Man is designed in such a way that he constantly needs love. This is one of his great needs. He will never be happy unless he knows that someone loves him. And he loves not for his merits, position in society or character traits, but simply as a person, with all his mistakes, shortcomings and weaknesses.
On the other hand, we ourselves feel the need to love someone. Without love, we become gloomy, gray and dull, all bright colors disappear, and life appears before us in colorless monotony, called routine.
Love it transforms our essence, ignites our hearts and moves us to accomplishments that we could not even imagine before!
However, what if it really isn’t there?
1 John 4:9,10
9 God's love for us has been revealed is that God sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might receive life through Him.
10 This is love, that we did not love God, butHe loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
2 Peter 3:9,15
9 The Lord is not slack in fulfilling his promise, as some consider slackness; Butis patient with us, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance .
15
And consider the longsuffering of our Lord to be salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote to you.
Song of Songs 8:7
7
Big waters can't put out love
and the rivers will not flood it. If someone gave all the wealth of his house for love, he would be rejected with contempt.
Isaiah 49:13-15
13 Rejoice, O heavens, and be glad, O earth, and shout, O mountains, for joy; for the Lord comforted His people and had mercy on His sufferers.
14 And Zion said: “The Lord has forsaken me, and my God has forgotten me!”
15
Will a woman forget her suckling child, so as not to have compassion on the son of her womb? but if she forgot, thenI will not forget you
.
1 John 3:1
1
Look whatthe Father gave us love,
that we may be called and be children of God. The world does not know us because it has not known Him.
If I don’t feel God’s love towards me, then that doesn’t mean anything. The most important thing we need to realize is the proof of the Father's love for us in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross(1John 4:9,10 ) , where the greatest manifestation of love took place: instead of us, who deserve eternal torment in hell, the Son of God suffered, taking upon ourselves our sins and guilt so that we could become heirs of eternal life.
This proof alone is enough to believe that God loves us and He cares about us!
But this is not all that the Lord showed us in His love. It manifests itself to us in all its diversity.
From God's promises we see that His love is demonstrated by His patience with us(2 Peter 3:9,15 ) , despite all the sins, mistakes and vices with which we constantly upset Him. And nothing in the world can extinguish this love (Song 8:7) .
By comparing His love with the love of a mother, the Lord shows that His fatherly love surpasses any mother’s feeling for her infant children. ( Isa.49:13-15 ) . Isn't this wonderful? Can doubt remain after these words? God will never forget us!
His love for us has no limit, so do not be afraid to always rely on it, for the Lord is faithful to what He says.
Giving His love to believers, God calls us His children(1John 3:1 ) . We become people with a special status and a new nature: through the love of God we are born again, we become heirs of the Kingdom of God and have the right to call God our Father! This is simply incredible!
Understand that if God is your loving Father, it means that He will always guide you, provide for you, nurture you, sometimes punish you, pity you, and comfort you, never leaving or forsaking His beloved children.
And this love gradually penetrates into our hearts, enabling us to love God in return and show it to our neighbors, because God not only experiences it for us, but also pours it into our hearts by the Holy Spirit:
Romans 5:5
5 And hope does not put you to shame, because God's love is poured out into our hearts By the Holy Spirit given to us.
Giving us the Holy Spirit, is the second greatest manifestation of God's love for us. God Himself, entering our hearts in the person of the Holy Spirit, constantly lives with us, testifying to our spirit that we are children of God.
The Spirit of God, in Whom is the source of all wisdom, came to guide us into all truth and to manifest in us this inexhaustible stream of love, which can flow through us at any time, if it does not meet an obstacle in our unbelief and life according to the flesh.
That's why, By opening yourself to the work of the Holy Spirit, you can always be filled with the love God has given you.
Although the Lord loves every creation, there is a separate kind of people for whom He has a special love - deeper and more thorough than for the rest, leading them to salvation and eternal inheritance in the Kingdom of God:
Romans 8:29-39
29 For whom He foreknew that and predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
30 A those whom He predestined, those He also called, and those He called, those He also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified.
31 What can I say to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?
32 He who did not spare His Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not with Him also freely give us all things? ?
33 Who will accuse God's elect? God justifies [them].
34 Who is judging? Christ Jesus died, but also rose again: He is also at the right hand of God,He intercedes for us.
35 Who will separate us from the love of God: sorrow, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? as written:
36 For Your sake they kill us every day; they count us as sheep [doomed] to the slaughter.
37 But all this we overcome by the power of Him who loved us.
38 For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor Angels, nor Principalities, nor Powers, nor the present, nor the future,
39 neither height, nor depth, nor any other creature cannot separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Psalm 145:8,9
8 The Lord opens the eyes of the blind, the Lord raises up those who are bowed down,The Lord loves righteous .
9
The Lord protects strangers, supports the orphan and the widow, and perverts the path of the wicked.
John 14:21
21 He who has My commandments and keeps them, he loves Me; A who loves me , he will be loved by My Father; and I will love him and I will appear to him myself.
John 16:27
27 ForThe Father Himself loves you, because you loved Me and believed that I came from God.
1 John 2:5
5 A whoever keeps His word, intruly the love of God is fulfilled: by this we know that we are in Him.
Let's see to whom this special love is directed. It is determined for those whom the Lord initially foreknew and predestined for salvation. (Rom.8:29,30) . Predestined by the Lord, subsequently called by Him to eternal life and justified by God (Rom.8:30) through faith (John 16:27) becoming righteous (Ps. 146:8) . Nothing can separate these people from the love of God in Christ Jesus!
Well, you say, but what about those who apostatize from the faith and return to their vices? Of course, this happens, but if you are now in faith, you can safely apply these promises to yourself. The Lord knows how to bring the work of love and salvation in the people He has predestined to completion, so it’s up to you to believe in it, and the Lord will take care of the rest Himself.
But as we become righteous through faith, we are called to grow in love for the Lord (John 16:27) which is given to us by the Holy Spirit and manifests itself in keeping the commandments of God (John 14:21) , so that God’s love for us may appear in greater and greater fullness.
The love of the Lord will overwhelm your life and surpass all reasonable limits in its manifestation towards you if you keep the word of God in everything (1 John 2:5) . So go for it!
John 3:16
16 Because so God loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyonebeliever in Him, did not perish, but had eternal life.
1 John 4:16-19
16 And we came to know the love that God has for us, and believed in her. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God is in him.
17 Love reaches such perfection in us, What we have boldness in the day of judgment because we walk in this world as He does.
(John 3:16) . Remember this primary task so as not to be shaken by trials and difficulties, because love is manifested not only in caring for our needs, but also in the process of getting rid of inner evil, lusts and corruption.God, loving us to the point of jealousy, as it is written: "The Spirit who lives in us loves to the point of jealousy" (James 4:5) , does not want to share His beloved with any sin that kills us, and for our own good he works to get rid of it, even when we don’t really want it or it’s hard to part with it.
Having known the love of the Lord to one degree or another, always firmly believe in it in order to begin to abide in it constantly (1 John 4:16) , and not from time to time.
Then it will bring you into unity with the Lord: you will live in Him, and He will begin to abide in you so that God's presence will constantly fill your heart and soul (1 John 4:16) .
And the result of this walk in love will be deliverance from all fear and boldness in following Christ (1 John 4:17,18) as we become more and more like the Lord in life, actions and character traits (1 John 4:17) .
Let these are the motives that drive you in your desire to know the love of the Lord. And never forget - only mutual love will give you a complete relationship with God. Therefore, accepting the love of God, you also grow in love for Him. (1 John 4:19) , and then you will never lack the pouring of it into your hearts.
There was no period of time in my life when everything seemed gray, monotonous and full of cramped circumstances. On the external plane there was no success, there was a certain stagnation everywhere, and the impression was created that there was no way out of this swamp. This was my valley of weeping and sorrow, a time covered in darkness.
Then I faced a serious test that allowed me to gain faith in the love of the Lord. It was this time of grief that gave me the impetus to grasp the promises of love. I believed the word of God more than external circumstances, comforted by the words that the Lord did not abandon me in His love, which surpasses maternal care!
And even though I did not see any special changes in any area of my life, faith in the love of the Lord allowed me to say, like David: "Why are you depressed, my soul, and why are you embarrassed? Trust in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God" (Ps.41:6) .
The promises of God became lifelines for me and allowed me to lay a foundation that I am still building on today and seeing the faithfulness of the Lord to confirm His word. As a result, I learned to always abide in God’s love, regardless of the circumstances, for which I am immensely grateful to the Lord!
Another remarkable example is the case when the Lord miraculously convinced one girl of His love. At one meeting of believers, this girl suddenly asked with tears to pray for her. We did not know what her need was and simply asked God to answer our petition.
While praying, a word came to me from the Lord that He loves her and she should not doubt God’s love. After this, the girl began to pray in a different language. She did not know or understand this language, but the Armenian girls there understood. After the prayer, they explained that the Lord said through her in Old Armenian: "The mountains will crumble and turn to dust, and the words that I have spoken(about love), won't change" .
This incident literally transformed her life. It turned out that she really was in a spiritual desert and became so discouraged that she began to doubt God’s love for her, and this word breathed life into her and gave her the impetus to a deeper relationship with the Lord!
But hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us.
Romans 5:5
Pentecost is repeated in the heart of every believer as God's love is poured into his heart by the Holy Spirit. Let me offer you a little historical analogy to illustrate this. The Lord's disciples were very sad when He died on the cross. They were extremely depressed and especially pained by the thought of His tragic death and burial in Joseph's tomb. But after a short time of waiting and patience, their hope was revived again, for their Lord rose from the dead, and they saw Him ascending into heaven. They were again filled with special hope because their Lord had entered into glory in heaven, leaving them the promise that He would come again and give them a share in His victory. So the Lord again planted hope in their hearts that at God's appointed time they would receive the Holy Spirit, whose divine influence was poured out upon them so that they would be filled with His power. They became brave. They were no longer ashamed of their hope, but proclaimed it in the preaching of Peter and the other disciples. They had been visited by the Holy Spirit and were now fearlessly proclaiming the Lord Jesus, their "hope of glory" to the world. translated from English.) (Colossians 1:27).
Truly, history repeats itself. The story of our Lord is a type of the experience of all His people. What happened to the Firstborn, to one degree or another, happens to all the children of God. We have an excellent example of this in the first part of the fifth chapter of Romans, from which our passage is taken. The third verse mentions our sorrows—our torments, the cross we bear. It goes on to say that through our patience and experience, blessed hope arises in us at the appointed time. We are renewed by the life of our Lord's resurrection and leave behind our cares and sorrows. He raises us from the grave of our misfortune. We then experience the divine visitation of the Holy Spirit and enjoy our Pentecost: “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” I believe you know what this means and are now enjoying it.
As a result of this visitation of the Holy Spirit, our hope becomes clear and confident, so that we boldly bear full witness to our hope and to the Blessed One who is its essence. I hope you have already proven that you are not ashamed of the gospel. If not, I hope you do. Our God visited us in mercy and gave us the Holy Spirit - His special gift for His children. Thanks to the Holy Spirit indwelling us, we know and feel God's love, and now we can no longer help but tell others about what the Lord has revealed to us. Thus, on a small scale, we have already repeated part of the history of the early church in our own personal history. You will find that not only in this, but in all cases, the life of the believer is the life of Christ in miniature. He who first said, “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26), still follows the pattern of Christ, making man a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) in the image of His Son.
