By Jesse Jost

I must confess some things about me that are pretty ugly. I crave admiration and recognition. I want to be liked and appreciated. Actually, I want to be worshiped. In short, I want what rightfully belongs to God. My illicit addictions to these things have brought me great sorrow and depression over the years. Only now am I just beginning to see these desires for what they really are. Pride: The great anti-God state of mind.

God put His glory on display by creating a world ablaze with beauty and He filled it with worshippers. It was an act of love. Worshipping God is the most thrilling and satisfying experience there is. But it all started to go wrong when one of God’s insanely magnificent creations, Archangel Lucifer, fell in love with his own splendour and began to crave worship for himself. He fell from heaven and his pride has led to him becoming the most destructive being in all creation.

Pride: What’s the big deal? Continue reading…

By Jesse Jost

Love. We use the word a lot; we kind of have to if we want to be biblical. Love is at the heart of Christian teaching, and it is one of few words used to describe God’s essence. It is easy to curl the tongue to the teeth and then bring the lower lips to those same incisors to form the word “love”, but what does the word really mean?

It seems that when Satan hates a truth he tries to employ one of two strategies. First, he tries to prevent people from talking or thinking about it. Out of sight, out of mind. But if that doesn’t work his next strategy is to get people to talk about it a lot, but then subtly change the meaning of the words so that what is being said sounds like the truth, but is actually very different. I think this is what Satan has done with the word “love.” We hear it all the time. God loves you. Love one another. But what is true love? What do you think of when you hear the word love? More importantly, what does God mean by the word love? A quick look at the Bible will show how vital it is that we understand what love is supposed to be.

Love matters

When the Creator of the universe, the One who defines right and wrong, the One we will all stand before on judgement day, walked among us, He was asked what the most important commandment was. This is what he said: “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)

The Apostle John goes so far as to say that if we do not love, we are not of God and we “abide in death.” (1 John 3:10,14) He adds that “everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:7b-8) We like to evaluate our level of spirituality based on our knowledge of correct doctrine or how well we are abstaining from certain things that other worldly Christians are participating in. But God says the distinction that matters is this: do we love Him and love others?

According to these and many other verses, if we get love wrong, either by not loving or by misunderstanding what love really is, we have gotten our whole life wrong.  Continue reading…