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.
“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 THREE – DAY FOUR
Mark 14:32-41 They came at length to a garden called Gethsemane. Jesus: Stay here. I’m going a little farther to pray and to think. 33 He took Peter, James, and John with Him; and as they left the larger group behind, He became distressed and filled with sorrow. Jesus: 34 My heart is so heavy; I feel as if I could die. Wait here for Me, and stay awake to keep watch. 35 He walked on a little farther. Then He threw Himself on the ground and prayed for deliverance from what was about to come. Jesus: 36 Abba, Father, I know that anything is possible for You. Please take this cup away so I don’t have to drink from it. But whatever happens, let Your will be done—not Mine. 37 He got up, went back to the three, and found them sleeping. Jesus (waking Peter): Simon, are you sleeping? Couldn’t you wait with Me for just an hour? 38 Stay awake, and pray that you aren’t led into a trial of your own. It’s true—even when the spirit is willing, the body can betray it. 39 He went away again, and prayed again the same prayer as before—pleading with God but surrendering to His will. 40 He came back and found the three asleep; and when He woke them, they didn’t know what to say to Him. 41 After He had gone away and prayed for a third time, He returned to find them slumbering. Jesus: Again? Still sleeping and getting a good rest? Well, that’s enough sleep. The time has come; the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. The Voice
“FleshOut” My Thoughts On God’s Love:
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The Love of God endured the betrayal of all sin, all sinners
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Jesus’ love willessly obeyed and suffered an undeserved death
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God’s Love was seeded into humanity without offense, without the rights it deserved, it was completely selfless in nature and characteristic
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What a love~ Jesus stayed the course, working through horrendous human emotions until His will was broken and His Kingdom love stood firm
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Jesus showed us that love is worth sacrificing for
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Jesus modeled that true love does not come easy.
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Jesus taught us that temptations are strong but love is strongest
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Jesus showed us to have a love that is self-centered is to have a love that is not powerful in sacrifice.
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Jesus showed us that our love walk is shored up by prayer and by laying down our will before our Father God.
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Oh, to love like Jesus did~ He chose to put His pure life into the hands of sinful men whose wills were bent by selfish disobedient pride.
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He gave all for us! Oh what a love!
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Jesus’ dedication to God enriched His love with the strength of self sacrifice and a will bent outward, away from inner selfishness – towards Kingdom purpose.
“TruthIN” The Characteristics Of God’s Love:
Had no offense in it; Stripped of personal rights, Powerful, Pure
“TruthIN” Application To My Life:
The outflowing of the love of Jesus was completely without offense towards others, even though it seemed He had every right to carry an offense towards his closest friends, who in the hour of his need did not come along side of Him and help Him carry his sorrow. To be like this, to have such a willessness that always leans into a self-sacrificing action is my desire. I have to “flesh out” my natural reactions and respond with the love of Jesus Christ, it was so powerful and pure. What would be my response to betrayal? Would I face it by courageously, letting go of my rights and loving as if I had never been hurt? This love of Jesus, this incredible inestimable love, I can’t wrap my mind around it, but I desire it, I hope to be like Him.
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John 3:16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. New Living Testament
“FleshOut” My Thoughts On God’s Love:
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God’s love redeems our flesh from death to life
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God’s love powerfully activates our belief
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This is how God loves, He loves extremely
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The love of God gave us His best gift
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So much was given up for me, so we might be able to receive eternal life.
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God thought of us as that valuable, that He gave His Only Son to be crucified.
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This impacting love demands an impacting response.
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If I believe in Jesus, then I will respond to Him with a complete trust.
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Trust is clinging to God when the world wants to pull you away.
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Reciprocating love relies on the lover of its soul to guide the way in this world, so our affections are not wasted on temporary things.
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I feel like God’s love completed the circle of life in me, there is no more dead end.
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God’s love gives me a future and a hope in my now.
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God’s love makes me whole-hearted, which to me means I don’t have to do things completely by my will, my obedience does not divide me, and it is will powered and heart felt!
“TruthIN” The Characteristics Of God’s Love:
Redemptive, Expressive, Giving, Excellent
“TruthIN” Application To My Life:
God’s love sacrificed the best that He had. My love is giving, but never that sacrificial. Our human nature is to always hold the best in reserve for ourselves and give out of our overflow. We don’t give out of our need. God went straight to the best that He had, this was the excellence of His love for us in action. He spared no expense, not even His Son. It is humiliating to see just how much love has been tainted by the culture of look out for number one. I am right there with that cultural say so, it has colored the way I see love and the way I love. Change me Jesus. You sacrificed your life for me, make me willing to sacrifice the best of my life for others. This is love, this is genuine, hard hitting love.