Now let's look at some of the mysteries of our spiritual experience. The passage I mentioned above from Romans 5 is like a little map of the inner life:
And not only this, but we also glory in sorrows, knowing that from sorrow comes patience, from patience experience, from experience hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us.
Romans 5:3-5
This passage can only be fully understood by those of God who have written it in capital letters in their hearts. “From tribulation comes patience,” said the apostle. This is not true in the physical world. Usually “from grief comes impatience,” and impatience does not bear the fruit of experience and “sours,” turning into hopelessness. Ask any man who has buried a beloved child, lost his wealth, or suffered pain in his body, and he will tell you that the natural result of suffering is that it produces irritation with life, rebellion against God, doubt, unbelief, fault-finding, and all sorts of things. evil. But what a wonderful change occurs when the heart is renewed by the Holy Spirit! Then, and only then, “from sorrow comes patience.”
One who is not concerned about anything cannot be patient. Angels cannot be patient because they are incapable of suffering. In order for us to have and exercise patience, we must be tested, and a great measure of patience can only be acquired through a great measure of testing. You have heard about Job's patience. Where did he learn it - among his herds, among his camels, or while he was with his children when they were feasting? No, he truly learned it while sitting in the ashes and scraping himself with a shard, when his heart was burdened with the death of his children. Patience is a pearl that can only be found in the depths of suffering; only grace can find it there, raise it to the surface and adorn its neck of faith.
Patience also gives us a personal experience of the character of God. In other words, the more we endure and the more we experience God's faithfulness, the more we are convinced of His love and the more we realize His wisdom. He who has never suffered anything may believe in the sustaining power of grace, but he has never experienced it. You must go to sea to know the skill of the divine Pilot, and you must endure the storm before you know His power over the winds and waves. How can we see Jesus in all His power if there is no storm for Him to calm? Our patience produces in us the experience of encountering the truth, the faithfulness, the love and power of our God. We bow in patience and then rise in the joyful experience of heavenly support. What richness of the world can be compared with the richness of human experience gained as a result of suffering? Experience teaches.
This is a real school for God's children. I don't think we understand anything well enough without the rod of suffering. Undoubtedly, we are most knowledgeable in what we have experienced. This truth must be burned into us by the red-hot iron of testing before it can be of any use to us. After such an experience, no one and nothing can frighten us, for the mark of the Lord Jesus will be on our hearts. This is how patience teaches experience.
What is very unusual is that Scripture then says that experience produces hope. This is not unusual in the sense of doubt, for there is no brighter hope than that of the believer who knows by experience God's faithfulness and love. But does it not seem strange that this great sorrow, these intolerable sufferings, these pain-bearing punishments, should at last give birth in us to this peculiarly bright light, this morning star of hope, this messenger of the eternal day of glory? Beloved, divine chemistry is miraculously producing pure gold from a metal we thought was worthless!
The Lord, in His grace, makes a bed for His people in the threshing floor of affliction, and it is there that we find rest like Boaz in the book of Ruth. He sets to music the menacing roar of streams of suffering. From the foam of the sea of sorrow He raises up a bright spirit of hope that “does not shame.” Consequently, the passage from which our text is taken is a selected extract from the inner life of the spiritual man. This is a fragment of the mystery of our spiritual life. We must read it with spiritual understanding.
Our main text for this chapter describes nothing less than the house of God and the gate of heaven. You can see this in the temple of the Divine Trinity. Read the fifth and sixth verses of the fifth chapter of Romans and notice that all three persons of the Divine Trinity are mentioned there:
The love of God (God the Father) has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us. For Christ, while we were still weak, at the appointed time died for the ungodly,
Blessed Three in One! It takes the participation of three Persons of the Godhead to create a Christian. The Trinity is needed to encourage the Christian, the Trinity is needed to continue the work of perfecting the Christian. To create in a Christian the hope of glory, the participation of all three is necessary: God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
I always love scriptures like this that bring us so close to the Trinity. They make me want to honor the Divine with the words of the hymn:
Glory to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
As it was in the beginning, as it is and as it will be forever and ever!
How wonderful it is to be moved to offer special worship to the one true God, the One in three persons, and to feel the desire of your heart with a willingness to do so. By faith we bow down with the hosts of the redeemed before the glorious throne and worship Him who lives forever. We honor Him with all our hearts when we think about the unity of the Holy Trinity in our salvation! Divine love is given to us by the Father, manifested in the death of the Son, and poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Oh, what a feeling of unity with the triune God! Let us bow before the sacred majesty of Jehovah, and, as we consider our text, allow the Holy Spirit to teach us His truths, that by learning the truth we may enter into His temple.
The text says, “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” The apostle developed his thought until he came to hope, the hope of glory. Having reached this height, he could not help but say anything about it. Diverting from his main theme, as he often did, he gave us some shining sentences about the hope of the believer.
First he explains the certainty of our hope—that “hope does not disappoint.” He goes on to describe the reason for our confidence, which I hope you enjoy today, for we are confident that we will never be disappointed in our hope, for God's love has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Then he reveals what result we come to when we have strong hope - we are not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ and are witnesses to the world.
The certainty of our hope
Some people have no hope, or have a hope of which they should rightly be ashamed. Ask those who deny the validity of Scripture what their hope is for the future. “I will die like a dog,” they will answer, “and when I die, then the end will come for me.” If I had such a pitiful hope, I certainly would not proclaim it throughout the world. I would not think of gathering a large audience and telling people, “Friends, rejoice with me, for we will die like cats and dogs.” I would never consider such hope a cause for celebration.
The agnostic knows nothing, and therefore I believe he hopes for nothing. In this case, I also don’t see any reason for delight. If I had only such hope, I would be ashamed. A Catholic's best hope is that when he dies, he will eventually be fine, but not before he must endure the purifying flames of purgatory. I know little about this place, for I cannot find a single mention of it in the Holy Scriptures. However, those who know it well, because they invented it and keep the keys to it, describe it as a dismal place where even great bishops and cardinals will have to go. I myself have heard invitations to faithful members of the church to pray for eternal rest for the spirit of a certain famous cardinal; If this is the fate of the noble people of the church, where will ordinary people go? There is no great superiority in this hope. I don't think I would gather people together to say, "Rejoice with me, for when we die we will all go to purgatory." They would see no particular reason for joy. I don't think I would talk much about it, and if someone asked me about it, I would try to avoid the question and say that it is a deep secret that would be better left to the clergy.
We are not, however, ashamed of our hope. We believe that Christians who are absent from the body are with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). We look for a city built on a solid foundation, of which God Himself is the chief architect and builder (Hebrews 11:10). We are not ashamed to hope for glory, immortality and eternal life.
We are not ashamed of the object of our hope
Moreover, we are not ashamed of the object of our hope. We do not believe that heaven represents indecent, carnal pleasures. We do not believe in an Islamic paradise of sensual pleasures, otherwise we too might be ashamed of our hope. Whatever imagery we use, heaven is pure, holy, spiritual and exquisite happiness. The false prophet would not have considered this sufficient bait for his followers. However, our hope is that our Lord will come a second time with all His holy angels, and “then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43). We believe that if we die before this time, we will rest in Jesus and be blessed with Him. “Today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43) - not only for the thief, but for all of us who have entrusted our spirit to the crucified Savior. We look forward to a glorious resurrection at His second coming. When He descends from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the sound of the trumpet of God, then our spirits will be restored to our bodies, and we will live with Christ as perfect, renewed persons. We believe and are convinced that from that day we will be with Him forever. He will give us the right to share with Him His throne, His crown and His heaven - forever and ever! The more we talk about the promised blessedness, the more we feel that we cannot possibly be ashamed of this hope of glory.
The final reward of faith, the final reward of a life of righteousness, is such that we rejoice in anticipation of it. Our glorious hope includes purity and perfection: freedom from all sin and the possession of all virtues. Our hope is that we will be like our perfect Lord and be with Jesus where He is to see His glory. Our hope is fulfilled in this promise: “For I live, and you will live” (John 14:19). We will not just exist, but live, and this is a completely different, higher level. Our life will be the life of God in our spirit forever and ever. We are not ashamed of this hope. We strive to achieve it.
We are not ashamed of the basis of our hope
Our hope rests on the solemn promises of God, which He has made to us through His prophets and apostles, and confirmed in the person and work of His beloved Son. Now that Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead, we, united with Him by faith, are confident that we will rise from the dead and live with Him. The fact that Christ was resurrected is an assurance to us that we will be resurrected, and His entry into glory is the guarantee of our glorification, because we have become one with Him by God's purpose and grace.
We all fell with Adam because all humanity was born in him. In the same way, we will be resurrected and reign with Christ because we now abide in Him. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living; He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and that is why these men are still alive. We believe the same thing about all who have died in the faith: that they have not ceased to exist, but are all alive in Him. Our hope is not based on reasoning that may vaguely prove the immortality of the spirit and the future reward for the righteous. On the contrary, our hope is based on the Word of God, which clearly and clearly states the truth of eternal life, leaving no room for doubt. If the Bible is a lie, then we must give up our hope; but since we have not followed “cunning fables” (2 Peter 1:16), but have received the testimony of faithful eyewitnesses of the resurrection and ascension of our Lord, we believe the Holy Scriptures and are not ashamed of our hope. What God promised is true, and what God has done fully confirms it. Therefore we have no fear.
We are not ashamed that we have hope
Someone might say to us with a smirk, “So you expect to be in glory, don't you?” Our answer is: “Yes, we expect it, and we are not ashamed to accept the weakly substantiated accusation you make, because our confidence is very well founded. Our expectation is not based simply on some proud claim of personal merit, but on the promises of a faithful God.” Let's remember some of these promises. He said, “Whoever believes in Me has eternal life” (John 6:47). We truly believe in Him, and therefore we know that we have eternal life. In His Word He declared that “those whom He justified He also glorified” (Romans 8:30). We are justified by faith; therefore we will be glorified. Our hope is not based on feelings alone, but on the fact that God has promised eternal life to those who believe in His Son, Jesus Christ. We heard our Lord pray: “Father! whom You have given Me, I want them to be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory” (John 17:24). We believe that the Father gave us to Jesus because we have placed our trust in Him, and faith is the sure sign and symbol of divine election. So, since we are Christ's, we expect to be with Him where He is.
We also read in the Word of the Lord: “That whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16); therefore we hold on to this promise and know that we have eternal life. This is a pretty logical argument. Unless it is a mistake that God said that the believer will live forever, we are not under any error in expecting eternal life. However, God's Word is the truest, and we are not ashamed to hold to every statement that justly arises from it. We dare to believe that God will keep His Word to us and to all other believers.
