This message will search out your heart and show you what it means to move in the love of God. It is about love, what it means to love, and how we can better love in the will of the Lord. The primary Scriptures for this word come from John 15.
Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. John 15:9. In his gospel and epistles, John is always talking about abiding, meaning that you live in it; you learn to live in His love.
If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full. John 15:10–11. Jesus spoke of a complete, full joy, and I believe that is very essential. This is the love that identifies us with the joy of God. Because we are obedient, we live joyfully in the love of God.
This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends, if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves; for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another. Verses 12–17.
Love is a difficult thing. From the time we can hardly walk we command people to love us; we demand their love. But it is difficult to explain what it is to love someone. What are the requirements of love? What does it mean to say, “I love you,” and have it be more than just three words you speak? Love is not easy, and I do not think people automatically love. But they need love.
A little baby will die without love. If a baby is put in an orphanage at the time of birth and is not adopted after a certain number of months, it is usually considered that the child will go to a mental institution. A child that is only put in a little crib and fed, with no one to love it, will become mentally retarded. It is important to remember that everyone needs love.
Everyone needs love, but many times people do not know how to receive it nor how to give it. Even on the natural plane people do not know what it is to love. But how much more do we have to learn how to love in the Spirit, how to follow the things Jesus said about love. There are many things in the Scriptures that are alluded to so simply and briefly, but they unfold what love really is to mean to us. I would like to offer some points on how to love.
If you want to move in love, you will have to learn to accept love. You must believe you are loved. This is very difficult. Do you have someone in your family or someone close to you that you try to love, and it seems they do not even know how to receive the love nor know what to do? Perhaps they came from families that did not express themselves too freely in love; they did not know how to love. Some have never known what it was to have their mother take them on her lap and hug them and love them, or to have their father tell them he loved them. There should be some memory in everyone’s mind of being loved, because people who have not been loved find it hard to accept love. It is not that they are embarrassed by it, but that they do not know how to accept the fact that people love them. When you walk into the church you will have to believe the people love you.
“I was there but nobody even spoke to me.”
That should not make any difference. If it were merely an obligation on their part to be polite to you they would have spoken to you. But when they speak to you, they will speak to you with real love. It is difficult to get people to accept that.
“Well, if they love they should be right there patting me on the back and telling me what a great guy I am.”
No. Sometimes the best expression of love is to be ignored. That is what makes men out of boys and self-reliant women out of little girls. They are loved, given guidelines, and left alone to go on their way. In this you have to know that you are loved and be able to sense that love.
It takes a great amount of love in the heart of a mother not to tie her little boy’s shoes. She taught him to tie his own shoes, but he is fumbling on the twelfth attempt, and she is waiting to take him to school. Instead of scolding him, “Oh, when are you ever going to learn to take care of yourself?” and leaving him depressed, it is much better to say, “Son, I love you. You tie your shoe while I fix your breakfast.” Let him fumble and cry a bit. Sometimes the greatest love you can show is to ignore another person, and let him come up strong. Do not smother. It is good to learn how to accept love and how to give it wisely.
It is also good to let yourself be needed. That is real love, and that is what God wants you to do. Let yourself be needed, and also learn how to need others. Do not withdraw from recognizing deeply your own need. Shyness makes people who have a need draw away, determined not to let anyone know it. “No one is going to know how I feel.”
We are born with another instinct. Did you ever hear a child cry when he needed something? He gets attention. Wherever there is a heart of love in a person, and someone expresses his need for that person’s love, it comes through. Two things always disturbed me when I heard them. One was the squeal of a pig caught in a fence or stuck while trying to squeeze under a gate. Nothing seems as penetrating as a pig squealing. The other thing I am unable to ignore is the cry of a baby. I remember the advice the old-timers gave when we had our children, “Just let them cry it out.” But if you let them cry it out, your nerves are almost shattered. You cannot do it because the sound is so penetrating. It moved me when I read in the book of Exodus how God told Moses, “Go down to Egypt because their cries have come up to Me” (Exodus 3:9–10). He loves you, and He will not ignore your cry. Cry to Him and it will come up to Him.
You are not going to love or be loved unless you get involved. In the churches God is raising up now you have to be involved. You cannot slip in and sit on the back row with the idea that you are not going to get too involved, that you will come after the song service and leave before the benediction, because you do not want to get involved or know anyone’s troubles. It will not work. You must be involved.
