The Love Of God

I don’t think I could make the statement: What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s what everyone needs, what everyone wants.
I don’t think I could get hardly a person in the world to raise their hand and say, “Excuse me, I disagree. We don’t need any more love. People being kind to one another, forgiving one another, taking care of each other, families staying together, people being sensitive. I’ll tell you what, we’ve got enough of that as there is.”

Now, think this through, though. If universally we agree that the world needs love and we all need to be loved, why is there such little love? It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it?

I put a little statement of three facts about love. Fact number one: It’s a universal need. We are all looking for love.

Fact number two is there is a universal solution to the universal need. God loves all people everywhere and longs to meet the deepest needs of their heart for love.

Fact number three: We have a universal disconnect. There is a tragic disconnection. You have this unbelievable need and this supernatural, unlimited, boundless availability, and nevertheless, most people remain starved for love. They are starved for love.

And there are three reasons. Some people have no idea that God cares for them and loves them. Some of those people have tasted and they know about God’s love, but they have not received it.

And then there is a whole other set of people that, at least once or twice, they have this experience and for the life of them, they don’t know how to touch it or taste it again.

I would say that is at least a decent picture of a universal need, a universal solution, and a very tragic disconnect, among both believers and unbelievers.

Brennan Manning, in his little book called, Abba’s Child, quotes Henri Nouwen and talks about, What is the root cause behind Christians not experiencing the love of God? I think his words are instructive. Nouwen writes, “Over the years I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection.”

Follow his logic closely. “Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are a part of a much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless, unlovable,” when we have voices that you are not worthy, you don’t measure up is the idea, when we carry in our hearts shame and guilt and a sense that we are unlovable, then he goes on to say, “…success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions.

“The real trap, however, is self-rejection…Self rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that God calls us the ‘Beloved.’” We are Beloved in Christ. We are in Christ. “Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”

I think at the core of the existence of God’s heart, at least in what I am learning, and as I have read many of the people that have walked much deeper in the Christian life than me, it comes to this sense that believing, just as you are, not if, not if this gets cleaned up, not because you do this or do that, but just as you are, because of who God is, that you are the object of His affection.

And that all these things about purity and all these things about caring for others and all these things about life transformation really start if they are genuine, at the very, very core of our existence, when we begin to see ourselves as God sees us: as precious, as valuable, as unconditionally loved, as the object of His affection and concern.

And there is nothing that brings greater honor to God if we could learn to receive it.

“How great a love the Father has on us, has lavished upon us, that we should be called the children of God.” [1 John 3:1]

So, let’s talk about what love is, let’s see if we can move it from that concept, intellectual, in our head, down into our hearts. For me, it’s: God’s love is His holy disposition toward all that He has created that compels Him to express unconditional affection and selective correction to provide the highest and best quality of existence, both now and forever, for the objects of His love.

Let me unpack that just a little, because the words were actually chosen fairly carefully. God’s love is holy. In other words, we learned that word, right? It means separate, marked-off, it’s totally other. And it’s a holy disposition. It’s just the way He feels, the way He thinks all the time about you. And it’s that He has created, He has this holy disposition that compels Him to do two things. He is just compelled, not because of something in you, but because of something in Him to express unconditional affection.

It’s a holy disposition that compels Him toward unconditional affection and selective correction. See, God loves me so much that any time my life, my thought, my relationship, my finances, and my priorities are moving me toward unhealthy things that will do damage to me and damage to others, His love does what? He brings about correction.

See, that’s what God’s love is. He is compelled to do it, but why? In order to provide the highest and best quality of existence. You know the abundant life Jesus talked about? That’s just another way of saying it. The highest, best. What does it mean? Life that is really life! Living to the brim! Living fulfilled! Living, not dependent on people’s response but something that wells up inside where the deepest longings and thirsts of your soul are satisfied. That’s what God wants for you.

God’s love is other and so absolutely beyond what we can grasp. And so that is my definition.

The characteristics of this love, and I call it agape love.

The New Testament writers actually made up that word. They just didn’t have a good word so they said, “We’re going to take this word agape, and let’s sanctify it, put it in the New Testament so it doesn’t get confused with storge or eros or some of these other kinds of loves that the Greek language was familiar with.”

