In this study we discuss passages that 1) seem reserved for the person who loves God (as opposed to simply believing in God), and 2) challenge us as to what it means to follow Christ in the spiritual journey from warm, friendship love (phileo) to love that is an act of the will and does not depend on a response (agape.)

Up to this point we have talked much of Christ living in the believer. In this message we study a related topic--the believer's position in God. We realize that we are enveloped by love--wherever we go, whatever new challenge we are called to experience, Christ has already experienced and conquered it and is wanting to share His victory with us in love.

We examine promises given by Jesus as recorded in John 14, 15, and 16. The promises are conditional upon our obedience. Jesus will reveal Himself within us in greater clarity and power as we continue to seek His Word and obey it.

We continue to study the agape love realm of knowledge, contrasting it to the perceptual (eye/ear) realm and conceptual (heart/mind) realm. We enter into this love realm of knowledge (which God calls true knowledge) by having a reverential awe of God that leads us to seek His face and do what He commands us to do. (Proverbs 1:7, Proverbs 9:10-12, isaiah 45:19, Hosea 5:15-6:3; Matthew 14: 22-29)

We look at additional passages in the Scripture that teach of the realm of knowledge (love of Christ) that exceedingly surpasses the knowledge realms of eye/ear and heart/mind. Scriptures examined include 1 Corinthians 2:7-16; Matthew 14:22-30; Ephesians 3:19-20.

Using 1 Corinthians 2:9 as our base text, we examine three realms of knowledge that a person can experience: a) perceptual knowledge through observation and sense experience (eye, ear); 2) conceptual knowledge (heart, mind) through reason and intellectual inquiry; and 3) the agape love realm that is of God and that makes all things available to the believer. We discuss how man is to be a spiritual being who receives knowledge first and foremost through his spirit's union with God rather than primarily through his eye/ear or heart/mind pathways. This is totally contrary to the way of the natural man.

We study the covenant that God made with David regarding his posterity and his throne as summarized in Psalm 89:19-29. Then we examine how all believers in Christ are grafted into these awesome promises.

Part of the image of God that man is designed to exhibit is that of headship. We examine from the earliest pages of Scripture and down through centuries how God continued to make provision for this, but man's sin caused a forfeiture of this. Christ's redemption re-instates headship as the covenant calling and right of the believer.

We are invited to calm and quiet ourselves regularly so that we might seek God and wait on His deliverance. In the process of our choosing to do this, He becomes our soulmate.

Using Psalm 118 as our base text, we examine the awesome deliverance experience of Jesus by the Father in which the Father Himself became His Salvation. We further study what this means for the church today.