YOU MUST LOVE WITH A CHRISTLIKE LOVE BECAUSE

He first loved you (l John 4:9). You do not originate love; it originates in the heart of God. You do not manufacture love, imitate His love, or fake His love. You receive and pass on His love. The only agape love you have is what you receive from Jesus. We first saw God's love in Him. "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:10).
Love is incarnate in Jesus —visible, constantly active, and self-sacrificing unto death. You love because you have seen this agape love of Cod in Christ and because that love has so transformed you that it expresses itself through you.
The Holy Spirit pours this agape love of God into your nature. Paul describes it beautifully: ''God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us" (Rom. 5:5). He fills you with his Spirit so that He can pour
His own holy nature of love through you as a abundant, gushing river. This is the chief stream of living water that Jesus promised you (John 7:38).

You love because the Holy Spirit pours His own loving nature into you as fully as you are open to receive. The more you pour out God love on others, especially those you lead and those in need, the more God the Spirit is able to pour into you His holy self—which is holy love, for God is love.
The more you pour out, the more He pours in—ever fresh, ever new, ever cleansing, ever transforming, ever filling, ever Christlike, ever reaching out to and blessing others. Oh, what a life and leadership of love as He pours in as fast as you pour out!

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To be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with the love He is pouring from the innermost nature of the Trinity into and through us. To be filled with all the fullness of love, for God is love! There is nothing higher, deeper, more holy, more blessed, more wonderful in all of human experience. This fullness of love, this gushing river of love, this indescribable bliss of love is God's plan for every Christian
If this is frue, and it is, then you as a Christian leader are to demonstrate its fruth and reality more than anyone else. You are to be a model of love. You can model this love of God in Christ in only one way and that is by being filled with this river of love and then letting it pour out of you into the church and into the world for which He died.

If this fullness of divine, supernatural love is not constantly streaming out from you as a Christian leader, you are not a true representative of Jesus. You are a misrepresentation. God is love; Christ is love. Christ can be represented only by love. The only true ambassador of Christ
(2 Cor. 5:20) is an ambassador of love. He who does not pour out love slanders the God of love he claims to represent.
Love is the essential ingredient for all Christian service. Love is the key for all Christian success. Love is the fragrance, the glory, and the power for all Christian living. Love makes a leader a shepherd. Love makes a witness an ambassador for Christ. Love makes work for God ministry

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Love is the secret of holiness, saintliness, and fruit. fulness. Love is the summation and fulfillment of the law. Love is the transforming power Of Pentecost. Love is the secret of Christlikeness. Love is the basic fruit of the Spirit The measure of the fullness of Christ is love (Eph. 4:13).

On the last great day of the feast Jesus stood and called in a loud voice, " 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, s&eams of living water will flow from within him.' By this he meant the Spirit" (John 7:37—39). So anyone who does not have this river of love is not thirsting, not believing, not obeying, for the Holy Spirit is given to those who ask (Luke 11:13), believe (John 7:38), and obey (Acts 5:32).

Since love is to be the most constant, most evident, and most attractive aspect of the Christlikeness of each believer, it is to be even more your daily nature, your visible glory, and your mighty power as a Christian leader. You dare not rest content with only a nominal, minimal experience of this love.

How can we describe the love that must characterize you as an effective pastor and leader? It must be based on the adoring, ardent, fervent love for Christ. It must be poured out in love for the church. And it must be constantly yearning, hungering, and thirsting for and seeking the unsaved.