And the characteristics are interesting. It’s a giving love, it’s a sacrificial love, it’s an unconditional love, and it’s a boundless love.

God’s love is expressed, primarily, through His goodness, mercy, longsuffering, and grace. And I have a quote here from one of my professors.

I really like what Dr. Ryrie says here. He says, “The love of God is like,” he says, “is like a tree and then there are branches of its expression and they are primarily His goodness, mercy, longsuffering, and grace.” And he says, “Although there are distinctions as you study these words, they are really not exact. God’s goodness may be defined as His benevolent concern for His creatures.”

Do you ever just think of God as, today, this moment? He is concerned about you. You know how some of you moms are? “Hey, call me when you get there. Call me, I want to know you’ve made it okay.” The God of the universe sort of has that attitude. “Hey, I’m checking on you. I want to make sure everything is okay.” Is that how you think of Him?

Or do you think of Him as far away, hard to get to, wish you could get His attention?

The love of God is expressed in His goodness. It’s also defined as a benevolent concern for His creatures as well as, “Mercy is the aspect of His goodness that causes Him to show pity and compassion.” Have you ever just really blown it and just felt so shameful and so bad and just, like, you’re not even lovable. Forget by God, by anybody.

The love of God is expressed in His mercy. And He just looks down and says, “This didn’t surprise Me at all. I’m not even shocked. In fact, before the foundations of the earth, when the Godhead was determining what the price tag of men’s freedom would be, Jesus knew that He would come and He would hang on a cross for that very shameful sin.

It goes on to say that, “His longsuffering speaks of His self-restraint in the face of provocation.” Have you ever thought of God exercising self-restraint? Like you really need a spanking and He just, “Mmmm, ah, I’ll wait a couple more days.” You’ve just got a really rotten attitude, or you’re involved in some blatant sin and the consequences should be swift but He just loves you so much, God is practicing self-restraint in His relationship with you. Why? Because He loves you.

And then the final word there is grace. “His unmerited favor shown primarily through Christ, which makes possible a relationship with Him.”

I have taken all that I have learned about God’s love and I thought that if I could put it in a few statements, a few simple statements, to get it from this, God loves me and I have these feelings now and then and, okay, it’s goodness and it’s mercy and it’s longsuffering and I get a little flash of it, but I wanted to give you a little summary of what it would look like if you could see, specifically, what it feels like and how God thinks about you, so you could start to move it from up here, intellectual, to down here to spiritual and emotional.

And as I read these, what I would like you to do is think about this question, lean back, Is this how I see God? Is this how I see God? And if that quick gut reaction is, I might intellectually believe God is that way, but that is not how I see God or think of how He sees me, then what you know is you have some renewal of the mind to do.

Statement number one: God’s love for you means His thoughts, intentions, desires, and plans for you are always for your good, and never for your harm.

We looked at Jeremiah 29:11 and James 1. But think of that. Do you, in your heart of hearts, think that His desires and intents, His plans, they are always for your good. He is just a very safe, safe Person to be with. And the plans for the future that He has for you, His desires for you, oh, it’s always for your welfare. See, if you understand the love of God, that’s what you will think.

God’s love for you means that He is kind, He is open, He is approachable, He is frank, and He is eager to be your friend.

Do you see Him that – remember? “I don’t call you slaves, because a slave doesn’t know what His master is doing. I have called you my friends, for all things the Father has made known to Me, I have revealed to you.”

Do you see Him as open and friendly? Or is He distant and unapproachable and you have to be good to be on good terms and when you’re good, He will listen to you, but if you struggle, He probably doesn’t? God’s love means that 24/7, He is open, He is kind, He is approachable.

God’s love for you means He emotionally identifies with your pain, your joy, your hopes and dreams, and He has chosen to allow your happiness to affect His own.

Have you thought of the – when you’re in pain and when you are hurt, is He on the other side of the fence and He is maybe causing it? Or is He on the side of the fence behind you with His arm around you, and your joys bring actually happiness to the heart of God?

And your hurts and your struggles bring tears. Have you ever thought of that? Have you ever thought that when Jesus’ friend Lazarus died in John 11, that He wept? That He hurt? That He felt for Mary and He felt for Martha and it broke His heart when He saw what a fallen world and death did. Is that how you see God? That when you are really struggling, instead of being down on you, He weeps with you.

