The Bridegroom’s Voice is a book penned by KimberlyMac as Jesus spoke to my heart His Kingdom perspective to “flesh out” our souls and prepare us by putting His “Truth in” our spirit, truth which will help us endure this life season and bring honor to God and His Kingdom. This is my “Groomsman Journal”, as I journey through the book, The Bridegroom’s Voice with Jesus. As a Groomsman, I am writing down everything I am hearing and learning from Jesus. If you too are taking this journey with The Bridegroom, I encourage you to add some of your Groomsman reflections from your journal as you are decreasing and He is increasing in you. Let’s encourage one another as we daily listen to The Bridegroom’s Voice.
“He who has the bride is the Bridegroom; but the groomsman who stands by and listens to Him rejoices greatly and heartily on account of the Bridegroom’s Voice. This then is my pleasure and joy, and it is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.” John 3:29-30 Amplified Bible
The Groomsman’s Journal
Week One The Bridegroom Speaks About Love
The Bridegroom’s Word, Written on your Heart
The love of God is immense and multifaceted. Read through these scriptures and write down every thought you have on God’s love. What is the Bridegroom speaking to you personally about His love? Define and journal the characteristic of His love that He is speaking about in each scripture. How can you apply these precepts on God’s love to your life? Pray this week that God’s infinite love becomes more evident in your life and your finite love fades away in the light of His glorious love that is increasing in you.
WEEK ONE DAY ONE –DAY TWO
Jeremiah 31:3 This is what the Eternal has to say: Eternal One: There will come a time when I will be the God of all the clans and families of Israel, and they will be My people. This is what I, the Eternal One, declare to you: My people who survived the sword found grace as they wandered in the wilderness; When Israel went in search of rest, I appeared to them from far away and said: “I have loved you with an everlasting love— out of faithfulness I have drawn you close. The Voice
“FleshOut” My Thoughts On God’s Love:
God’s love can always be found by me it doesn’t matter where I am.
God loves me with an everlasting love. Lovingkindness draws me to Him and by continued faithfulness, He keeps loving me!
Overcoming Courage- Never ending peace is found in His everlasting love.
He purposely chose to love me with a strong, enduring love, a passion that knocks the fleshly self will right out of me and causes me to desire only Him.
A hard hitting love, that is God’s love and it impacts me forcefully, changing my direction from I to Him!
“TruthIN” The Characteristics Of God’s Love:
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God’s love is everlasting
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God’s love has a foundation of faithfulness
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God’s love endures
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God’s love is always followed by His peace
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God’s love faithfully draws us to Him
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God’s Love is dynamic, it is active and full of life and is a forceful goodness in me and through me
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There is so much in our human condition that fails us. God’s love will not fail us. My love has not stood the trials-tests of time, but our AWE-GOD’s love, it has-it will. His love will always BE.
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God’s Love for me is a huge gift of courage-strength and an absolute potential for great boldness as I step out in my day in complete faith in Him.
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The strength of God’s love is it’s strands of courage- strength-power that He weaves into it, the very nature of #AWE-GOD is a bold-tough love, He braided it with cords of strength, potential and hope
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I love that God’s devotion to us is a love that includes a never ending flow of His Peace! AWE-GOD we need Your peace today.
“TruthIN” Application To My Life:
As I find the Sovereign will of God hard to swallow, it makes me feel as if my soul is in a lonely wilderness. This is not true and now I know that it is here, during these times of soulish nightmares, that it is important to embrace the love of God that I know is enduring, strong, unfailing and led by His peace. The sweet uniqueness of God’s love is it’s backsplash of soul harmony, an incredible peace that follows it and saturates my spirit once again with His lavishing love. I now know that wherever His Sovereign will is, there too is His Infinite Love, they go hand in hand. I don’t experience one without having the benefit of the other, it is a dual God providence. The coolest truth I now see about the love of God is it’s acquaintance with pain and suffering. The love of God endured and grew through the most challenging suffering ever and purposefully prevailed, winning an eternal victory. This is why I now can face everything and every life season that the Sovereign Will of God brings me too with an unshakeable, overcoming courage that is substantiated by my faith braided together with God’s impacting, life changing love.
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Hebrews 12:5-7 And have you [completely] forgotten the divine word of appeal and encouragement in which you are reasoned with and addressed as sons? My son, do not think lightly or scorn to submit to the correction and discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage and give up and faint when you are reproved or corrected by Him; 6 For the Lord corrects and disciplines everyone whom He loves, and He punishes, even scourges, every son whom He accepts and welcomes to His heart and cherishes. 7 You must submit to and endure [correction] for discipline; God is dealing with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not [thus] train and correct and discipline? Amplified Bible
“FleshOut” My Thoughts On God’s Love:
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God correcting me, disciplining me is an action of His love.
