Keep Your Self in the Love of God

January 19 - Keep yourself in the love of God.  Jude 21

   The love of God, like every other attribute and perfection of Jehovah, is everlasting and unchangeable:  even as the essence of God himself.  This love is manifested to his people in Christ Jesus.  He is the object in whom they are viewed and loved by the Father.  As "Jesus is the same yesturday, to-day, and forever;" so is God's love toward them.  Time, with all its concurring circumstances, can make no alteration or change, increase or diminution herein.   But, as to the sense and enjoyment of this love, the word of truth and experience of this love, the word of truth and experience of saints plainly testify of its ebbing and flowing, its fervor and abatement in the soul.  Hence the necessity of those tender calls, kind warnings, and loving counsels, addressed to believers in the word of truth; because they are ever to be active, as those who are made alive to God, and have thier senses exercised to discern between good and evil.  Exhortations excite jealousy and quicken diligence.  The enjoyment of the love of God is our heaven below;  to keep ourselves in the happiness.  Keep ourselves in the love of God!  Yes.  How?  Use every means which love commands.  Avoid all things which love forbids.  Account not this legal.  Those who do, have only the notion of love in the head, but are strangers to the constraints of God's love in the heart.
   Would you ever enjoy love, O Christian?  Be much in meditation upon it, think daily, constantly of that unparalleled instance of it:  God so loved the world as to give his only begotton Son Jesus, to atone for sin by his precious blood, to justify sinners by his perfect righteousness.   Dost thou know this by the Gospel?  This is love revealed.  Dost thou beleive this, in thine heart, by the Spirit?  This is love felt and enjoyed.  ALL, all flows from the rich, transcendently rich love of God in Christ Jesus.  O be concerned daily to keep thy soul in and under a lively sense of this love!  and also keep thyself, by this love, from all worldly and forbidden indulgences.  Thy flesh may covet them;  but by love of God, by his mercies in Christ Jesus, and for thy soul's sake, abstain from them.  Know verily, as hurtful food will impair the health of the body;  so these things will as certainly rob thy soul of its peace, damp the warm sense of God's love, and render thee indifferent and lifeless to the enjoyment of the love of God.  Thus saith the God of love, "Consider your ways."  Haggai 1:5

From  "A SPIRITUAL TREASURY for the CHILDREN OF GOD" - American Tract Society 1770