We are not ashamed of the certainty of our hope
In addition to this, beloved, we are not ashamed of the absolute certainty that our hope will be fulfilled. We believe that if we are truly justified by faith and have peace with God, then we have the hope of glory that will not fail us at the end or on the way to the end. We do not think that we can be abandoned and forsaken, that we can fall from the grace of God: “For (He) Himself said: “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). We do not expect to be left to ourselves, which will mean our certain and certain destruction, but we expect that He who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion until the Day of Christ (Philippians 1:6). We are confident that He who created this hope in us will justify this hope by fulfilling it at the appointed time. He will keep us through a long life if we are to live long, He will keep our hope alive when the time comes for us to die, and He will remember even our dust and ashes when they are hidden in the grave. “Who will separate us... from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord?” (Romans 8:35, 39). It is written: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mark 16:16). This is exactly how it will be. Those who believe “shall not perish in their way” (Psalm 2:12), or on the way. Didn't God say, “And I will put My fear in their hearts, so that they will not turn away from Me” (Jeremiah 32:40)? He will not let His children stumble and fall. He says: “And I give to them (My sheep) eternal life, and they shall never perish; and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28). We will never be deceived if we trust Jesus completely. No one will be able to say: “I trusted that the Lord Christ would preserve me, but He did not preserve me. I relied on Jesus to preserve my spiritual life, but He did not preserve me.” Never. We will not be ashamed of our hope.
The reason for this confidence
I have introduced you to the assurance that gives believers, especially tried and experienced believers, complete hope “that shall not disgrace.” My second goal is to focus on the reason for this confidence. Why do believers who have good hope rejoice in it?
God's Love
One of the main pillars of this hope is God's love. I expect that one day I will sit among the angels and see the face of my Beloved. I expect this not because I am special or have achieved this through special deeds, but simply because of God's boundless love. I do not trust in my love for God, but only in God’s love for me. We trust Him because He loves us. We are confident that He will fulfill our hope because He loves us too much to let us down.
All our hopes arise from God's love and rely on God's love. If it were not for the love of the Father, the covenant of grace would never have existed.
Were it not for His boundless love, no propitiatory sacrifice would have been offered. If He had not demonstrated His love in action, the Holy Spirit would not have given us life and renewed us. If it were not for His unfailing love, all the good things that were in us would soon pass away. Were it not for His almighty, unfailing, boundless love, we could never hope to see the face of the King in all His glory in a distant land. He loves us and therefore guides, nourishes and establishes us forever. Don't you believe it with all your heart? If this love could be stopped even for a moment, if it stopped supporting you for a moment, what would happen to you? God's love is the primary reason for our hope in Him.
Dear believer, notice that the real reason for our confidence is that “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit dwells in the heart of every believer, and He performs many works of grace. Above all else, He pours out God's love into the hearts where He dwells. Let me illustrate this to you with an example. Imagine that a richly decorated box filled with precious incense has been placed in the room. This wonderful fragrance is hidden in a box. This is an exquisite aroma, but no one has ever inhaled its fragrance. God's love that comes into the heart of a believer is like this rare fragrance; it cannot be enjoyed until it is poured out. The Holy Spirit takes this box, opens it, then the pleasant fragrance of divine love flows out of it and completely fills the believer. This love penetrates, permeates, enters and fills his entire being. When roses release their scent, a pleasant fragrance fills the entire room. In the same way, when a sincere believer meditates on God's love, inviting the Holy Spirit to help him in this, then these beautiful thoughts fill his mind, memory, imagination, reasoning and emotions. God's love is so all-encompassing that it cannot be limited to any one emotion, just as it is impossible to contain the scent of incense in a certain narrow space.
Moreover, just as fragrance delights the sense of smell, God's love, poured out in the power of the Holy Spirit, overwhelms our emotions with a supernatural sense of grace. All the garments of the Lord of love are fragrant with myrrh, aloes and cassia (Psalm 44:9). What can be compared to God's love? The fact that the eternal and limitless God loved all humanity, that the love of the Heavenly Father is so strong that He gave His Son to die, is a truth that immediately surprises and brings joy. This is the root from which the flower of perfect joy grows. This is an ivory palace, every inhabitant of which rejoices. You can meditate on this love until it takes hold of you and takes you over; until your soul becomes like "the chariots of the nobles" (Song 6:12) before you know it.
The fragrance of fragrant incense not only saturates the air and brings pleasure to everyone in the room, but also remains there. You can remove the incense from the room, but the pleasant aroma will remain where it was for many hours. Some smells seem to linger forever. Perhaps you opened your dresser drawer yesterday and noticed the wonderful smell of lavender, but you haven't put a bag in there since last year. The smell remains. A few drops of pure perfume will fill a large room with its scent, and it will remain long after the bottle has been tightly closed.
When God's love enters the heart and is poured out by the Holy Spirit, who is the great Master of the art of spreading love, it remains in the heart forever. Everything else may cease, but love remains. We may forget God's love for a moment in the midst of all the affairs of this world, but as soon as the pressure subsides, we will return to our peace. The pleasant fragrance of divine love overcomes the disgusting smell of sin and never leaves the heart that has known its magnificent pleasures.
Let me make another comparison. God's love poured into the heart by the Holy Spirit is like a rain cloud, black and overflowing with blessings, raining down countless silver drops to fertilize every place where they fall. Absorbing life-giving moisture, drooping plants straighten up and rejoice at the revival sent from heaven. After some time, in the place where the rain fell, a gentle vapor begins to rise, which rises to the heavens and forms new clouds. God's love in the same way pours into our hearts and saturates our nature until our spirit is drunk with it; then this new life produces flowers of joy and fruits of holiness. Subsequently, our grateful praise rises up like incense burned on the altar of Jehovah in the temple. Love pours into us and produces reciprocal love in our hearts.
Now let's leave these comparisons. The abundant outpouring of God's love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit means that He gives us a special sense of gratitude and acceptance of that divine love. We have heard about it, believed in it and thought about it. In the end, we are captivated by its greatness. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). Such Love cannot be measured by anything. It completely captivates us; we are full of wonder and admiration. We are amazed by its greatness, its uniqueness, its difference, its boundlessness. It pours out into our hearts.
Then we truly begin to accept His love. We cry, “He has loved me; He gave Himself for me." We begin to feel that God's love was not only love for people in general, but also love for us specifically, and it just knocks us off our feet. Believing in this special love for us, we are ready to dance with joy. Faith sees that this is true, and then we want to “praise Him with loud cymbals” (Psalm 150:5). Of course, this in turn is followed by the giving of love that the human heart should feel. “Let us love Him, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). We once doubted His love for us, but now we can no longer give in to such doubts.
If we were asked three times, like Peter, “Do you love Me?” (John 21:15), we would answer humbly, but with the deepest feeling: “Lord! You know everything; You know that I love You” (verse 17). “Lord, I could not live without loving You. I would a thousand times rather wish I had never been born than not have love for You. Although I do not love You as much as I should, and my heart desires much more love for You, I do love You, not only in words, but also in deeds. You know it is so, and I would be sinning against my own conscience by denying it.” This is what it means when God's love is poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit he has given. It is to know it, to enjoy it, to accept it, to rejoice in it, and to be divinely influenced by it. May this pleasant fragrance never leave the depths of your soul!
Christ died for the wicked
Next, I want you to notice a particularly pleasing detail that struck the Apostle Paul as surprisingly remarkable. He told us about what influenced him the most. He said, “For while we were yet weak, Christ died at the appointed time for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). Another important detail we need to think about is that God gave His Son to die for the ungodly. The fact that God loved those who loved Him, that God loved His renewed people striving for holiness, is truly beautiful, but most of all it is the thought that He loved us when there was absolutely nothing good in us. He loved us even before the foundation of the world. He saw that we were fallen and lost, but He loved us so much that He chose to send His Son to die for us. Jesus didn't come because we were good, we were evil. He gave Himself not for our righteousness, but for our sins. What motivated a righteous God to act out of love? It was not the superiority of His human creation that already existed at that time or was to be realized in the future. It was simply the favor of the God of love. Love was born from God Himself. She was so great in God's heart
He saw us, destroyed by the Fall,
However, he loved us no matter what.
He loved us when we hated Him; He loved us when we opposed Him, when we cursed Him, when we persecuted His people and blasphemed His ways. How excellent! Oh, may the Holy Spirit establish this truth in our hearts and make us feel its power! I can't even express the depth of God's love for you, let alone pour it into you, but the Holy Spirit can do it, and then you will find yourself so captivated, so humbled, and yet so full of praise to the Most High God !
Therefore, the apostle was not content with merely reminding us of God’s immeasurable love for us. He also did not want us to forget that Christ died for us. Beloved, the fact that Christ loved us in heaven is wonderful in itself, but it is much more excellent that He then came down to earth and was born in Bethlehem. That He lived a life of obedience for us was wonderful, but that He died was the culmination of the sacrifice of love, the summit of the mountain of love.
Some sights of the world are especially impressive to us when we see them for the first time. We are interested in seeing them again, but then they become ordinary. The sacrifice of Christ on the cross surpasses human understanding; The more we learn about him, the more amazed we become. To the believer who has been saved for two thousand years, the sacrifice of Calvary is an even greater miracle than when he first learned about it. That God Himself came down to earth, becoming man, and in this nature died the death of a criminal, exposed on the execution stake, in order to save us, who were His enemies, is something that would be impossible to believe if it were told to us someone with less authority than God. It is a perfect miracle, and if you allow it to take hold of you, if you allow the love of God to be poured out in your heart by the Holy Spirit, you will feel that in comparison there is nothing worth knowing, worth believing, or worth honoring. Nothing will ever compare to our interest in the Cross of Christ. We can study many areas of different sciences, but the knowledge of the crucified Savior will still remain the greatest of all sciences.
Christ will save us with His life
Then the apostle says that now that we have been reconciled to God, the Lord will love us forever. He said it this way: if God loved us when we were His enemies, then He will surely continue to love us now that we have become His friends. If Jesus died for us when we were rebels, He will deny us nothing now that God has made peace with us. If He reconciled us by His death, He can and will surely save us with His life (Romans 5:10). If He died to reconcile enemies, He will surely preserve those who are reconciled.
Do you see the whole picture completely? We have many reasons for maintaining our glorious hope, so that we may not be ashamed of it. When the great God Himself makes us feel the surpassing greatness of His love, we cast out all doubt and fear. Based on the nature of His love that we have seen in the past, we conclude that there is no way He can abandon us in the future. How can it be - to die for us and then abandon us? Is it possible to shed the blood of His heart for our redemption and yet allow us to perish? Can Jesus, clothed in the scarlet robe of His own propitiation by death, reveal Himself to us - what He does not reveal to the world, and then, after all this, say to us: “Depart from Me, you cursed” (Matthew 25:41 )? This is impossible! He doesn't change. The foundation stone of the arch of our hope is the unfailing love of Jesus Christ, who is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). The Holy Spirit has poured out the love of God in Christ Jesus into our hearts in such a way that we are fully confident that nothing can separate us from it. Until we are separated from it, our hope of glory remains as sure as the throne of the Eternal.