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John 15:10-16 If you keep My commandments and obey My teaching, you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and remain in His love. 11 I have told you these things so that My joy and delight may be in you, and that your joy may be made full and complete and overflowing. Disciples’ Relation to Each Other 12 “This is My commandment, that you love and unselfishly seek the best for one another, just as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love [nor stronger commitment] than to lay down his own life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you keep on doing what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you [My] friends, because I have revealed to you everything that I have heard from My Father. 16 You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and I have appointed and placed and purposefully planted you, so that you would go and bear fruit and keep on bearing, and that your fruit will remain and be lasting, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name [as My representative] He may give to you. Amplified Bible
“FleshOut” My Thoughts On God’s Love:
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God’s love is joyful, the recipe for this joyful love begins with the ingredient of obedience.
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God’s love is unselfish and seeks the best for us.
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God’s love has a commitment with the supernatural edge of selflessness
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I am the representative of God’s powerful love
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I am purposefully placed to be God’s distribution of His love
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A self-sacrificing nature is the best characteristic of a great love, it has no personal rights to trip it up. Love freely flows.
“TruthIN” The Characteristics Of God’s Love:
Joyful, Delightful, Complete, Overflowing, Sacrificial Commitment, Unselfish
Example, Perpetual, Obedient, Replenishing
“TruthIN” Application To My Life:
Obedience is the key to a joyful love. The more willess I am, the more the love I have takes on a self-sacrificing nature. I become a person who lays down their rights to give the best to others. My Jesus, Others, You life becomes the greatest love I know and emits a joy unspeakable. There is great joy in being chosen by Jesus, but there is even greater joy to respond to His love by giving it to others. He is a great example, I am in followship of Him. I have been purposefully set apart from the moment I received this incredible love of Jesus Christ. I am positioned in God’s Grace and this in itself is my greatest life joy, a joy nothing and no one can ever steal from me. This love, this joy is forever mine and it is my desire to continue to give it away as long as I am here on this earth.
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Dueteronomy 7:6-9 For you are a holy people, who belong to the Lord your God. Of all the people on earth, the Lord your God has chosen you to be his own special treasure. 7 “The Lord did not set his heart on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other nations, for you were the smallest of all nations! 8 Rather, it was simply that the Lord loves you, and he was keeping the oath he had sworn to your ancestors. That is why the Lord rescued you with such a strong hand from your slavery and from the oppressive hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. 9 Understand, therefore, that the Lord your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love on those who love him and obey his commands. New Living Translation
“FleshOut” My Thoughts On God’s Love:
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God loves me like a special treasure that He holds dear
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God loves me with a faithful and steadfast love
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God chose to love me, He chose me
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Because God loved me, He liberated me from sin with an overwhelming power to live for Him always
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A loyal love relationship, this is what I have with my AWE-GOD
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God’s Love is a freeing love, it redeems us now and forever because it is faithful and true
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God’s love stands the test of the grip of evil, it endures until all is set in righteousness, I can depend on this
“TruthIN” The Characteristics Of God’s Love:
Mighty, redemptive, faithful, steadfast, kind, loyal
“TruthIN” Application To My Life:
It was the powerful love of God, a love that chose me, that has set me apart in my life right now, all for Him. Simply-Significantly Jesus loved me with His life. He died my death in that lavishing love kind of way, with an unfailing love He purchased me. Everything about God’s love for me is excellent. It was perfect in sacrifice, in laying down of rights, in reaching unconditionally, in strength, in loyalty and unfailing in it’s pursuits and now strong in victory over death. There is no greater love and I have been rescued forever by it. Impactive Repercussion!
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:
My Reflection
Characteristics Of God’s Love:
God’s love is miraculous, impactive. life giving, redeeming, deep, personal, true, inestimable, selfless, courageous, daring and passionate, genuine, constant, sure, unchangeable, enough, guiding
My Thoughts On God’s Love:
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God’s love changed our lives forever, how can we even begin to estimate it’s worth to us
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The mission of God’s love has always been personal in nature and pursuing of us
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God’s love is relational in nature
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God’s love endured much in order to impact our lives
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God’s love chose the hard path for us
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We were wanted! We were wanted so much that both The Father God and The Son, Jesus made an extreme sacrifice.
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How can we not respond to so great a love?
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Immeasurable – Incalculable love! We can’t figure it out, we can’t out spend it, we can’t calculate the inestimable fathomless value of it.
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Because Jesus’ love stayed the narrow course of death on our behalf, it did not stray from its Kingdom purpose and we have eternal life.
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It is a courageous love, a love that is not afraid of sacrifice, a willess love that forfeited its kingship rights to become a worldly pauper.
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This love that Jesus has for the Bride of Christ is hard to wrap my earthy mind around as it saturates my heart with eternal hope
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Genuinely! I heard that word and I automatically feel convicted by it, because sometimes my love for God is so willful and not heart connected. I do things religiously instead of relationally. I am trying to change that to be completely His.
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I am not genuinely devoted to you. Selfishness stumbles me out of that description.
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I believe in You, but I don’t always believe You when my situations don’t go the way I planned them. I react to the world first, to what I see first, I do not fully respond to You, look to You. I wish I did. I hope for this change in me.
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Your love always inspires me and it brings much AWE to my life, I have to say even in adversity, I stand in AWE of You.
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Am I devoted to God, is it genuine-heartfelt? The point is I did not automatically say Yes.