Every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. I John 5:1b. You cannot love God unless you love what He begets. You have to get involved whether you want to or not. I have seen broken homes in which a widow has been left alone to raise children. Another man comes and says to that woman, “I love you,” and she listens. She knows how much she needs to be loved and how much she wants to love, but she is torn by many things. She has her own flesh and blood that she has born. What can she do? Then she sees that the man really loves her, because he begins to love the children. And because he loves her and wants to make her his, he makes the children his too. If you love, you have to let yourself be needed, and you have to learn how to need others.
This message is telling us how to love, something we thought we knew how to do. You have to believe in the love that is given you. You have to have faith in it. It is real unbelief when you feel no one could really love you. There is an old saying, “He has a face that only a mother can love.” But I have learned not to judge by the superficial appearance of people, not to look at people to see how beautiful or how homely they are, the color of their skin, or whether they are rich or poor.
I look to see something I find in so many people. It is a little cry that is not voiced. You cannot hear it with your ear, but in a quiet moment it sounds like a freight train coming through. It says, “Let me love you! Love me.” Since I have had ears to listen with, it has been many years since I have failed to hear that in a human being. It is there. We come into a walk with God and learn that the Body makes increase of itself in love (Ephesians 4:16). The humble come in and they say, “Is there any chance that I too can love? Can I start giving something? Maybe it isn’t very much but I would like to give what I have. And I have such a need.”
How do we express love? You learn after a while to listen to what people are trying to say, and you respond to them accordingly. It is what you do that expresses your love. Fulfillment is an action. You might not be able to do what they desire, or meet a financial need, but you do what you can.
When you see your brother in need, can you shut up your bowels of compassion against him? Let us not love in word but in deed (I John 3:17–18). There has to be something that reaches out and relates yourself to your brothers and sisters. “I love you. I love you.” Love is gentle, but it is also like a stick of dynamite. Love lights the fuse tenderly and then blows up those walls you have built around yourself. It is love that says, “Let me in. Don’t close the door on me. I want to love you.”
When we love we have to do two things. It is like washing feet. It is one thing to wash feet; it is another to have your feet washed. A person may say “I would have no trouble washing the feet of everyone in the church. But I am embarrassed to have my feet washed, wondering if I have a hole in my sock. I have to be sure my feet are clean before I have them washed.” That comes from a tendency to shut the door and build a wall. That person says to the world, “I’m a fortified city. Don’t come near me.” We cannot do that.
In the Body of Christ, it is faith that worketh by love (Galatians 5:6). Love is something that comes along with our walk. And if it is not there, it is like the story of the old man who was asked, “What is salt?” He said, “Salt is what makes the potatoes taste flat when there isn’t any.” And what is love? Love is what makes the gifts and the ministries go flat if there isn’t any. I can speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and if I do not have that love I am a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And if I would give my body to be burned, it would profit me nothing if I do not have love (I Corinthians 13:1, 3).
I Corinthians 13 gives a most glorious definition of love. “Love suffereth long, is kind, envieth not, is not puffed up, seeketh not her own …” (verses 4–5). It says what love is not. Many times that is the only way you can describe love: “Love is not …” Love is not building a wall. Love is not locking a door. Love is not withdrawing from someone you need and love.
This is the fast God has chosen: that you deal your bread to the hungry and you do not hide yourself from your own flesh. Even within the walls of your own home you do not hide away from your husband or your wife, your mother or your father, or your children (Isaiah 58:6, 7). Perhaps you feel you must have walls. There may be a great deal of conflict and discouragement within the home. We learn the lesson about the price of love from the Father: He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son (John 3:16). If you love, you are going to suffer, not because the person is worthy for you to suffer for him but because that is the way love is. God loves you, and He gave His Son for you; and if you love God you are going to give yourself to the Lord. You are going to love the Body of Christ and you are going to give yourself to it also.
The Lord is opening up something in my heart, and it is bubbling. I feel like saying over and over again: “Little children, love one another, for love is of God.” And because we are born of God we love (I John 4:7). We cannot do anything else.
Yes, you will suffer, and people will take advantage of you. When you love and take down those walls, you have no defense. That is the reason why the ones who love you and the ones you love are those who hurt you the most. People out in the world do not hurt me, for I can love them objectively. If they do me a wrong I can forgive them. But when those I am one with do something to me, what do I do? Because I love them I bleed, but I do not put up a wall.
Let us look at God’s love, how completely He has come to love us. No longer do I call you slaves; for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends.… John 15:15. God loves us so much that He confides in us His plans and His purpose. That is the only thing that makes us different from slaves.