The apostle also reminds us that “we have now received reconciliation” (Romans 5:11). Now we already feel that we are one with God. Through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus we have peace with God. We love Him, our bickering with Him has ceased. We enjoy Him, we strive to glorify Him. This wonderful feeling of reconciliation is a sufficient assurance of grace and glory. The hope of glory burns in the golden lamp of a heart reconciled to God Jesus Christ. Since we are now in perfect harmony with God, seeking only to be as He wills and to do as He wills, we have within us the firstfruits of heaven, the dawn of the perfect day. Grace is glory that has not yet blossomed. Living in harmony with God is the seed of perfect holiness and perfect happiness. When we are under the power of holiness, when there is nothing in us that we continue to cling to, knowing that it is contrary to the thoughts of our holy Lord, then we can be sure that He has accepted us, that we have His life and We will ultimately enter into His glory. He who has made His enemies His sincere friends will not allow this good deed to be ruined, nor His holy purpose to remain undone. Our present delight in God is the guarantee of our endless joy in Him. Therefore we are not ashamed of our hope.
The Holy Spirit Working in Us
One more thought on this topic. Notice especially that the apostle not only mentions God's love and the fact that it is poured out into our hearts, but also mentions the divine Person through whom it was accomplished. The outpouring of God's love into our hearts was accomplished by the Holy Spirit given to us. This could only be done by the Holy Spirit. Could you be conquered by God's love as a result of the devil's influence? Could you be conquered and overjoyed in God's love through the power of your own fallen human nature? Judge for yourself! People who have felt God's love pouring into their hearts can say without a doubt, “It is God's finger, the Holy Spirit has done this in me.” Only the Holy Spirit can do this. Some may say, “Thank God that I was given the privilege of hearing a powerful sermon!” Yes, that could be the case, but you still might not feel God's love in your heart. Preachers can pour out love through preaching, but they cannot pour it into human hearts. The inner nature must be subjected to a higher influence than human oratory.
Perhaps you were alone in your room or walking along the side of the road when the sweet fragrance of love entered your heart. Oh, God's love! The amazing, immeasurable, incomprehensible love of the Father! Oh, how wonderful it is to feel this love so much that our soul itself will flare up with a new fire, and our loveless nature will burst into flames with love for the great Beloved, who loves the souls of people! Who can perform such a miracle except the Holy Spirit? And how did we receive the Holy Spirit, if not by the gift of God, whose gifts and calling are “irrevocable” (Romans 11:29)? God does not give and then take away; His gifts are ours forever. If you have been given the Holy Spirit, isn't He a guarantee of God's love?
Doesn't the New Testament describe Him as the pledge, the earnest of our inheritance? Isn't the deposit a guarantee that all other conditions will be fulfilled? Would the Holy Spirit place His seal on a document that would later prove to be erroneous and fail to fulfill its purpose? Never! If the Holy Spirit abides in you, He is a guarantee of everlasting joy. When His divine indwelling brings grace, glory follows. When the Holy Spirit comes into a person, He comes to make an abode for Himself. He will remain in us until we are caught up into the higher realms to see the face of our Lord forever.
The result of our sure hope
This sure hope produces inner joy. The man who knows that his hope of glory will never fail him because of the great love of God which he has tasted will hear music in the night. The mountains and hills will sing wherever he goes. He will rejoice “and boast in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2), especially in times of trouble. It is often in the moments of greatest suffering that a person can truly feel the deepest comfort, because then God's love will be revealed in a special way in his heart by the Holy Spirit, whose name is “Comforter” (John 14:16). Then he will know that the rod of correction was dipped in mercy, that his losses were sent in a father's love, and that his pains and sufferings were meted out with a good purpose. In our suffering, God does nothing to us that we would not want for ourselves if we were as wise and loving as God. Dear friend, you don't need gold to make you happy; you don't even need health to make you joyful. If you just know and feel divine love, sources of pleasure will pour out on you - you will attend a banquet of special happiness.
Our inner joy carries with it the grace of holy boldness in proclaiming our hope. Christians do not often enough demonstrate the joy of their hope to unbelievers. We don't wear our best uniform, we don't talk enough about the joy of being in the Lord's service, we don't talk enough about the wages our Lord will pay at the end of the day. We remain silent as if we are ashamed of our hope. We even complain about the various hardships of life, when we have a reason to be the happiest people on God's earth. I think this is because we rarely experience the outpouring of God's love into our hearts. If we had the scent of God's love within us, those around us would smell it. When you drive past a perfume factory, you immediately notice a pleasant smell. May unbelievers taste the fragrance of our joyful hope. Let us especially speak of this to those who mock us most, for I know from my own experience that some of them are likely to change more quickly than others.
Many times a convert has written to his unbelieving friend, telling him of his great change and new joy, and that friend has put the letter aside with a grin or a joke. However, after thinking about it, after a while he said to himself: “Perhaps there is something in this. I am a stranger to the joy that my friend speaks of, and I certainly need all the joy I can get, for I am depressed enough.” Let me tell you that not all unbelievers are as foolish as some people think they are. They are aware of the problem in their hearts and long to know something better than what this empty world can give them. So it often happens that once they know what is good, they immediately accept it. Even if they are not hungry for God, I know of no better way to make a person desire food than to start eating himself. The observer will feel his mouth watering and suddenly feel an appetite.
In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the servants were ordered to bring the best clothes and dress the younger son, putting a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet. However, the father did not tell them to force his son to eat. He said, “Let us eat and be merry” (Luke 15:23). He knew that when his hungry son saw others feasting, he himself would begin to eat. When those who are of God's family eat and drink in joyful fellowship and rejoice with the Lord, feasting in divine love, the poor hungry brother will be tempted to join you and will be encouraged to do so.
May we enjoy true godliness so much that we never disgrace it or feel shame because of it. Come therefore, all ye that have the hope of glory, and let all men see that ye are not ashamed of this hope. Be bait for those who don’t know the joy of God’s love. In other words, let the sweet notes of your happy life attract people to Jesus! May the Lord grant you to spread the love that He has poured into your hearts, and may the fragrant fragrance in your hearts fill your homes, your places of work, your fellowships and all your lives with fragrance!
Ilchenko Yu.N.
Plan:
I. Introduction
God is Love (Agape) and the motive of everything He does comes from love. And God wants us to have a revelation of this and serve people out of the love He has placed in our hearts. Without it we are unable to serve people. There is a shortage of love in the world and this gives rise to many problems: rejection, hatred, suicide, divorce, mental illness.
II. God's love never fails
1 Corinthians 13:8 Love does not cease, does not end, does not stop, will always exist. She will not tolerate failure, defeat, collapse. It will not weaken, will not lose strength, will not go bankrupt.
III. God gives revelation about love
John 17:26 God loves us with the same love that He loves Jesus. The power of His love is in us.
Rom.5:5 When we accept Jesus Christ into our hearts, we accept His essence, His love. It is given to everyone.
Eph.3:20 God's love surpasses human understanding, and only God can reveal to us the truth about love.
1 John 4:16 We need to know God's love, believe in it and not rely on feelings.
To do this, you need to: 1) put the Word of God in first place, it changes our thinking; 2) reflect on the Word about love, become saturated with it - this prepares us for accepting faith; 3) act on the Word, proclaim it (whatever you say will happen to you) - we subordinate our feelings in order to love. When we start thinking about a person with love, our attitude and actions change. We know God's love so we can believe and act in love (Gal.5:6).
IV. The essence of God's love is Agape.
John 3:16 God conquered evil with love. Agape is God's unconditional, perfect love. Agape is a choice and decision, not feelings and emotions. Agape is constant, unchanging, conscious. She always takes the first step to build relationships. If we are guided by feelings, we will be offended, we will be vulnerable, but the power of God's love will protect us because it is based on faith. God has given us the ability to love to repel the attacks of the enemy and win. God's love provides a way out, salvation, hope. John 15:10-11 Agape brings joy.
Matt. 5:43-46 Agape helps us love our enemies. Matthew 10:36– the enemy with a spirit of rebellion can act through our relatives, through our family, but God gives us the power of love to bless them. Only God's love through us will change their lives.
Joseph's example: although he was betrayed by his brothers, there was no resentment or revenge in his heart. God was with him because Joseph was with God. Filled with God's love, he did not allow himself to be offended and did not allow darkness, anger and hatred into his heart.
Gen.50:30 Joseph allowed God to act and overcome evil with good. Forgiveness is the movement and action of God's love. Direct your thoughts in a good direction.
When we use love languages to serve people and build relationships, the Lord is revealed through us: kind words bring life and inspiration (make a list of kind words, teach them and practice them); time - this sacrifice of sociability is pleasing to God (Hebrews 13:16); gifts indicate that you care about the person; help - good deeds with which you serve people; touches open hearts, God touches people through us.
The power of God's love is the greatest power in the universe and will never cease or disappear. So don't let evil control you, but trust God, be filled with His love and let Him work through you to serve people, to bless and change their lives.
Sermon:
Today we will continue to talk about the royal priesthood. This is such an endless topic, like the Kingdom of God itself, like God himself, like God’s endless love. We can talk about this and talk about it, why? So that we absorb the word of God, so that faith comes into our hearts, so that we become doers of the Word that we listen to, and not just listeners of this word.
1 Corinthians 13:8 “Love never fails, although prophecies cease, tongues are silent, and knowledge is abolished.”. Love agape never stops. The expanded translation of the word “does not cease” means does not end. It cannot end because God is love itself - unconditional love that loves without demanding anything in return, that does not set any conditions. For our human understanding, this is a difficult topic, in fact, because our relationships are built on the understanding: I am for you - you are for me. Our relationships are often built on feelings. In our country, it mainly prevails "fileo"(Greek word) - friendly love. This is love for people who I like, who are nice, who are pleasant.
But God tells us about completely different truths. He tells us to love our enemies. How can you humanly love your enemies? As a human being, you don’t want to love, but to beat. But we will see what God's Word says on this subject. Truth sets us free. Only God's love - "agape", never ceases, it is endless, it will not fail, it will not lose strength, it will not weaken, it will not fail, it will not go bankrupt. What great power there is in God's love.
Relationships in the Kingdom of God are built on relationships of love. Why? Because God Himself always acts from a heart of love, His motive is the motive of love. Everything God does for us is done out of love. He looks at us with love, thinks of us with love, acts towards us with love. Therefore, in order for us to be truly one with God, it is very important for us to understand God as love. Because God is love, God is agape, God is unconditional love. This is very difficult for human understanding, but we believe that the Holy Spirit will give us revelations. His revelations, His truth, will bring us freedom, and freedom will bring us blessings and strength.
John 17:26 “And I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” If we look carefully, we will find that Jesus Christ says that the love with which the Father loved Jesus Christ abides in us. Look how much God loves us. According to human reasoning, the Father should love Jesus more. He does everything for the Father, He fulfilled the perfect will of God, He did everything that needed to be done and continues to do. Why should we be loved? But Jesus says: “I will show them Your love. The love with which You loved Me will also be in them.” The power of God's love is within us. If you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart, together with Him you accepted His essence - His love. God loves each of us with the same love with which He loved Jesus, without belittling us or degrading us in the least.
Rome. 5:5 “But hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”. God's love was poured out into our hearts. Every believer has this great potential of God's love, in each of us who have accepted Jesus Christ there is the power of God's love. It has already been poured into your heart, you already have it, we just need to see it, know it, believe in it, release it. Faith works through love. In the spiritual world, everything works through faith. We cannot receive anything from God without faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God.