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I do believe in You. I just love myself more than I love You. This needs to change because I know perfect love, casts out all fear. I need to believe YOU.
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I need to know You more, love you most. Change me. Increase in me.
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Devoted? Constantly Committed-Loyal-Dedicated-Faithful! I want to be because this is how You, Lord God have been, are and will always be.
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It is not natural to cherish someone you disagree with, someone who has dashed your expectations! Lord you want me to cherish You at all times and that means dying to self wants, my dreams and putting my expectations in Your hands.
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I do believe that Your love will inspire me when I am growing through hard times as I cling to You and dig my roots deeper in Your Kingdom.
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I think the hardest thing is letting go of our plans and loving-trusting God relentlessly when our way is hit with a sudden detour.
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It is hard for me, change. I have always stumbled through change. I can see why now. My heart IS divided between this world and where I belong.
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Lord I need to cling to You, wholly-holy. Dig my life roots deeply in Your Kingdom. Change me. I desire You to be my enough.
My Response To The Bridegrooms Voice On Love:
Fleshing Out My Worldly Viewpoint Of Love
God loved me with a sacrificial love, a hard hitting, impactive-active love with His intent proposed to reproduce in me the same kind of true love that was found in His Son, Jesus
Christ. The love of Jesus was connected to sacrifice of self, laying down the human nature and rising up a supernatural redemptive character, that He demonstrated over and over again through the dying to self, a willessness that I too need to walk in. I not only need to take on the name of Christian that was purchased for me through the salvation of Jesus, I need to be the love, be found in His love demonstrated through my name sake, Jesus Christ.
The Conviction Of God’s Love
Forgive me Lord, I am not genuinely devoted to you. My heart is divided. There are times when my flesh kicks up so badly, when I lean into the sway of its wants, that I am so very disrespectful to You. I do have cultural attitudes in my heart, I see them now and they do need to be fleshed out. It is my plans. They don’t look like the reality of my life season. Here is where I stumble, here is where I see that my life is still about me. I am not content with what You have allowed, where You have placed me in this life season. You have purpose, Kingdom purpose and You are looking out for my good. I know this. But I am one sided and me first. I do not think of Your kingdom first, it is not natural for me to do so. You and Your Kingdom need to be my enough. I need to decrease. What I want needs to decrease. This world in me needs to decrease and when it does, then I know I will be genuinely devoted to you. This is what I desire. This is the work I hope for You to do in me.
Gaining A New Understanding Of God’s Love
As I daily experience the true love of my Savior, Jesus Christ, it is an “impactive repercussion” that collides with my spirit with a forceful effect of courageous passion and selfless love. The impact of Jesus love for me stimulates my human strength with an enduring love for others. I hope to emulate a persevering love as I continue to grow and believe in the love of Jesus Christ for me. I am hoping huge as I stay in a vital-vertical relationship with Jesus, that His love will impact my faithfulness for His mission to reach people for the kingdom, His love will transform my natural soulish affection to the supernatural of His true love, a devotion that rises above self will and is laid out on the harvest field of this world on an altar of selflessness, forfeiting all that is natural and springing forward in a miraculous redeeming love.
Learning The Mission Of God’s Love
I know the gift of God’s genuine love, gifted to me has an inestimable nature and I could never repay it and it will never run out. I can give it away continuously and no matter what my life situation, I will have, by His Holy Spirit a continuous courageous passion, an ardent selflessness, a servant’s love that stimulates my human strength with joyful endurance. God’s love has the ability to withstand the trial of personal betrayal and also, is able to persevere through the tests of extremely hard seasons of life. This is the love gifted to me in abundance and I plan on gifting it to others daily, because the supply of it will never run dry.
The Impact Of God’s Love
The love of God has an “impactive repercussion” on my passion to live for Him. His love enforces my mind with Godly intentions, stretching my thoughts past my natural mind sets into God’s unseen supernatural understanding. I have a natural tendency to rationalize, reason and doubt, but as I embrace God’s love, His supernatural insight fortifies my trust with His hope that springs eternal, His steadfast peace that continuously breaks loose the strongholds of thoughts that keep my mind chained to impossibility. The love of Jesus motivates me, drives my passions in the direction of right thinking and right living, it has an impactive, heavenly repercussion on my soul attitudes.
The Excellence Of God’s Love
God’s love has a soul saturating quality to it as He lavishes us with it and because of its relational-salvational characteristic, I am able to persevere and grow through my life from season to season. My faith endures and my life is endowed in God’s living legacy of victory, an inheritance provided to me by the Love of God. Jesus’ righteousness is continually impacting my soul with His fidelity and it creates in me an undivided heart in Holy Alliance with my Father God. In this incredible, impacting love of Jesus, I am in full allegiance with Almighty God and protected eternally under the advocacy of His Holy Spirit. I am secured forthrightly in the position of God’s glorious grace. Yes, I am unmoved by this world, firmly anchored in God’s Truth through His True Love, a devotion paid forward for me by Jesus Christ, His Son with an “impactive repercussion” of God’s mercy!
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 three and four 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, KimberlyMac