Notes from a Talk on Extreme Love by Bart Hadaway

Bart teaching the team in Pattaya

Bart Hadaway serves as a pastoral and spiritual overseer at Extreme Prophetic Ministries with Patricia King.

There are common threads between believers and unbelievers with regard to problems and struggles.

This shouldn’t be. But it makes sense that it is so – the enemy is not that concerned about unbelievers, but he is concerned about believers. Ultimately his assault is directed against God. We are an integral part of God’s plans.

When Jesus makes a statement like ‘if you love one another, all the world will know...’, it makes sense that unity would be a problem for satan.

John 13:15 - 17:  I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

The King James version translates Christ's words as: "If you know these things, happy are you if you do them"

If you DO them. It is not revelation but implementation that brings happiness.

Jesus also said: "As the Father sent Me, so I am sending you".

Ultimately it is God Who initiates and Who implements everything. We are here because God sent us.

It is imperative that we understand how Jesus was sent. He is our example. 

A revelation of the righteousness of Christ gives you bold confidence that you are pleasing and truly acceptable to God. Christians often have trouble truly believing in their hearts that God really loves them. People love God and are truly sold out to God but believe in the depths of their heart that God loves other people more than them. So then they perform to please God. This leads to a kind of spiritual gymnastics, good resolutions, and patterns of failure and discouragement. And it is never enough, no matter how hard you try.

But all the time Jesus is saying "I want to send you as the Father sent Me" – and this means to be sent as a son.

John 17:20 - 23:  "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

You have loved them even as you have loved me...

You have loved them as much as You have loved Me.

Did God love Jesus? Then He loves us. 

It is beyond the ability of natural man to comprehend – that God loves you as much as He loves Jesus.

But it is still true.

Romans 8:31 - 39: What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

Note the plurals. This is the common sense verse of the Bible. God gave His son. Why should we think anything else is held back?

Paul can teach the truth about what we all have, but being persuaded is personal. He writes: " I am persuaded that nothing can separate me from the love of God." 

My God loves me, loves me just as much as He loves His Son.

The story of the prodigal son illustrates God’s heart. 

Prodigals disrupt your perfect world. It is easy to react with anger. When God faced that issue he responded by redeeming There was a time when God asked Kim: ‘Are you going to crucify your child or are you going to get on the cross for her?

God's heart is redemption. So why come to God as though He is angry with you? His love is absolute.

When you are incapable of doubting His love you will always want Him. Our belief system should be such that our confidence in Him is completely secure. This leads to freedom and to the ability to love people.

"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. (John 4:34)

We are the same, and for the same reason. 

Why? Because He loves me. We don’t need to work for God’s love. It is a love relationship with the Father. No performance. Nothing to prove. Nothing to show. Just to be in His love. Just living in His love.

Jesus says: "As the Father sent Me, so I am sending you...As the Father loved Me, so He loves you..."

We can’t comprehend it, but we can certainly receive it.

John 17: 25 - 26: "Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."‘

... that the love with which You have loved Me may be felt in their hearts... This was the prayer of Jesus.

Eph 3:17 - 19: And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Psalm 37: 4 tells us to 'delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.'

The truth is that our greatest desire is for Him. We are wired that way. 

Gal 4:6: Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba" ,Father.

The reason you are miserable when the enemy attacks is to do with the thought of not being with Him. So let Him know, just like a child crying out: "I want you Papa"

That’s the heart He has given us. 

(Note: A CD teaching by Bart & Kim Hadaway about believing God for prodigal children is available here: Hope for the Prodigal. The devil can’t have your kids. Final! )