1 John 4:16 “And we knew and believed in the love that God has for us.” We have come to know God's love. We always associate love with feelings, we have either phileo, or storge, or eros - this is what we feel. But it is written here that we have known and believed in the love that God has for us. What do we need to do? We need to know - learn about it, enter into the truth of God's love, and believe in it. Therefore, God's agape love works according to faith and not according to the flesh. It's not our feelings, it's the power of God that comes through faith. We need to develop faith in God's love. Faith comes from hearing the Word of God.
How do we use the principles of faith? We take the Word of God, we put it first, and we look at what the Word of God says about a topic. If we are sick, then we take the Word of God, which speaks of healing. If we have a problem with finances or something else, we find a certain Word of God that speaks on the subject, and we put that Word first. We don't put feelings first, we put God's Word first. Then we meditate on the Word of God. Why do you need to think? When we meditate, we become saturated with this Word of God, meditating prepares us to accept faith. Reflection prepares our heart, it prepares us so that we can receive it and so that our heart becomes good soil.
Psalm 1.
Why was the man blessed? Because he was in the Word of God day and night. He thought about it, and thought, and thought, until this truth was revealed to him. This revelation brought him faith, because faith comes by hearing the Word of God. And in order for us to believe in God’s love, we need to know it - this happens through our reflections.
If you need to know and believe something, you need to write down the corresponding passages of Scripture. If we talk about God's love, there must be corresponding scriptures about God's love that we will read and meditate on. Then our heart will be freed from all stones, from thorns, from everything that prevents this Word from taking root in us. Our heart will become good soil for receiving the Word. Then we need to act by faith, because faith without works is dead. Not only to know, not only to believe in God’s love, but also to live in God’s love.
How do we do this? I remind you of the principle of faith. We make a decision. It all starts with our decision. If you make a decision to live a life of love, and you think about it, and then you begin to act, then your faith begins to act in love. Therefore, we need to renew our thinking, we need to confess the Word of God. Do not confess your feelings, because most often, we confess our feelings: “How bad I feel, how hard it is for me, it hurts, how much I don’t like this person, he annoys me.” When we say this, we are confessing how we feel about ourselves, about that person, and not what the Word of God says. As a result, we have what we say, and often, you don’t even know why you don’t like the person.
Sometimes you look at a person and think: “Why don’t I like him, does he seem to be a normal person? But it seems to you that everything about him is wrong, and his clothes are wrong, and he walks wrong, and speaks wrong, and he laughs so disgustingly.” Sometimes we don’t even know where it comes from in us and why. But if we put the Word of God first, then everything aligns, everything comes in accordance with the Word of God. Our meditation on the Word of God changes our thinking, and our confession releases faith. It will happen to you that you can’t tell. We need to say in victory, “Lord, I choose to develop faith in love, I choose to walk in love, think in love, act in love, respond in love.” Because that's the kind of life Jesus lived. He said: "The works that I did you will do". If His life was a life of love, a life of service, then it should be the same for each of us. By accepting Jesus Christ into our lives, together with Him we accepted His mission, His plans, His desires. We must have the same feelings (Phil.2:5).
But our feelings often contradict the feelings of the Word of God. But in the beginning there was the Word. You always need to remember what to do first - the first, second, third step. And so gradually, we enter into what God tells us to do. Therefore you pray, you speak, you confess, and you reject all your selfishness. We all have a lot of egoism. It manifests itself in difficult situations very easily and quickly. While we are sitting, so sweet, kind and cheerful, but as soon as someone steps on your foot, or says: “Move over, this is my place,” it will immediately be clear how you love your neighbor and what you will say to him in response. We must not be forgetful listeners. We listen, we experience God's love in order to believe in it and act on God's love.
In the modern world we talk a lot about love. Films, songs, books, novels - this is the most frequently discussed topic, this is what people think and talk about most often. Despite this, love is the greatest shortage on earth. There is a lack of love in the world. Why? Because the whole world lies in evil. Evil is the opposite of love. Evil is sin, hatred, non-forgiveness, aggression. The whole world lies in this aggression, in non-forgiveness, in hatred. The atmosphere of evil presses on every person, not only on non-believers. But they are even more susceptible to it because they do not know how to resist it. But it also puts pressure on us, the believers. We must understand that God has given us the ability to repel these attacks. And not only to reflect, but also to win.
There are many different problems in society. For example, the problem of suicide. Why do people commit suicide? Because they feel unwanted, rejected, they have given up on their lives. They don’t think about what they need, they direct their thoughts not in the direction of life, but in the direction of death. What's the reason? Lack of love. But it is God's love that gives salvation, it is God's love that gives a way out, it is God's love that gives hope. When we accepted Jesus Christ, we accepted God's love, and with that came faith, hope and love.
What other problems are there in the world? Divorces. Families are breaking up. In Russia, every second marriage breaks up, these are terrible things. This is especially true for young families under thirty years of age, when most divorces occur. Why? Because there is no basis for family, there is no basis for love. Love is the strongest foundation. If a family is based on love, it will overcome storms, storms, and floods. Everything will stand. We overcome everything through the power of him who loved us (Rom.8:37). We cannot overcome these storms in life, these problems, various difficulties, if we do not have the power of God's love in us. That's why there are so many divorces.
There are also many mental illnesses. Why? Because all diseases are caused by nerves, many people are very nervous, mental, very hot-tempered. What should they do? Some psychotherapist can give sedative drops or pills, but will this solve the problem? It won't solve it. The condition may calm down for a while, but the root of the problem is the lack of God's love. If there is no love, then the person becomes nervous, worried, and angry. Therefore, we need God's love - agape, which is unconditional.
We find it very difficult to believe in unconditional love. We always think that if I did something to you, then you owe me too. But if you haven’t done anything to me, then I don’t want to do anything for you. Then I will be offended, offended. When we are not led by God's love, but simply by our feelings, we always get offended. Because our feelings are infringed and affected. When we walk in our feelings, our feelings are very sensitive, we are so vulnerable. If you look at us the wrong way, we will be offended. But the power of God's love will protect you from offense. God's love is not based on feelings, it is based on faith. And faith makes the decision - to love. She doesn't expect anyone to love her. Many people sit and wait, who will love them? They say: “There is no love in the church, there is no love there, there is no love anywhere, no one loves me.” I remember one character from the film, there was this Panikovsky who constantly complained that his girls didn’t love him, and he had no geese, he had nothing, and his life was so pitiful and unhappy. The enemy wants to make us so pitiful and unhappy. But God's love is power. And the strong do everything arbitrarily (Proverbs 26:10). Agape is the first to take a step towards a person. She doesn't wait for anyone to come to you. If the love of God is in you, you will come first, you will act, you will express love, you will serve.
Rome. 5:8 “But God demonstrates His love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God did not wait until He could love us. We often want to love people who are pleasant, soft and fluffy, beautiful and wonderful. But God loved us when we were sinners (Rom.5:8). And it was with His love that God conquered evil. He did not wait for all the people to correct themselves. They cannot reform without God's love - this is the most important ingredient for humanity to change and reform. But we accepted God, we accepted the Savior, we accepted God's love, and therefore our lives change and we become different. God's love is a choice, it is neither feelings nor emotions. God loved us, but nowhere does it explain why. He loved us - He made this decision, made this choice. In order for us to move with God, we must make the same decisions.
What else is the benefit of God's agape love? So it is not based on feelings, it is constant, it is conscious. Everything that is based on feelings is changeable. Therefore, we can see on TV that some people, he got married five times, and she got married eight times, and love quickly passed, and then another, a third, a fourth appeared, ad infinitum. In fact, it was not love. Love is a state that God gives us. This is what God Himself is. Therefore she is conscious, she chooses to love, she is not based on feelings. Our feelings are changeable, today you feel this way, tomorrow it’s different, and after tomorrow you don’t want to see. That's why many people have problems in relationships and families. That’s why he fell out of love, then she stopped loving, where did it all go, where did it go? You had a crush, phileo, it is amorphous, it often disappears. But God's love is constant, and our families will then be strong and stable. We must understand what a great advantage the Lord has given us by pouring His love into our hearts, so that we would be constant and not rush from side to side.
Focusing on feelings, we can wait until I finally like someone so that I can do something good. You can wait until I want to do something kind and good. If you sit and wait, you may never wait, but when you make a choice, you are in control. You make a choice, you decide to love other people with God's love, and you don't have to wait. If you want to have friends, you must be friendly, you must take a step forward (Proverbs 18:25). When you start thinking about a person with love, your attitude towards him will change. From your attitude all your motives change, and when your motives change, you act from the heart of God the Father. Because His motive is love. Good thoughts give rise to a good attitude, and a good attitude gives rise to good deeds.
We talked about the five love languages. Has anyone remembered what love languages are? Present. This is self-centeredness speaking in us. The first thing we remember is what they did for us. Gifts – we are pleased. At the previous service, when I spoke about gifts, many faces broke into a smile. Because we are pleased when they give us gifts. But it doesn't all start with gifts.
Firstly, good words. It all starts with kind words - words of encouragement, inspiration and consolation. The principle “in the beginning was the word” has not changed. If we want to touch a person, touch their heart, to build friendships, we need to say good words to people. There is a shortage of good words in this world. What do we hear around us? Negativity, gossip, condemnation, criticism, dissatisfaction. Very rarely do people hear kind words. Most often they hear this once a year when it is their birthday, then they say good words to you, tell you how good you are and wish you all the best.
We need kind words constantly, they build us up. "Death and life in the power of language" (Proverbs 18:22). Kind words give life and inspiration. To touch a person with God's love, start saying kind words. This is difficult if we are used to speaking negatively, criticizing, discussing, it is difficult for us to find kind words. I would advise you: “Write down a list of kind words and learn this new language for you.” How do they learn a foreign language? They write down the words and begin to learn them. And when you learn them, you begin to practice them. Write down kind words and start practicing them. Maybe at first they will sound awkward, the pronunciation is not very good, but gradually you will get used to pronouncing them. While we only swear perfectly, negative words simply fly out of us. But when kind words need to be said, sometimes a person freezes: “Well, what can I tell you? You are good, you are very good, what else can I say?” Our vocabulary should be enriched with kind words. For kind words to bear good fruit, you need to sow good seeds.
Secondly, time .
Hebrews 13:16 “Do not forget also to do good and be sociable, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” When you devote time not only to yourself, but also time to someone else, this is a pleasing sacrifice for Him, because at this time you build relationships. You listen to the person, not just tell him. The problem for believers is that we know everything, and we seem to be above non-believers, above people. We say: “They are dark, they lived in darkness, they do not know the light of the Word of God.” And as soon as they open their mouths, we immediately bombard them with what we know: quotes, tirades, scriptures. But in order to spend time with people and build relationships with them, you need to learn to listen to people, be patient, and not interrupt them. This is also not easy for our nature. If we know something, we immediately want to give it away, lay it out. But this does not open people's hearts. Because he may have wanted to say something, but in response, like from a machine gun, you began to scribble the Word of God, and that’s all - he was already confused, closed down.
