THE SUPERNATURAL HABITS - PAUL & NUALA O'HIGGINS (the best e book reader .txt) 📗

command - it is now an experiential reality.
“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we also have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice on the hope of the glory of God …. because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.” (Romans 5:1,2,5)
Through this heavenly imported love we are empowered to fulfill the two great commandments, to love God and love our neighbor. Jesus said, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:40) All else is trimming.

It’s not Natural it’s Supernatural!
Heavenly love, which the New Testament calls ‘agape’ and which the translators translate as ‘love’, is not a human kind of love. It is an attribute of God Himself which natural man is incapable of manifesting on his own. It is a direct import from heaven. It is part of the substance of God, which He transmits to us through the Holy Spirit, and it produces within us the benign attitude of wanting and doing the best for everyone. It is the great secret of the supernaturally empowered believer and the great key of the New Covenant.
Jeremiah and the prophets saw this coming reality which the Messiah was to release into the earth. “Behold, the days come, says the LORD, that I will cut a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I cut with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which covenant of Mine they broke, although I was a husband to them, says the LORD; but this shall be the covenant that I will cut with the house of Israel: After those days, says the LORD, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall no more teach each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, Know the LORD; for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more.” (Jer. 31:31-34)
The old laws of do’s, don’ts and religious ordinances failed not because they were not good laws but because we were not good through the corruption of sin.
The New Covenant, inaugurated by Jesus, solves this problem. Through His atonement, God provides for the remission of sins and through the gift of The Holy Spirit He implants His love and righteousness within the hearts of believers. With the presence of God’s Spirit within we are now equipped to fulfill the love commandment and to live as God designed us to live.
The breakthrough of the New Covenant is this:
1. God Himself in Jesus takes on Himself our guilt and shame, and
2. God Himself provides the love with which we can love Him and love one another.

Love in Three Dimensions
As this heavenly love is downloaded into our hearts on a daily basis through the Holy Spirit, we live in the bright sunshine of God’s love. This love is:
• love from God for God
• love from God for ourselves, and
• love from God for others.
It is a pipeline from heaven to us and through us. As we develop the habit of receiving and giving this love we become part of God’s irrigation system of bringing heaven’s goodness into our world. Keeping God’s love flowing into and out of our hearts is our main responsibility and our greatest joy. “Keep yourselves in the love of God, eagerly awaiting the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to everlasting life.” (Jude 1:21)

Enemy-Loving Love
“But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” (Luke 6:27)
Heavenly love (agape) is not based on how others treat us. Neither is it a response to the attractiveness or goodness of others. It truly is heavenly. It empowers us to love the unlovely, the hateful and even our enemies. It equips us for enemy-loving love.
This kind of love is revolutionary in the best sense. When we love our enemies we can cross through barriers of ethnicity, culture, class and religion. Divisions created by historical enmities melt in the presence of this love. The supernaturally empowered believer can ‘step out in love’ to build a bridge of love to enemies.
In the 1970’s Northern Ireland was being torn apart by sectarian hatred and violence. During this time our friend Cecil Kerr (while working as a pastor of a Protestant church in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland) was inspired by heavenly love to cross the sectarian barrier between him and his Catholic neighbors. He refused to conform or be held in by invisible walls of prejudice and determined to overcome them.
He did not agree with every theological or political view of his Catholic neighbors but he owed it to God and to Himself to love them. As he walked to the 'Catholic' side of the town he felt as if he could hear the voice of his ancestors crying: "Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!" This of course was not the voice of his ancestors but the voice of evil spirits of division that heavenly love within Him was confronting and overcoming.
By crossing the invisible divide in his town he overcame the spiritual forces of hostility that divided his society. In the process he broke through to a fuller Christian experience. He did not change his theological opinions but he became an instrument of God's love to his fellow Irish people. He along with many others walked through walls of hostility and created bridges of love that made way for a new society in Ireland.
Similar breakthroughs take place every day around the world. Supernaturally empowered believers build bridges of love that heal communities, repair relationships and transform society in a way that the political and justice systems could never do.
As we exercise and develop the habit of responding to heavenly love we overcome the barrier of racism, bigotry, class and religion and make breakthroughs for the love of God and the kingdom of God throughout the world.
Believers who develop this habit are the greatest agents uplifting social change at every level on the earth today.

Heavenly Love Causes us to Empty Ourselves
Jesus, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8)
The supernaturally empowered believer follows the example of Jesus by learning to empty Himself in obedience to God and in the service of others. “No one has greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
Heavenly Love is self-empting, self-giving love. It is a motivating power that leads us to empty ourselves of our own interests in the pursuit of God’s interests in others.
In fact, all supernaturally empowered believers are empowered for this kind of self-emptying love. This love inspires all of us in the interests of each of us and each of us in the interests of all of us. It transforms all relationships and fills them with meaning and worth. When Christian doctors and nurses empty themselves in the interests of their patients, pastors in the interests of their congregations, parents in the interests of their children, employers in the interests of their employees, employees in the interests of their employers, life is lit up by the son light of heavenly love
When Heavenly Love takes over his heart, the supernaturally empowered believer sees life in a whole new way. His motivation changes, and instead of asking “How can I get the most out of life?” he asks “How can I give my life away in the service of the One who loves me?” His life escapes from the tight walls of self-centredness and he begins to be less interested in merely his own survival and more interested in lifting others up.
Paul describes this kind of love when he writes: “And I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls, even if loving you more and more, I am loved the less.” (2 Cor. 12:15)
As Jesus says: “He who loves his life must lose it and he who loses his life finds it.” (Mark 8:35) This is not a call to self-mutilation or self-repression but an exhortation to come fully alive by escaping the prison house of self-centredness and losing ourselves in the river of His love for others.
It is only when we discover this self-empting love that we reach our fullest godliness and deepest humanness as supernaturally empowered believers.

Chapter 9: THE HABIT OF ASSEMBLY

Chapter 10: THE HABIT OF REST

CHAPTER X
THE HABIT OF REST

The lion, the king of the beasts, rests about 20 hours a day. Rest is an essential part of life.
Contemporary life is designed to get maximum production from human beings. Our identity gets lost in the machine of production. Sabbath Rest is the sign that we are not slaves but sons.
Rest is not just a pause between work periods but also a time of return to our source, recovery of identity and celebration of God’s goodness. “For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. And you would not.” (Isaiah 30:15)
God placed the need of rest into our bodies and lives. This need for rest is not a weakness but part of the rhythm of our lives.
Thomas Edison thought that sleep was a waste of time and a mere biological necessity. The light bulb has given us a 24-hour day where life never stops. In