samuel was another.  The Lord called him three times before he finally responded right through Eli who perceived that the Lord had called him.  Samuel did not yet know the Lord, nor was the word of the Lord yet revealed to him.  Then the Lord said to Samuel, “Behold, I will do something in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle.” (1Samuel 3:11)  When He responded, God chose him to anoint the first two kings of Israel, Saul and David, established as a prophet of the Lord.  Prophets make known the will of God for His people.  This speaks of relationship.  This speaks of God’s desire to be known by His own.

God has a million and one ways of calling and inviting us to get to know Him.  David was chosen and anointed with oil by Samuel after all the sons of Jesse paraded in front of him and seen none of them fit to be king.  “For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”  (1Samuel 16:7)

If the people who walked in the old covenant displayed great signs and wonders for others to come TO KNOW WHO GOD IS, how much more now that we are under the new covenant with better promises?  Jesus even said … “greater things you will do!” Have you ever thought of that?  What then is the sole purpose why He shows Himself strong in and through us? …. for us to experientially know Him and make Him known because only when we know Him in a very personal way can we make Him known.

JESUS CHRIST was given because it’s time for His own people to come to know, practically through personal experience, His love that FAR SURPASSES all knowledge.  He demonstrated what it means to walk in love.  He is all the time introducing His great love for us to woe us back into His loving embrace where NOTHING AND NO ONE can ever separate us from Him again.   When we are filled and flooded with God Himself, postured to have the richest experience of God’s presence in the Holy Spirit, His love completely heals us spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally and makes us complete.  When we get constantly exposed to His presence in the secret place, it changes us and we are never the same as when we entered in.  Then, our wholeness IN HIM powerfully enables us to be the carriers of His love to the people around us who are in need.

Why do we fight?  Because of fear!  Fear of the unknown!  Fear of people’s opinions about us! Fear of being different!  Fear of failure!  Fear of being weak!  Fear of being and having nothing!  Fear of having no position or name badge!  Fear of not wearing name brands!  Fear of being looked down!  Fear of being invisible and forgotten.  Fear of being trampled and abused! Fear of being considered nothing!   Fear of having not enough!  Fear of being taken over!  Fear of being judged by people!  Fear of being judged by God!

Remember this … “God has NOT given us a spirit of fear, but of POWER and OF LOVE and of a SOUND MIND.”  2Timothy 1:7

The power of the Holy Spirit indwelling our innermost being and personality strengthens and spiritually energizes us to stay steadfast in our identity and security of being loved by God through the finished work of Jesus Christ.  The Holy Spirit reveals to us that our sins and iniquities had already been judged and dealt with by the Blood of Christ because OF LOVE.  He continuously and perpetually pours the love of Christ in us until we get filled and flooded.  This is the power that sets us free from fear of being judged by God that brings us to the extent of a sufficient understanding of His love.

His love, not our human love which has its limits, is the most powerful force in the universe.  It is the kind of love that forgives our iniquities, raises the dead, mends the brokenhearted, heals the sick, sets the captives free, opens blind eyes, opens deaf ears, makes the lames walk and casts out demons.  It is the kind of love that SETS us to be the apple of His eyes, the object of His affection and secures us to be confident from the inside out that we belong to Him ALL THE TIME and nothing can snatch us away from Him.  His word even says that He never loosens His grip of us.  Imagine with me on this … the hand that holds the whole world is holding us tightly, who can take us away from Him?  NOTHING and NO ONE!

Our sense of belonging matters most for that’s where our identity is anchored upon.  When we come to know the truth of who we are IN HIM and who HE IS to us, then our hearts rest.  There is NO need to fight!  His word says, “Avoiding fight is a mark of honor; only fools insist on quarreling.” (Proverbs 20:3 NLT)  No need to be on top all the time and win over a person.  Being a victor, an overcomer and more than a conqueror is not all about winning a physical or an emotional fight let alone political and religious fights.  It more than that and way above that.  Is when we allow His love to flow in and through us and LET HIS LOVE WIN over our differences in thoughts, opinions and cultures that keeps the peace and joy within ourselves and with those around us.  It takes revelation knowledge of His love and maturity to trust God and choose to let Him be our vindicator IN PEACE than us vindicating ourselves.

The culture of the kingdom of God is to cast away FEAR that expresses itself in anger, rage and anxiety in which out of these come wars, conflicts, hostilities and famines.  There is only ONE WAY to do it.  When the war from deep within our hearts ceases by believing and receiving the LOVE OF CHRIST that far surpasses all understanding, our wholeness and completeness within ourselves will cause the war outside to stop!  It all starts from ourselves individually.  Our God is a very personal God and His ways vary from one individual to another.  Our only unifying factor which is to be the final authority in our lives is THE WORD OF GOD!  His Word is the truth and He watches it to come to pass when we believe.  It is His Word that makes the impossible possible in our lives when we submissively say … “BE IT DONE TO ME ACCORDING TO YOUR WORD.”  Booooom!!!  Then, manifestations come!  With God, all things are possible and nothing is impossible to him who believes!

When we give His Word the final authority over our lives, then when it says … “there is NO FEAR in love”, then so be it.  When we do it in submissive wonder, then the wonderful things around us will align into the truth of His word that get manifested before our eyes in our lives.

“There is NO FEAR in love [dread does not exist].  But PERFECT (complete, full-grown) love drives out fear, because fear involves [the expectation of divine] punishment, so the one who is afraid [of God’s judgment] is not perfected in love [has not grown into a sufficient understanding of God’s love].  We love, because HE FIRST LOVED US.” 1John 4:18-19