“I have not called you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing.” A slave has no reason to know; it is none of his business. But the Lord says, “I know you are going to serve Me, and I love you; therefore I am going to reveal to you what I am doing. Because you know what I am doing I will call you friends; you are no longer slaves.”
He makes us His friends, and I think that is probably a key to all revelation ministry. Would you like to know how to be a minister unto the Lord? Love God and be open to His love. When He loves you He does not want to make you just a bond servant; He will make you a friend, one who knows what his master is doing. That is exactly what a New Testament ministry is: one who knows what the Master is doing.
The next step is found in John 15:16. It is beautiful. You did not choose Me, but I chose you.… The Lord did not need to do that, but He said, I appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give it to you. This is the love that makes a choice.
When a boy says to a girl, “I love you,” it may mean something, or it may mean nothing. When the girl says, “Yes, I really love you,” to the boy, it may mean something, or it may mean nothing. I have seen some of the very young ones fall in love. That was all; they fell in love. They did not love anyone; they were in love with love. The boy could have been anyone. The girl loved him because she was in love with love, and the whole idea intrigued her. But real, mature love is a love that focuses.
There is nothing more wonderful than when the Lord looks at you, and says, “I love you, I have chosen you. You are My choice.” It should break your hearts when His promise comes to you and God says, “I have ordained that you are going to be My servant.” It means He has chosen you. He has focused His love upon you. That is what a man does to a woman when he decides to start courting her. Then people say he is “hooked.” There comes a time when they both make a choice and say, “Forsaking all others.” That is what we do when we come to love the Lord. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. I John 2:15b. Love must make a choice. Love does not exist without a choice being made.
God says, “I have chosen you; I have appointed you.” What does it mean to say that He has appointed us? God does not need me or you. Why did He choose us? Why did He appoint us? It is His way of giving our lives significance, to put us in a place where He really needs us. He is God and can do anything He wants. He chose this as the way He would move. He chose to move through human vessels, and He has chosen you and appointed you to be one of those vessels. You are suddenly aware that you are needed. You were not needed, but God has made you needed, made you necessary. That is what causes love to endure.
I heard of a woman who worked for years putting her husband through medical school. She became head nurse and a specialist in the same field her husband studied. He was one of the outstanding surgeons, and she became his chief nurse. This couple had thousands of dollars coming in for every operation, yet she left her husband and ran off with a premed student so she could work and put him through medical school. She had to be needed.
God knew what makes human beings tick, so He said, “I will make you needed. I will make you necessary.” That is very important. If someone loves you and needs you, that gives some permanent meaning to your life. He said, “I will send you out and you will bear fruit.” That is necessary.
Consider a young couple that gets married, with the condition the world is in, finances, and everything else. He is working to keep body and soul together. She is a pretty young thing who could work and make a little money so they could have a nice life and enjoy themselves, but what do they do.
She says, “I want a baby.”
He gets that glow in his eyes and says, “Yes, let’s have a baby.”
Yet the world is overpopulated already. They are not thinking about the population explosion, only about their own emotional explosion—they need to be fruitful. Their love must bear some fruit. They could work toward some other meaningful goal together until they could afford children, but usually that is not the case. If only the people who were ready got married, the human race would be extinct in one generation, and if the only people who had babies were those who could afford them, there would be few babies, so it goes another way. The drive is there to love and to be fruitful.
Because a person loves the Lord, he wants to serve Him. He wants to do anything. When I drive up to the church, there is a brother who is concerned to help me. He takes the keys and parks the car. He arranges everything, and I have the feeling that he is really serving. Take that away from him and that brother would wither.
God wants you to be active, to express your love, to serve Him and be fruitful. So He opens the door. He meets people’s hearts and says, “Now, you are going to flow together in love. You are going to go to the ends of the world.” And so we go trotting along.
“Where are you going?”
“I am going to the ends of the world.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to preach the gospel of the Kingdom.”
“Why?”
It is because we love Him. We have a tremendous amount of work to do, but it is exciting because we are serving Him and loving Him. There will be no end to the things He lays before us.
Love will give permanent meaning to your life. The more you love God and give of yourself, determined to serve Him, the more it will have a real, permanent meaning. He said, “You are going to bear fruit, and your fruit shall remain” (John 15:16b). You want to feel you have brought something permanent in the earth.
One of the most shattering experiences for good moral people to have, that which can cause their characters to disintegrate, is for their marriages to break up. If you ask authorities in places where couples can get a six-week divorce, they will tell you about the people who commit suicide in their hotel rooms, the ones who drink until they are destroyed, those who throw away their morals completely and suddenly do not care about anything. What has happened? Something had meaning to them, but suddenly there is no permanence to it. Nothing is left. They loved and now it is all ashes.