God’s love for you means, fourth, that He takes pleasure in you just for who you are totally apart from your performance or your accomplishments. He is the God of Zephaniah 3. He is the God that is mighty. He is the God who is with you. He is the God that, when there is confusion all around, says, “Just let Me quiet you with My love, and let Me sing over you in rejoicing.”

Is that how you see Him? You know who I am describing? I’m describing the God of the Bible. This is the God of the Bible.

Finally, God’s love for you means He is actively and creatively orchestrating people, circumstances, and events to express His affection and selective correction to provide for your highest good.

Do you think of this God who is not only loving but He is actively orchestrating and allowing relationships and events and circumstances so that He could express affection through a person? Affection through a job promotion. Affection through a discovery of a spiritual gift. Affection through a new friend that really understands you. Affection through a relationship that you never thought you would have. Affection because your body wasn’t working and for reasons that none of us understand, why or when or how, but rather than through medicine He decided just to touch your body.

Or does He also, in His love, just so care that selectively brings circumstances and people to bring about selective correction and bring some pain and discouragement and some depression and maybe you lose a job and maybe you lose a friend because He wants to get your attention?

Maybe your 401k went bloop and maybe your business is going south because, just little by little, you didn’t mean to, but you are drifting, you’re drifting. And He is so jealous and He so loves you and He sees where that is going to head, but He does some things that make you mad at first. But like watching the little kid run out into the street, He runs out after you, grabs you by the neck, jerks you back so the car doesn’t hit you, and then, out of love, gives you a little whack on the rear end and says to you, “Honey, don’t go there anymore. You are too precious.”

Some of you may say to yourself, like I have struggled with, Of all the ones, this is kind of a neat one. If this were true, it would be really neat. You know? That one on justice was kind of hard to take. The holiness was a little overwhelming. The wisdom I kind of liked. But, boy, this would feed my soul. This would change my life. Is it really true?

And so what I would like to do is I would like to demonstrate, from Scripture, that this is the God that loves you and loves me.

I’d like to walk through how God reveals His love to us through about one, two, three, four, five, oh, six different things.

God reveals His love to us, first, through creation. Are you ready for this? He made you for Himself. Do you ever think about it this way?

Genesis chapter 1 verses 26 and 27: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our own image, in Our own likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and birds of the air, and the livestock, and over the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

He created you in His own image. You are like Him. And He creates this paradise and He wants to have a relationship with you and then in Colossians 1:16 you learn, “For by Him, Jesus, all things were created: things in heaven, things on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and,” I love this, “for Him.”

It’s easy to think, Oh, the earth was created for Him. Angels were created for Him. Everything was created for Him, watch this: you, you were created for Him. He made you so He could be with you.

I remember when I was a little boy, it is so in our DNA because we are in God’s image, I remember going to the beach as a little boy and you know when you play in the sand and it was that wet kind of sand, which you could build stuff? I took about three hours. I dug the hole and got it, I thought it was really deep but it seemed kind of deep. And then I built this wall and I was making this castle. And it was like on a cartoon.

Some big kid I didn’t know, three hours, you feel bad for me already, don’t you? Tell you what, ladies in the front row here, they are going to be permanent prayer partners. Oh, man, Chip! He’s probably psychologically damaged for years! But seriously!

This big kid comes and he kicks it all down. I’m five years old and I can still remember it. And I created a sand castle from a little water and this is how it made me feel. Why? Because what I make for me matters to me.

And what God makes for Him matters to Him, and He made you. He made you. That’s how much you matter.
The second evidence is providence. And this is not so much a theological word as that He shows kindness. It’s God’s kindness to all men. As Christians, sometimes we get the idea that God loves us! But we get a little ticked off when He loves other people. We do! We really do. It’s us four, no more, club.

Matthew chapter 5 verses 44 and 45, Jesus speaking, Sermon on the Mount, “But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and He sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”

The apostle Paul, same idea as he is speaking that classic Acts 17. And among all the intellectuals, he is giving his message on Mars Hill. And he says, verse 24, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and He doesn’t live in temples built by hands. And He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.”

God gives all men, the most evil people, breath and life and everything else. “From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.”