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Correction is how God deals with those He loves.
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Submission to God’s correction is the same as embracing His love
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True love does not give up when corrected, tested or tried, it only grows stronger in wisdom, more submitted in forthrightness, willess in mind and courageous in action.
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Discipline and Love are not synonymous in our human culture. God is made to look like an angry God at times.
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We don’t understand the discipline of God or understand the concept that a loving God will discipline us or that discipline is love in action.
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The times I have been disciplined by God have turned out to be the best times of growth for me and a place of peace that is unsurpassed by human expectation.
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I think incorrectly about discipline because I know the truth is when God disciplines me, He is loving me at His best!
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Don’t be crushed in heart by God’s discipline, He never means to break our spirit, only to shape our will! Submit to God!
“TruthIN” The Characteristics Of God’s Love:
It has a discipline nature to it
Corrective
Fathering
Training
“TruthIN” Application To My Life:
Hardships, trials, tests all of these prove God’s love to me and I should not lose heart when I am “growing through” these things, it is the proof of God’s love for me. God’s Fathering is a steady love of correction and discipline as that of a loving Father, who is growing me into the best I can be. To endure God’s correction and discipline, these testings of my soul and spirit, I must cling to the truth that I have a Father God and this is part of the nature of His love to grow me through this life. I must submit myself to the all of the love of God, even the part that causes me to have to endure and grow through this life in excellent ways.
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Revelation 3:8-14 “I know all the things you do, and I have opened a door for you that no one can close. You have little strength, yet you obeyed my word and did not deny me. 9 Look, I will force those who belong to Satan’s synagogue—those liars who say they are Jews but are not—to come and bow down at your feet. They will acknowledge that you are the ones I love. 10 “Because you have obeyed my command to persevere, I will protect you from the great time of testing that will come upon the whole world to test those who belong to this world. 11 I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take away your crown. 12 All who are victorious will become pillars in the Temple of my God, and they will never have to leave it. And I will write on them the name of my God, and they will be citizens in the city of my God—the new Jerusalem that comes down from heaven from my God. And I will also write on them my new name. 13 “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches The Message to the Church in Laodicea. 14 “Write this letter to the angel of the church in Laodicea. This is the message from the one who is the Amen—the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s new creation: New Living Translation
“FleshOut” My Thoughts On God’s Love:
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God’s love activates fully for me when I obey Him.
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Obedience is my love action and God’s reaction is infused inner strength to me and great God favor towards me.
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Protection is an outflowing of God’s love towards all those who obey Him
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Obedience leans us strongly into God’s protective love.
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My love for God is acted out of my obedience toward’ s God and God responds by showering the blessings of His love through honoring my life in various, creative ways that not only add honor to my life, but add glory to His Kingdom.
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The intent of God’s love is always shown by His owning of us in all of our ways
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When you obey God, you can expect endurance—hope that perseveres and guards your heart in the strength of the Love of Christ
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God’s Love Is Huge! God’s love can do things that man’s love cannot even begin to hope to do.
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God’s love opens doors for us that no man can open! His love protects and keeps us and grows us through times of testing. His love displays itself in the safe-keeping it provides for us always and forever!
“TruthIN” The Characteristics Of God’s Love:
Active Love
Protective
Rewarding
Is Great In God’s Favor
Honoring
Responsive
Intentional
“TruthIN” Application To My Life:
To endure through the hardest of times, to know perseverance that leads to honor, I must cling to the love of God, which is always the strength to my weak human condition.
God’s love is rewarding in nature and when I am obedient to Him, even my enemies will be caused to bow down at my feet. I must patiently obey God, enduring and persevering all temptations and persecutions and choose Him first, and God’s responsive love will do the same for me. God’s love will put me first as I put Him first, it is a give – give unity where I get the better end of the deal as His love infuses me, rewarding my obedience with His strength, protection and favor. My life lived out in faithfulness to God no matter the cost, is met by the responsive love of God through His honoring me as His own, His intentional favoring of my life and His rewarding me with His sweet Presence and all the great blessings He showers upon the all of my everything.
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1 John 4:7-14
My loved ones, let us devote ourselves to loving one another. Love comes straight from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and truly knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. Because of this, the love of God is a reality among us: God sent His only Son into the world so that we could find true life through Him. This is the embodiment of true love: not that we have loved God first, but that He loved us and sent His unique Son on a special mission to become an atoning sacrifice for our sins. So, my loved ones, if God loved us so sacrificially, surely we should love one another. No one has ever seen God with human eyes; but if we love one another, God truly lives in us. Consequently God’s love has accomplished its mission among us. How can we be sure that He truly lives in us and that we truly live in Him? By one fact: He has given us His Spirit. We have watched what God has done, and we stand ready to provide eyewitness testimonies to the reality that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
“FleshOut” My Thoughts On God’s Love:
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When we choose to love, we are not doing so in our own strength, the love of God is in us and works through us! It is so cool to know that when we love others, God’s love is also in us, working through us and running it course.