The Lord says to us, “Love Me. I have chosen you. I will bring promises to you, and I will show you the meaning of your life. I will set you on the course and guide you. You will bear fruit because you have loved Me. Your fruit will remain. Your life will have a permanent significance to it. You are not going to drift anymore.”
What a terrible feeling it is when you feel that everything has disintegrated and there is nothing left! Never criticize anyone for what he does under a circumstance like that. Look to see what happened to him. Look to see the vacuum that was created. There is nothing more devastating than to be in a place where suddenly your life has no meaning at all. Open your heart and say, “I am going to love. I am going to be loved. And I am going to have a life that is significant. All through my life I will have that permanent realization that I have born fruit that remains.”
All of this comes to show that God’s real purpose is to bring you into a relationship with Himself and then to meet your need, …that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give to you. John 15:16c. The mark that a man loves a woman is that if he has the money, he meets the needs of his family. Someone has said, “It is not sexual difficulties that end marriages, but it is arguments over finances.” Because of the selfishness in either case, there is really no difference. I never complain about money my wife spends if we have it, because I cannot relate selfishness and love. It is impossible, in my thinking. God loves us. He blesses us and brings us to the place where He says, “Ask whatever you will and I will give it to you. Anything you ask the Father in My name He will give it to you.” He is trying to work out something to take care of your need. If we really love, we have the same attitude the Lord has. We want to see everything met, everything supplied, everything provided for.
We will finish up with John 15:17. This I command you, that you love one another. This message causes you to search your hearts and say “I thought I really loved the Lord and loved the church, but I am beginning to see there are some things that must be worked in my life. This love must be perfected.”
That is what the Bible speaks about: the love being perfected within us. Open your heart to really love.
I AM THINE
A HOLY PRAYER AND EXHORTATION
You are free. It is the Lord Who has made you free. Babylon has no hold upon you. You are a free people in the Lord. The grace of God aboundeth and the love of God filleth thy heart, and thou art able to leave all limitation behind. Thou art even able to leave the thoughts of yesterday, all of the things thou has been conditioned to feel, and all thy ways of response. The Lord draweth thee unto Himself, and He declareth unto thee, “Thou art free.” The Lord hath set thee free.
You are His people. He shall draw thee, and thou shalt run after Him. Thou shalt bind thyself to Him, and thou shalt say in thy heart, “I am free of Babylon. Lord, I am Thy bondservant. And I turn my heart away from everything the world would hold over me and every demand they would make of me. And Lord, I would be wholly Thine. I would speak Thy word in the earth. O God, I would walk with Thee like Thy very shadow. I would be Thy extension, Thy Body in the earth. And whatsoever Thy heart feeleth, I shall feel. Whatsoever Thy heart willeth, my hands shall perform it by Thy strength. O Lord, I am Thine.” This shall be thy cry in the night, “Lord, I am Thine.” It shall be thy cry and thy joy when thou art on the top of the mountain. Thou shalt say, “Lord, I am thine.” When a host encampeth against thee, thou shalt cry unto the Lord, “I am Thine.” At times when thy heart would fear, thou shalt look unto the Lord and say, “I am Thine.”
Day by day this shall sustain thee, that thou hast been bought by a price and art His peculiar possession in all the earth. Thou art His royal priesthood, raised up to be His kings and priests and to reign with Him. It shall always be in thy mind and heart that thou art a free people, free of the world. Thou hast been freed. Thou hast risen up against the oppressor, the oppressor about thee and the oppressor within thee. Thou hast made thy boast in the Lord, and thou hast said, “O Lord, Thou hast redeemed me out of the hand of the enemy. Thou hast lifted me up out of the kingdom of darkness and translated me into Thy Kingdom. O Thou precious Sovereign of love. Thou hast entreated me and my heart doth respond. Thou hast called me and my heart is glad. Thou hast spoken to me in the night season and prepared the dawn of a new day for my heart. Thou hast whispered Thy revelation to me and said, “Shortly, shortly thou shalt see the day I shall bring forth in the earth, the glorious day, and thou shalt walk with Me in it. Thou shalt be My people, My sons and daughters, and thou shalt walk before Me, because I shall purify thee. Ye shall walk without rebuke and without offense.” Yea, thou shalt say in thy heart, “I am Thy possession. I am Thine, O Lord.” Amen.
When the times of unworthiness sweep over you it is good to know you belong to Him.