I would just remind you that the evidence of God’s love is He shows His kindness to all people. He loves, not just those who are righteous. He loves the unrighteous. He loves the evil. Why? He is longing and creating and giving rain and joy. Non-Christians have great weddings, non-Christians have babies, non-Christians fall in love, non-Christians have great promotions, non-Christians develop new patents, they are scientists, they are artists, they have this creative DNA, given by God, and they experience the joys of life.

And it’s all intended so they would say, “Ah, ah! Who gives this all to me?” That they might reach out and touch Him and find Him – why? Because they matter. Because He loves them.

The third way that God expresses His love is through the incarnation. He is literally proactively pursuing you. Jesus’ mission statement is in Luke 19:10: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.”

John 4, we have the woman at the well. And, “Should we worship on this mountain or that mountain? And she has had five husbands and is shacking up with someone now. And they have a spiritual conversation and Jesus breaks every cultural taboo and He says, “I’ve got living water for you. I’ve got life for you. It’s not when you clean up your act,” she was totally rejected by her culture. That’s why she was out during that time of the day.

And then what does He say? The Father is seeking, literally, study the word, is pursuing those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. Jesus came, He left all the glory of heaven, myriads and myriads and myriads and myriads of angels worshipping Him, He takes on human flesh, lives on a dirty planet, is rejected by men, his life explains what the Father is like, why? To pursue you! We don’t know what God is like. He is invisible. What is He like? How does He think? How does He treat people that are desperate? How does He treat people that have been so wicked, so perverted, so sinful, especially then, five husbands and living with someone?

What would God think of someone like that? He would think, I would love to give you some living water. I would love to forgive you. See, what I know is you were looking for love in all the wrong places. You were looking to fill the hole in your heart with men and you found that five couldn’t do it and probably the guy you have isn’t doing it now.

You were looking for significance and you were looking for security and you were looking to be whole. What you didn’t know is you were looking for Me! But you just couldn’t see Me and you didn’t know about Me and I want you to know, I have a free gift for you that is available now, not if you do something, not because you will do something. Because I love you.

That’s how God feels. And He pursues us. He made you for Himself, you were the object of His love well before you came to Christ, and He is pursuing you. That’s why Jesus took on human – that’s the incarnation! He took on human flesh so He could come and pursue you for relationship with Himself. That’s how much He loves you. Let’s get this moving from our head down to our heart.

The fourth way that He reveals His love is through discipline. We don’t really like this one so much. Hebrews 12:6 says, “Because the Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes everyone He accepts as a son.” The word punish there, literally, it’s not the idea of a punitive idea, nearly as much as this is the idea of He harshly corrects or brings about correction for a desired result. And I don’t like it and you don’t like it. But it’s an evidence of His love.

The fifth way He reveals His love is by the Holy Spirit. He supernaturally pours His love into our hearts. Romans 5:5 says, “And hope doesn’t disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.”

This is that Spirit. The moment you come to Christ, you do understand what happens. You are an unbeliever like I was an unbeliever, you understand the gospel, you realize Christ died in your place for your sin. You repent. That means you have a change of mind and you recognize what is true about you and you say, with empty hands, “I want to receive the free gift, by faith, of grace.” The moment I receive Jesus Christ, put my trust in His work and His resurrection, the Spirit of God enters my life.

Ephesians 1: I am sealed with the Spirit, I am adopted into God’s family, I am baptized into this thing called “the Church,” spiritual gifts are deposited in me, I have an inheritance that will never change, and I am now a part of God’s family. And the Holy Spirit takes up residence in me. That’s why I am His temple.

And then what He will do, the Spirit of God, remember He says to the disciples? “You can’t take in everything, but the Spirit, when He comes, will lead you into all truth.” That’s the last night.

You remember the very last night? He said, “I am with you now, but it is better that I go because I won’t just be with you, I will be in you.” And the Father will come and I will come and just as I am in the Father, and the Father is in me, so We will come and We will be in you” – how? “by the Holy Spirit.”

And so, the Spirit of God, dwelling in us, will take the Word and you have had it happen. He pours out the love of God. I remember late one night, I was dating a girl that I was sure I was going to marry. And her life was going this way and she was a believer and my life was going this way. And it was a lordship issue and it wasn’t some big breakup. I just knew that she was convinced that we were supposed to, after college, get married and she was an only child and lived in this little town outside of West Virginia on the Ohio River and then live right next to her parents.