Therefore, when we spend time with people, let's learn to listen to them, let's become good listeners. For a good listener, God will give a good situation, the person will reveal his problems, needs, and then knowledge will come from the lips of the priest (Mal.2:7). We, as priests, messengers of the Lord, will give the Word from God to this situation. After all, when you sit and listen to a person, at that moment you also pray and ask: “Lord, what do you want me to say to this person?” You don’t say what comes into your mind, but you pray and ask: “Holy Spirit, what kind of word does a person need? What would you like to tell him?
Third, present . It's wonderful when people give us gifts, but God wants to teach us to give gifts to others. A gift - he says. If you give a gift, it means something to the person. We need to remember people's birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, anniversaries, everything that happens to them. And when you give a gift, a person sees that he is not indifferent to you, this is your participation in his life. God has given us the greatest gift, He has given us the gift of eternal life. We cannot earn salvation, we cannot deserve it. God in His mercy and grace has given us this gift, this gift. That's why we should give gifts. The nature of God is to give and demand nothing in return. Don’t demand: “I gave you something, but you didn’t give me anything.” That’s it, I won’t give anything anymore.” Remember that you must act out of God's love - agape, His love is unconditional.
Fourthly, help, good deeds . Help helps us establish relationships. When you help a person, you see how you can serve him. Each of us has different talents. What I can do, no one else can do. And what someone else can do, I cannot do. Each one serve with his gift. (1 Pet. 4:10). Serve, help others with your gift, it will bring blessings, it will strengthen your relationship with that person. Through this help, the Lord will manifest itself and the Holy Spirit will act. Who is our helper? Holy Spirit. He gives us what we don't have. The Holy Spirit gives us His gifts. Through a relationship with the Holy Spirit, we experience the fruits of the Holy Spirit. When we serve another person, the Holy Spirit works through us and touches that person's heart.
Fifthly, touch . We all know that in some difficult situation, God touched us. It was this touch that opened our hearts. Everything we talk about, words, time, gifts, and help - all this is God’s touch to people through us. Why? Because God loves people most of all. And because of this love, He gave Himself, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. Let us love not only in word, but in deed and in truth.
We said that if we have good thoughts, good words, good deeds, and then good feelings and a good attitude will appear. Doing good is always nice. Some people say: “When I do something bad to someone, I feel better.” Until he pours out all his anger and irritation on someone, he will not calm down. But this is not the way out that the Lord offers us. Our thoughts influence our decision, the decision influences our actions. Then our feelings and emotions appear. We must be rich in every good work (2 Cor. 9:8). And we will see how beneficial this will be for ourselves, how blessed it will be for ourselves. By helping and loving others, you will experience joy yourself.
When Jesus was born, there was great joy in heaven. All the heavens rejoiced, the angels rejoiced. They rejoiced in this gift that God had given to humanity. Therefore, this joy will come to us, and our feelings will be affected when we do something for people. We do not start with feelings, but feelings will also be affected. Because we have a soul, we have feelings, but we start with a decision, with a thought, with the word of God. If we think, think, pray, and from an attitude of love, then we begin to act accordingly. Some people think that if they help someone, love someone, they will suffer. Perhaps this is due to past experiences. You did something good to someone, helped someone, or did something good, wonderful, but in return, this person did something nasty or mean to you.
I want to advise you to read the sayings of Mother Teresa. She was a great woman of God, she ministered to the most humiliated and abused sections of India, the poorest and sickest people who had no hope, no future.
“People can be reasonable, illogical, selfish - forgive them anyway. If you show kindness and people accuse you of having secret, personal motives, show kindness anyway. If you are successful, you may have many imaginary friends, real enemies, still achieve success. If you are honest and frank, people will deceive you, still be honest and frank. What you have been building for years can be destroyed overnight, build anyway. If you have achieved serene happiness, everyone will envy you, still be happy. The good that you did today, people will forget tomorrow, do good anyway. Share the best you have with people, it will never be enough. In the end, you will see for yourself that all this is between you and God.”
All our actions are between us and God. This is agape, which does not require anything in return. And I love the words of this woman of God so much. She not only spoke, but also lived such a life. I don’t know which other religious figure was as famous and influential as Mother Teresa. It was accepted by kings, presidents, and kings. Why? She was not moved by feelings, she was moved by the power of God's love. If we live like her, do what the word of God says - forgive and love, do not repay evil for evil, but overcome evil with good, then a completely different life will open up for us, completely different prospects, a different influence that will God give.
John 15:10“If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. I have spoken these things to you, so that My joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.”. Jesus in His life on earth did not complain: “Father, why did you send me into this human skin. I got in and walk with these ungrateful people who today shout “Hosanna” to Me, and tomorrow they want to crucify Me. Today I help them, heal them, free them, and the next day they want to kill Me. How ungrateful people are, how bad.” Everything Jesus did, He did with joy. Therefore, what we do we need to do with joy. We will reap if we do not give up (Gal.6:9). Let us not weaken in doing good! Let's get joy from what we do. Jesus said: " My joy will be in you, and your joy will be complete.”(John 15:11). This will make us happier and better. The power of love is the greatest power, but for this you need to give up your egoism, self-centeredness.
Matthew 5:43-46 “You have heard that it was said: Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you: love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who use you and persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven, for He makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what will be your reward? Don’t tax collectors do the same?”
Jesus tells us to love our enemies. Who are our enemies?
Matthew 10:36 “And a man’s enemies are his own household.” When we come to faith in Jesus Christ, our loved ones usually do not express much joy or delight about this. They say: “Why do you need this? Where did you end up? Quit this thing quickly before they take everything away from you. They’ll take everything away, you’ll be left without a stake, without a yard.” But rather, the enemies are not themselves, but the spirit that stands behind it, the spirit of resistance. When we chose to go against the spirit of this world, against demons and devils, we chose to follow God, of course, this world reacts. And first of all, he reacts through our loved ones and relatives, but we will still love and bless them, we will pray for them.
Let's look at Joseph from the side of God's love from the Father. The story of Joseph itself is very unusual. Firstly, he was betrayed by his close people, his brothers. They betrayed him and sold him into slavery. At first they wanted to kill him, but then they thought it would be more profitable to sell him. How did Joseph feel? How do you feel when people close to you betray you? But the bad things didn’t end there for Joseph. When he got to the house of Patiphar, where he served faithfully, God was with Joseph. Why was God with Joseph? Because he was with God and walked in God's love.
If Joseph had simply acted like a man who had been deceived, wanted to kill, betrayed, what would have been in his heart? There would be a desire for revenge in his heart, his heart would be filled with hatred and anger. If he had lived in such a state, God would not have been with Joseph, the devil would have been with Joseph. Darkness and malice would fill his heart.
God is the God of love, He is agape. Joseph did not allow anger and hatred to fill his heart, he did not allow himself to succumb to the provocation of the enemy. But if he became angry and made plans to take revenge on his brothers, he would lose his spiritual strength, first of all. And when a person loses spiritual strength, he loses both mental strength and peace of mind. Often people, when some problem occurs, begin to spin this problem, think and think. And the more you think, the worse you become. The wrong people get worse, but you get worse. Through these thoughts, the devil begins to influence you. What thoughts are, such is the person. When you start to get angry, start to hate them, you just add fuel to the fire, and you get worse and worse. And you become empty, lost. You no longer have strength, joy, peace, or future.
Why did God give us agape love? To protect us. It is like a shield of faith that can quench the fiery arrows of the evil one. Whatever the arrow is - betrayal, betrayal, deceit, and so on - there are many arrows, but the love of God covers you like a dome, and these fiery arrows cannot hit the target, they cannot hit your heart. What is the devil trying to achieve? Get into your heart. So above all else, guard your heart (Proverbs 4:23). As soon as the poisoned arrows of anger, hatred, and non-forgiveness get there, this poison begins to kill you. And you gradually lose your strength, run out of steam, become empty. When you become powerless, it is very easy for the devil to take you captive. You cannot resist, you have left your position in Christ, you have entered another position - anger and hatred.
Why is Joseph significant for us? If you look at his life through human eyes, it was getting worse. At first, Patifar's wife accused him unfairly, and he goes to prison. Then in prison there was injustice again, one thing, another, but God was with Joseph everywhere. His heart was not hardened, but was filled with God's love. And the most interesting moment was when the brothers came to Joseph. They didn't recognize him yet. If Joseph were a person who held anger, he would have said: “Oh, you fell into my hands, now I’ll take revenge on you for everything, now I’ll give you a fun life.” But Joseph was not like that, he was with God. When the brothers recognized Joseph, they were all afraid. They think differently - evil for evil, betrayal for betrayal.
Genesis 50:19“And Joseph said, Fear not, for I fear God; Behold, you have plotted evil against me; but God turned it into good to do what it is now: to save the lives of a great number of people.”. As often happens in life, someone deliberately does you harm. But God will turn this evil into good if you are with Him. If Joseph wanted to take revenge and repay evil to his brothers, God could not do anything, could not advance him further, because this is not God's will. But since he allowed God to act, God's love filled him, God Himself did everything. God gave him a high position. Why? Joseph went from faith to faith, from glory to glory.
There are people who harbor deep within themselves not forgiveness, resentment, some kind of pain, this does not allow them to further move after God. Because this resentment and pain holds you like an anchor. You get caught on something and you can't move any further. That's why it's so easy to know if you're walking in God's love. When you forgive, this is an act of God's love. God gives you the power to forgive, it is not your power. But you make a decision, and God gives you strength. You make a decision, and God is with you just as God was with Joseph.
God can work in the most difficult situations. Joseph retained love and forgiveness in his heart. These are all love languages: he helped them, he gave them gifts, he did the best for them. And then the Lord touched their hearts. When we give space to God, then people change, because God Himself acts.
There is a lot of anger and hatred in the modern world today. If on the road a person does not yield to someone, or drives the wrong way, he flies out and not only curses, but takes out a pistol and shoots. In peacetime, people start shootouts on the roads because they are ready to kill a person for driving the wrong way. Hatred is always released when a person has pride. Why was he angry? His “ego” was infringed, his “I” was hurt, so anger rises to such an extent that the person is ready to shoot, kill, beat, and so on. But God's love protects our hearts, it guards our heart.
Many situations happen in our lives, but it all depends on how you react. You can also jump out: “You have a pistol, and I have a machine gun. And I will shoot with a machine gun." The enemy will provoke us, will try to take us out of God's world, out of God's love, but we must guard our hearts. Don't let the enemy's arrows hit you, don't let the arrows kill you, don't let anger and hatred devastate you. On the contrary, during difficult situations, direct your thoughts in a good direction. After all, in whatever direction you direct yourself, that’s where you will be. You can choose feelings and flesh: “My feelings were infringed, he began to call me names and insult me.” But you can choose a different path, pray for this person, bless him, bind the demons that manifest themselves through him, and not curse him and not answer him in kind.
What does it mean to bless? To bless is not to encourage his actions, but to give room for God to act in this person, so that God's light comes, God's salvation, to allow God to touch this person and change his life.