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We never love alone, God loves through us. How cool is that! Especially knowing the quality of His Love!
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When we love others, God’s love comes alive in us, lives in us. I can hardly comprehend what that might look like in me or understand the power of that truth.
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Even thinking about the fact that God’s love, His love in action was to send His only Son to die for me, it completely blows what I know out of the water! I have had a little view of God’s Love, this verse gives me a HUGE view of God’s love. I know I probably won’t ever comprehend the full scope of God’s love on this side of heaven. I just humbly receive it.
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God’s Holy Spirit gives life, strength, boldness to the condition of our human love, helping us to endure in His love! Thank you Father God for Your love, I pray You reveal yourself to me daily and help me to walk in the strength of Your love, may it cover my human condition with Your supernatural character!
“TruthIN” The Characteristics Of God’s Love:
True Love
Atoning
Mission Orientated
Unselfish
“TruthIN” Application To My Life:
I am completely open to God’s love and it has an impactive repercussion on my life. It is my desire for His love to work in me, run it course in me and then through me reach out and touch others. I need to make sure I have that vital-vertical relationship time with God, because His love covers my human condition with His supernatural character, it is quality of love I could never produce in my life on my own. It is so important for me to remember the sacrificial nature of God’s love, to remember that out of love for me, Jesus died my death. This reminds me of the action of God’s love and how this action is still paying forward a sacrificial love out of my life to all those God divinely connects me with. I desire to devote my life to God and His love, to receive it fully and invest it wholly-holy in this world I live in for the glory of the kingdom I belong too.
My Reflections As I Listened To The Bridegroom’s Voice As He Spoke About His Perspective Of Love:
My Groomsman’s Journal Reflection And Response:
Fleshing Out My Worldly Viewpoint
The truth about our worldly viewpoint of love is that it is not complete. The lie is that it is based on our soul alone. God shaped in us a body, soul, will, mind, spirit and the whole of us can experience and walk out of His love. I don’t have to wait for my feelings to be wholly-holy aligned with God before I obey Him. The will of God loved us, therefore my will can love God too, through obedience to Him, even though my soul feelings have not lined up with my will to please God. Love is just as valid acted out of the will as it is acted out of the body, mind, spirit and soul. God wants me to love Him with all of me, including my will.
Loving God Willfully
I have made bad choices to follow after my soul, instead of letting my will lead me to obedience, the type of obedience the Lord requires where from every moment to every choice I obey Him. I cannot have this kind of obedience if my will is not engaged with the love of God. I must love God with all of me, not just the easy part, the soul where my feelings are, but also the will that God uses to discipline me and grow me up. God shapes my will and this too is a part of His love for me. I must love Him with my willful obedience even though it does not feel good. Growth is not a feel good thing, it is a willful love. If I want to grow in Christ, I must submit everything about me to His love, which has a disciplining, corrective training nature to it.
His Love My Legitimacy
When I cling to the Infinite love of God, I have in my inner spirit an endless force of courage that goes before me with peace and leaves a backsplash of peace upon my soul like that of living water that quenches your spirit at all times. My legitimacy as God’s child is strengthened as I intermingle His love with my active faith.
God’s Love Stays Put
I don’t have to be afraid of God’s love leaving me when I am unlovable and “growing through” hard times. I can be assured that this special love, this unique love of God will stick with me, never leave me and this is my courage to face my flesh, allowing God to flesh it out and grow me through by the power of His enduring love in me. I must remember that the love of God does not disassociate with anything, it is not afraid of pain and it embraces suffering and I too must be willing to be the same.
The above is taken from The Groomsman’s Journal of KimberlyMac from The Bridegroom’s Voice week one where the Bridegroom shares with the Bride His perspective of what love is. The above journal is my response to the truth Jesus has shared with me from day one and two of our conversation about love. I highly suggest you purchase a copy of The Bridegroom’s Voice and start your journey with the Bridegroom, Jesus, listening to His Voice, fleshing out your soul and letting Him put His Kingdom truth in your spirit. You too can have a Groomsman’s Journal.
***If you are on the Journey with The Bridegroom’s Voice, please leave a comment to share with others from your Groomsman’s Journal. Thanks for being an encourager! God bless you MUCH, KimberlyMac