And I felt the call of God on my life. But I’m telling you, I loved her. And I was heartbroken. And so I said, lordship, I mean, lordship is doing what is right whether you feel like it or not. It doesn’t have a whole lot to do with how you feel. Most of the best obedience in my life, I’m telling you, I didn’t want to do. But I don’t feel bad about it, Jesus didn’t want to do His either.

In the Garden, I don’t hear Jesus saying, “Father, thank You. This is the hour which We planned on from the foundations of the earth. I am really excited about this one. High-five the Holy Spirit for Me, hey! Let’s go!” What I hear is, “Father, if there is any other way, if there is a plan B, in the mind of the Godhead, let’s go with it now. Nevertheless…”

You demonstrate your love for God – what, how? Obedience. John 14:21. “He that has My commandments and keeps them, He it is that loves Me. And he that loves Me would love My Father.” And then what happens? “And We will come and We will reveal,” or manifest, “Ourselves to him.”

And so we go our separate ways, and one night, we have broken up, but I am used to, for a couple, three years. Home basketball game, hair is wet, come up the stairs, and she is always there right on the rail. She grabs my arm, I feel like a special guy, go over to the student union, get a Coke, da-da-da, just a great relationship.

Well, we break up for three or four or five months and I’m praying, I’m going, Oh, God, change her heart. Help her to see a vision for the world, and I’m crying and I don’t want to see anybody and I’m in my pity party and, Oh, God, it’s so hard to follow You. There will never be anybody like this as good, ever, ever. Ooooh! I’m not kidding.

I was whiny, wimpy! And I was depressed, a guy like me loses weight, you’ve got problems. You know? And so I’m praying and I’m believing God is going to do something. He’s going to bring her back to me. So I come out of the locker room, hair is wet, we lost another game, that wasn’t good. And I come up the stairs and there she is. And I’m thinking, Yes! God! Thank You so much!

So I come up the stairs and then she’s got that look like, there is something wrong about this. And I said hi and I said her name. “Hi, how are you doing?” And there was this, sort of this, a little standoffish. And then a guy came up the stairs, it was another guard on the team. Ladies, you don’t know, but guys, you know how you talk in the locker room and you kind of know the score, where guys were at, what they do, why they do it, all that jazz? And this dude is a snake. Okay? He’s a snake.

And he walks right by me and he goes out the door and they go out arm in arm. And I remember walking across campus, being as mad at God as ever. Boy, I was mad, I was so mad! I told God, Either You speak to me, You speak to me tonight or I’m out of here! I cannot believe You would do this to me! And I went over and I went over and I said, Okay, I’m going to, okay. I’m going to read right where I’m reading and You’d better speak to me. I’m serious!

Literally, the words came to me, I feel like a beast inside. I just, I mean, I was so angry and so disappointed. And so I read Psalm 71. He didn’t speak. Okay. Psalm 72. He didn’t speak. I figure you ought to keep reading where you are. You know? You start jumping around you’ll try and make God speak to you.

I opened Psalm 73. I’m telling you, I read Psalm 73 and I have never audibly heard the voice of God that could not have been the Holy Spirit pouring out His love more clearly, more powerfully, in all my life. It was scary. The very thoughts that I had, the very phrases out of my mind, the things that I said, the very core issues, I read Psalm 73 and I wept like a baby in my room. God understood. And He had a plan.

You see, one of the ways God will love you is the Holy Spirit will be poured out, and the way He will do it is that sometimes He’ll do it through His Word. Sometimes, I was in India shortly – and it was such a dark time in the middle of the night and spiritual opposition and all this tsunami and I couldn’t sleep. And there is all this spiritual warfare going on.

And in the middle of the night, I just started, I put on my tape player and I just started to sing. God, I just feel so alone and so far away and this is so scary. And I just began to sing and the Spirit of God just came into the room and poured the love of God and I just felt like He put His arms around me.

I have been in an ICU before where I thought, Oh, one of my boys is going to die. And I begged God and I pleaded with God and the Spirit, you have been there, you have had these, haven’t you?

The final way is through His Son. Jesus reveals the nature of God’s love for us through His Son. Jesus modeled compassion, grace, and truth.