Eph.6:4 “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.” We are very often irritable. Irritability is just the beginning, then it develops into anger. We can say not only fathers, but also mothers, do not irritate your children, do not be irritable yourself and be irritated with others. When we love and bless our enemies, we become sons of the Heavenly Father. When we act as the Father acts, then our true nature manifests itself, our sonship - this makes us different, strong. Evil people are always nervous, irritable, dissatisfied, and they themselves suffer from this. Don't let anger dwell in you. Be filled with the love of God, it changes, sets and blesses us, then we bless the people who are against us. We do not curse, we do not act in the same way, but we bless, we redirect our thoughts, our words and actions into the channel of God. And God begins to act.
Ephesians 3:20 “But to Him who, by the power that works within us, is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.”
I want to tell a story that happened when we were recording one of the albums in the Rio nightclub. We were looking for a club that had decent equipment, light, sound, etc., to record our album on video. We found a club, agreed, signed an agreement. And when we were almost signed up, the director of this club arrived. He was very angry and forbade us to record. But we negotiated with him, and at that time the people in the hall were praying. God changed his heart and he said, “Okay, write it down.” But when we wrote everything down and were about to leave, the huge windows of this nightclub suddenly collapsed. It was like when God's people were going around Jericho, the walls of Jericho were collapsing inwards instead of falling in as usual. The same thing happened with the club's windows.
It was not just a nightclub, it was a very bad place (as we found out later). In this place, drugs were sold, people disappeared, and various gang wars took place. The residents of this building, where the club was located, were afraid to even go into their entrances, because there was always something going on there. When the club closed, I read reviews online about how grateful people were. Before this, they contacted both the police and the authorities, but no one did anything, no one could help them. They didn't know why it closed. But we know that it closed because God came there. When the Lord intervened, then everything changed.
So, we finished everything and already arrived at the church, unloading the equipment. At this time, one of the owners, one of the main bandits, arrived at the club. When he saw what happened at the club, he was so filled with anger and hatred that he came here to church. He asks: “Where is the pastor?” I was just unloading, and I said: “I am a pastor.” And then he was carried away, with him was another of his co-workers, a thug twice taller and wider than me. He began to threaten me, took out his pistol: “Yes, I’ll shoot you,” and whatever else he wanted to do to me. In my flesh, I was also tempted to say something to him in response. When our feelings are hurt, we also want to respond somehow. But I prayed, and God told me: “Don’t respond to his attacks, just be silent.” And I stood and was silent. I think if I had answered, the situation would have been completely different.
In the midst of this conversation, my wife, Irina Ivanovna, comes out, sees this picture and makes the only right decision. He comes up, removes the gun in the hands of this bandit, and says: “God loves you.” It seems like such simple words, but in fact, this bandit suddenly went limp and lowered his hands. And both of these bandits silently, like two geese, went to their car, and we remained standing and watching what the Lord could do. And He can do incomparably more when we allow ourselves not to respond to evil with evil, but to overcome evil with good, then God intervenes and works miracles. Such miracles that we could never do.
Later I learned a lot about this man. It's good that I didn't know about him before. Many things God does not reveal to us right away. When we went to this club, we did not know what would happen there. But God always remains faithful. Therefore, when we are in God's love, the supernatural power of God is at work. When we obey the Word of God, then our testimony has power. Indeed, it was the power of God, no one could do it. I don’t know what he felt at that moment, why he suddenly went limp, lowered his gun, and they both went to the car. But we understand that the impossible becomes possible when we release the power of God's love. It surpasses human understanding. God is love, and the power of His love does incomparably more than what we ask or think.
The Lord wants us to receive revelation, to know, to believe in God’s love, and to move not by our own strength. Our strength, no matter how strong we are, is limited. Our resources, no matter how rich they are, are limited. But God is unlimited, God is without limitations, He is above all limitations.
Let our lives change, our thinking change. We suffer defeat because we do not give room to God, but we ourselves want to take revenge, we ourselves want to repay, we ourselves want to do something, even if not explicitly, but in thoughts or words. The power of God's love is the greatest power in the universe...
Don’t let evil control you, don’t let it control and dictate how you live, how you think, how you act. Let God be God in your life, let God's love move through you, and you will see something incredible, supernatural things begin to happen. Many times in my life I have seen God work when I relied on Him.
Joseph was the man that God was with, and he was with God. God gave him promotion, God gave him growth, incredible success because his heart was filled with God. Joseph did not allow any anger, any bitterness, or resentment to enter his heart. He walked in freedom, he walked in the power of God's love, and that's why God was able to do what He did through Joseph.
Let's stand and pray because we must practice in our lives what we are talking about here. It’s one thing to hear that we need to love our enemies and pray for those who curse us, and bless those who persecute us. It's another thing to actually do this in your life. We need to put God's Word first and meditate on the Scriptures that speak of God's love so that they enter our hearts. And through this, God will cleanse, liberate, renew and act in our lives.
I want to pray now, and I also invite everyone who is watching us live to pray. For God's love there are no distances, no limits, God's love is limitless. God's love is lacking in this world, but we can bring it to people. Many people say: “I have this, I have that, I don’t need your God.” But we know for sure that they do not have God's love. Only God has God's love, and without accepting God into his heart, no person can receive this God's love.
Prayer.
Dear Lord, we thank You for teaching us, revealing Your truths to us. Your truth makes us free from all anger, from all unforgiveness, from all selfishness. We renounce all this in the name of Jesus Christ. We decide to think thoughts of love. We decide to act in love, walk in love, respond in love. This is what You did here on earth, Jesus, and this is what we should do, as You lived, so we should live.
We pray and believe that through the power of love, our loved ones, our relatives, our colleagues, employees, they will recognize You. The power of Your love will touch people and they will open up to You, Lord. Evil cannot be overcome with evil, but evil can be overcome with God's love. Evil can be overcome by God's power. For a carnal person this will not be clear, but for a spiritual person it is understandable. The spiritual one understands everything.
May the Spirit of wisdom and revelation continue to work with us, continue to influence us, continue to work through us. We are here, Lord, not to do our will, but to do Your will. We thank You, Great God - God of agape love, God of unconditional love. We worship You, we glorify You, because Your love has saved us. Your love brought You to the cross. Your love has taken our sins, our illnesses, our curses. Your love has saved us and made us healthy, blessed and happy. You told us to walk in God's love, to put on God's love. Thank You. We praise You. We exalt You, Lord. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen!
I
St. John's twice-repeated statement that “God is love” (1 John 4:8,16) is one of the most striking truths of the Bible. And it is precisely this that is most often misunderstood. Around this truth, like a barrier of thorny bushes, false ideas have appeared, hiding its true meaning from us, and it is not so easy to break through this intricacy. But the hard mental work required to get to the truth is more than rewarded when the true meaning of these sayings finally hits the heart of the Christian. A climber who climbs Mount Ben Nevis and looks around, standing at its very top, does not complain about the severity of the journey.
Happy indeed is he who, following John, can repeat his words immediately preceding the phrase “God is love”: “And we know the love that God has for us” (4:16). To know God's love is heaven on earth! And the New Testament proclaims the knowledge of God's love not as a special privilege for a select few, but as an integral part of the life of an ordinary Christian, unknown only to those who are spiritually unhealthy or spiritually deformed. By saying that “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5), the Apostle Paul does not mean love of God, as Augustine believed, but the knowledge of God’s love directed towards us. And although Paul did not even know the Christians of Rome to whom he was speaking, he took it for granted that this statement was as true for them as it was for him.
There are three things worth noting in Paul's words. First, look at the verb “poured out.” It is this word that describes the “outpouring” of the Holy Spirit Himself in Acts 2:17-18,33; 10:45; Titus 3:6. This word implies a free, powerful flow - an influx, a flood. This is why the NAB says that “the love of God flooded our hearts". Paul describes here not weak or momentary experiences, but deep feelings that capture our entire being.
Secondly, pay attention to the grammatical form of this verb. It expresses a lasting state that appears as a result of an action. What is meant here is that the knowledge of God's love, once flooding our hearts, fills them even now - just as a once-flooded valley remains submerged in water. Paul expects the Roman Christians, like himself, to live with a joyful and abiding consciousness of God's love for them.
And the third point. This outpouring of the knowledge of God's love in us is the daily, ordinary ministry of the Holy Spirit, His care for those who accept Him - that is, for all true believers. It is a pity that so little attention is paid to this aspect of His ministry. Because of the great perversion that impoverishes us and makes us miserable, Christians today are entirely occupied with the extraordinary, exceptional moments of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and we simply do not pay attention to His constant ministry. We are more interested in the gifts of healing and speaking in tongues - gifts that, as Paul pointed out (1 Cor. 12:28-30), are not given to all Christians, than in the gifts of the Holy Spirit such as peace, joy, hope and love that fill the hearts our knowledge of God's love. But the latter is much more important than the former. Addressing the Corinthians, who believed that the more speaking in tongues the merrier and more godly, Paul insisted that without love—without sanctification and transformation into the likeness of Christ—tongues are worthless (1 Cor. 13:1-3).
Paul would certainly have felt that this was something that needed to be said today. It would be sad if the desire for revival, which we now see in many places, should lead to the dead end created by the new Corinthians. Let us not forget Paul's words to the Ephesians about the Holy Spirit: he desired that the ministry of the Spirit (described in Romans 5:5) would lead them with increasing power to a deeper and deeper knowledge of the love of God in Christ. The NAB is a bit loose on Ephesians 3:14-16, but it conveys its meaning well: “I am on my knees before the Father... and I pray that... He will give you by His Spirit strength and might in your hearts, .. so that you, together as God’s people, firmly realize that there is breadth and length, height and depth of the love of Christ, and know this love, even though it is beyond all understanding...” Revival means that, with God's help, the dying church will return to the principles of Christian life that are described as completely ordinary in the New Testament. Real revival is not about chasing tongues (in the end, it doesn't matter whether we speak in tongues or not), but about wanting to know God's love, which the Holy Spirit will pour into our hearts with greater power. For it is with this that personal revival begins (which is often preceded by deep work of the soul in relation to sin), and it is with this that revival in the church is supported and strengthened.
The purpose of this chapter is to reveal the nature of God's love as shed into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. To do this, we will focus on John's claim that God truly is love. In other words, the love that God gives to people, which Christians know and enjoy, is the revelation of His own heart. This thought will lead us to the deepest mysteries of God's nature that man can comprehend, and we will go deeper than we have yet ventured. By looking at God's wisdom, we have learned something about His mind; Thinking about God's power, we somehow felt His right hand; By speaking of His word, we have learned something about His will. Now, as we reflect on His love, we will see His heart. We are entering holy ground; we need reverence to walk on it without sin.
II
Two general remarks need to be made about John's words.
1. “God is love”- this statement cannot be called the complete truth about God revealed to us in the Bible. This is not an abstract definition; rather, from the believer's point of view, it sums up everything that Scripture tells us about its Author. “God is love” - this statement presupposes the rest of the biblical testimony about God. The God of whom John speaks is the God who created the world and judged this world by the flood; who called Abraham and made him a people, and then punished this people with whom He made His covenant with captivity and exile. This is God who sent His Son to save the world. This is the God who turned away from unbelieving Israel and, soon after John wrote his letters, destroyed Jerusalem. And it is God who will one day judge the world in righteousness and truth. It is this God, says John, who is love. It is foolish to contrast these words of John, as some do, with the biblical testimony of God's harsh justice. It is naive to think that the God who is love cannot at the same time be a God who condemns and punishes those who disobey Him, for this is precisely the kind of God we are talking about. John says here.