Right? Just the life of Jesus. He shows us the Father’s love by how He responds to children, by how He feeds people, by how He has compassion on Jairus’ daughter, by how He stops with the widow and it’s her only son and He raises him from the dead, by how He forgives.

He reveals His love by His teaching and He explains, if you want to know how Jesus feels about people, Luke 15. “Why are you hanging out with those sinners and those bad people?” And so He tells them a parable and He tells them the three familiar stories: lost sheep, lost coin, lost son. You know the story.

And the picture is the Father waiting for the Son to return, to do – what? He goes out every day, Is he here yet? Is he here yet? Is he okay? It’s the picture of someone pursuing and seeking and searching and the sheep comes back on the shoulders and the coin is found and there is a party, and the son returns and there is life.

His teaching told us about the love of God. And His death demonstrated the extent of God’s love. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”

“But God demonstrated His own love for us,” Romans 5:8, “that while we were yet sinners” – there is no performance, we are His enemies then, right? “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Do you sense the need to just get some of these truths soaking?

An object’s value is always determined by the price paid for it. To God, you are worth the price of His Son’s death in your place.

God loves you. How do you receive it? You must respond to God’s love in three specific ways. One, you receive it by faith in your heart.

John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever,” you need to be a whosoever. You need to be one of those people who receive it.

John 1:12 says, “Yet to all who receive Him, Jesus, to those who believe in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.” If there is anybody that has never received and jumped into the liquid ocean of love, of the God I have described, just receive Him. Just say, “Lord Jesus, I want You. I get it. Come into my life.”

The second thing to experience God’s love is we must believe it by faith in our minds. You receive Him by faith in your heart, and then we must go through the journey that I have been talking about, of believing it, by faith in our minds.

1 John 4:13 through 16 says, “We know that we live in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love that God has for us.”

Did you hear that? We know, objectively, and we rely on God’s love. How do you know and rely? How does it work? Let me give you three really specific ways.

The way you begin to get this process operating, where it moves from here in your head, to your heart, is you saturate your mind in the truth of God’s love for you.

I have put a very, very important passage: Romans 8:28 through about 39. It’s the passage about, “Neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come. Nothing can separate you from the love of Christ.” Nothing.

So, you saturate your mind with God’s truth about this. And that is why I talked about whether it’s 3x5 cards or being in the Scriptures or praying these back to the Lord.

Second, ask God to help you grasp His love for you. I don’t know what you pray or who you pray for, but the apostle Paul, in Ephesians 3, gives us a great example. When he is praying for a group of people, what does he pray? He says, “God, I pray for this group of people right here. What do I pray? I pray that You will strengthen them in their inner man so that they could, by faith, grasp the extent of Your love for them.”

What is he praying? “God, I want You to do something to take it from here down to here.” Ask God. Pray for yourself, Lord, help me grasp that You love me. Lord, I want to even feel it. Lord, help me to take all those messages and false kinds of loves and all the baggage that I have and wipe it away. Please help me experience and know Your love. Do you think He will answer that prayer? You know for sure it’s His will. So, you saturate your mind with truth, you ask Him.

And then, third, refuse to seek love in cheap substitutes. This is the woman at the well. And it’s all of us in here, to some degree or another. And 1 John 2:15 and 16 says, notice the word, “Do not love the world or the things that are in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life, it’s not from the Father, it’s from the world. But he who does the will of God abides forever.”

And those are the three things that trip everybody up all the time. There is a sensual lust, there is the desire for more stuff, and there is the desire for ego to be a somebody. God says, “Refuse them.”

And what seals the deal is after you receive it and believe it, we must bestow it, by faith, through our wills. See, the way you really get is to give.

And there is a command. This isn’t one of the options. John 13, remember? The last night with the disciples, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another,” – how? “just as I have loved you.” How is that? Sacrificial, unconditional, by giving.

And then there is a calling. Jesus laid down His life for us, we should – what? Lay down our lives for one another. And then there is a promise, “Give and it will be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running back into your lap.” So if you love with a teaspoon, you get a teaspoon of love back. You love with a tablespoon, you get a tablespoon back. You love with a gallon jug, you get a gallon jug back. Stick that tanker into the ocean, and start going, whoooo! And your life might get downright scary.