To avoid misinterpretation of the Apostle’s words, let us consider them together with two more of his statements, which, by the way, were recorded from the words of Christ Himself. We find the first in the Gospel of John: “God is spirit” (John 4:24). These are our Lord's own words spoken to the Samaritan woman. The second appears at the beginning of the 1st Epistle. John writes: “This is the gospel which we have heard from Him and proclaim to you,” and states: “God is light” (1 John 1:5). The words that God is love cannot be separated from these two statements. Let's see what they teach us.
"God exists spirit". In saying this, our Lord sought to remove from the mind of the Samaritan woman the idea that there was only one true place of worship, as if God could somehow be limited in space. “Spirit” is the opposite of “flesh.” And if a person, being “flesh,” can only be present in one place at a given moment, then God, as “spirit,” is immaterial, incorporeal and, therefore, does not know this limitation. Therefore, the condition of true worship will not be the place where you stand - in Jerusalem, or Samaria, or anywhere else - but your heart, which has felt and received His revelation. “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”
The first of the thirty-nine verses further reveals the meaning of God's "spirituality" (as it is called in the books) in the somewhat strange-sounding statement that God is "without body, without parts, and without passions." These negations express something very affirmative. God doesn't have bodies - This means, as we just noted, He is free from any restrictions in time and space, that is, He is omnipresent. In God there is no parts- this means that His inherent properties merge into His personality in perfect integrity, so that nothing in Him ever changes. With Him there is “no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17), thus He is free from natural limitations and remains eternally the same. God doesn't have passions- this does not mean that He does not feel anything and is therefore impassive or that there is nothing in Him that would correspond to our emotions and experiences. But if human passions (especially painful ones, such as fear, suffering, regret, despair) are in some sense passive, involuntary, caused and suppressed by circumstances, then the corresponding qualities of God have the character of a deliberate, voluntary choice and are therefore completely different in everything from human passions.
So, the love of God, who is spirit, is not like the fickle and ever-changing human love. And this is not a fruitless thirst for something unrealizable - this is a decision of God’s entire being about favor and goodness towards us. And this attitude was chosen voluntarily by Him and firmly established. In the love of almighty God, who is spirit, there is no fickleness or fickleness. His love is “strong as death... great waters cannot extinguish love.” Nothing can separate those to whom it has once been revealed from this love (Rom. 8:35-39).
But God, who is spirit, is at the same time "light". John proclaimed this to some Christians who had lost their moral sense and were declaring that they were not sinning in anything. To emphasize his point, John adds, “And in Him there is no darkness at all.” "Light" means holiness and purity, according to God's law; “Darkness” is moral perversion and unrighteousness, defined by the same law (cf. 1 John 2:7-11; 3:10). John argues that only those “who walk in the light,” striving to be like God in holiness and righteousness of life, avoiding everything incompatible with this, can have fellowship with the Father and the Son. Those who walk “in darkness,” no matter what they say about themselves, do not know such a relationship with God (vv. 6-7).
So, God, Who is love, is first of all light, and therefore we must abandon all sentimental ideas that His love is all-permissive, complacent condescension, far from moral norms. God's love is holy love. The God whom Jesus revealed to us is not indifferent to moral issues; this is a God who loves righteousness and hates iniquity, a God who desires to see His children “perfect, even as the Father... who is in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). He will not allow a single person to come to Him, no matter how correct his beliefs may be, if he does not strive for holiness in his life. And He subjects all whom He calls to Himself to severe tests so that they achieve this holiness. “For the Lord punishes whomever he loves; He beats every son whom he receives... for his benefit, that we may have a share in His holiness... Every discipline... brings to those who have been taught through him the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Heb. 12:6-11). God's love is strict, for it expresses the holiness of the Lover and strives to lead those loved by Him to holiness. Scripture gives no reason to think that since God is love, He will reward with happiness those who do not want to strive for holiness, or will protect His beloved from troubles, knowing that these troubles are necessary for their further sanctification.
Now we need to make a second point about John's words.
2. “God is love”- it is the complete truth about God for the Christian. When we say “God is light,” we mean that God’s holiness is expressed in everything He does and says. Likewise, the statement “God is love” means that God’s love is demonstrated in everything He says and does. And the knowledge that this is really so is the highest consolation for a Christian. Being a believer, he finds in the cross of Christ confirmation that he, he personally, is loved by God: “The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me"(Gal.2:20). Knowing this, the Christian applies to himself the promise that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). Not only something, mind you, but All! Every event that happens to a believer expresses God's love for him, and everything happens to fulfill God's purpose. So, as far as the Christian is concerned, for him God is love - holy, omnipotent love - at every moment and in every event of his daily life.
Even if a believer does not understand why and why God acts this way in his life, he knows that love comes before him and behind him. He can always rejoice, even if, from an everyday point of view, his affairs are bad. He remembers that when the story of his life becomes known to him in its entirety, it will turn out that all of it, as the hymn says, was “mercy from beginning to end” - and that is enough for him.
III
So far we have tried to describe God's love in general terms, only approximately showing how and where it works - but this is not enough. What is its essence? How do we define and analyze it? In response to this question, the Bible puts forward the concept of God's love, which can be formulated as follows:
God's love - it is an expression of His goodness towards every sinner, With with whose welfare He identified Himself and gave His Son to be his Savior, and now teaches this sinner to know and love Himself by entering With him into a covenant relationship.
Let's explain this definition piece by piece.
1. God's love is an expression of His goodness. By God's goodness the Bible means His universal generosity. Berkhof writes that God's goodness is “that perfection in God which prompts Him to treat all His creatures with kindness and generosity. It is the affection that God has for His living creatures as such.” Because of this goodness, God's love is the highest and most magnificent phenomenon. “Love, in a general sense,” wrote James Orr, “is that principle which induces one moral being to desire and rejoice in another such being; it reaches its highest expression in such personal communication when one lives the life of the other and experiences joy in giving himself to the other and receiving from him a flow of reciprocal affection.” Such is God’s love.
2. God's love is an expression of His goodness in towards the sinner. The very essence of God's love is goodness and mercy. It is an outpouring of God's kindness that is not only undeserved, but in direct opposition to our sinfulness. After all, God's love is directed towards rational beings who have violated God's law, whose nature is perverted in God's eyes and who deserve only condemnation and final expulsion from His presence. It's amazing that God could love sinners, but he does. God loves creatures that have become so unsightly that it seems; it is no longer possible to love them. There is nothing in the objects of His love that can cause that love; there is nothing in people that could awaken or attract His love. Human love is caused by some quality of the loved one, but God's love is completely voluntary, does not depend on anything, is not caused by anything. God loves people because He chose to love them - as Charles Wesley wrote about it: “He loved us, He loved us because He willed to love” - and His love cannot be explained by anything other than His own good pleasure. In the Greco-Roman world of New Testament times such love was not dreamed of; their gods often burned with lust for earthly women, but never burned with love for sinners. Therefore, the authors of the New Testament had to introduce into their dictionary a virtually new Greek word agape (agape), to describe God's love as they knew it.
3. God's love is an expression of His goodness to to each sinner. This is not a vague, vague benevolence towards everyone in general and towards no one in particular. On the contrary, since it comes from omniscient omnipotence, then in essence it concretizes both its object and its direction. God's purpose in love was determined before creation (see Eph. 1:4); it involved, first, the selection of those whom God willed to bless, and, second, the determination of the specific gifts of that blessing and the ways in which those gifts would be given and used. All this was determined from the very beginning. Thus, Paul writes to the Christians in Thessalonica: “But we must always thank God for you, beloved brethren of the Lord, that God from the beginning, through sanctification of the Spirit and faith in the truth (the means by which blessing is imparted), hath chosen you (choice) unto salvation (specific final blessing)” (2 Thess. 2:13). The expression of God's love for every sinner is the fulfillment of His purpose to bless the very sinners He created for eternity.
4. God's love for sinners implies that He identifies Himself With their well-being. Such identification is found in all love: this is what tests whether love is true or not. If the father remains carefree and happy when his son is in trouble, and the husband looks indifferently at his wife's tears, the question immediately arises how strong the love is between them. After all, we know that those who truly love are happy only when their loved ones are happy. Also God in His love for people.
In previous chapters we noted that God displays His own glory in everything - to be seen, known, loved, glorified. This statement is true, but incomplete. It must be recognized that by loving people, God voluntarily linked His own highest happiness with their happiness. It is not for nothing that the Bible constantly says that God is the loving Father of His people. It follows from the very nature of this relationship that God's happiness will not be complete until His beloved are delivered from all their troubles:
And the Church redeemed by Him
Freed from sin.
God was happy without man, before he was created. He would continue to be happy if he destroyed humanity after the Fall. But it so happened that, by His voluntary decision, He loved certain sinners, and now He will not again know perfect, unclouded happiness until He brings each of these sinners to heaven. Thus, He forever made His happiness dependent on ours. Therefore, God saves not only for His glory, but also for His joy. This largely explains why there is joy (God's joy) among the angels of God and with one sinner who repents (Luke 15:10) and why there will be much joy when on the last day God brings us blameless into His holy presence (Jude 24) . This thought surpasses all understanding and is almost impossible to believe. However, according to Scripture, this is what God's love is like.
5. God's love for sinners is so great that He gave His Son for their salvation. Love is tested by what it gives, and God's love was expressed in the fact that He gave His Son to enter the world as a man and die for sins, that is, to become the only Mediator who can lead us to God. No wonder Paul calls His love “great” and surpassing all understanding (Eph. 2:4; 3:19)! Where else can you find such unspeakable generosity? Paul proves that this gift in itself is a guarantee of all other gifts: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things”? (Rom. 8:32) The New Testament writers continually point to the cross of Christ as proof of the authenticity and boundlessness of God's love. Thus, John, immediately after his statement “God is love,” continues: “The love of God for us was revealed in this, that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might receive life through him. This is love, that we did not love God, but He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (lJohn 4:9-10). Likewise, in his Gospel, John writes: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him... may have eternal life” (John 3:16). And Paul says about this: “But God demonstrates His love toward us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). And he finds proof that “the Son of God loved me” in the fact that He “gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
6. God's love for sinners reaches its goal when leads them to the knowledge of God and unites With Nim in a covenant relationship. A covenant relationship is one in which two parties commit themselves to each other forever in mutual service and dependence (such as a married couple). When a covenant is made, a promise is made (for example, a promise of marital fidelity). In biblical religion there is a form of covenant relationship with God. The first time such a relationship was clearly outlined was when God appeared to Abram as El Shaddai (God Almighty; the God who will provide for all things) and solemnly gave him the covenant promise: “I will be your God” (Gen. 17:1-7). As Paul says in Galatians 3:15-17, through faith in Christ all Christians will inherit this promise (see v. 29). What does it mean? This is truly an all-inclusive promise; it includes almost everything. “This is the first and fundamental promise,” declared the Puritan Sibbes. “Truly in him is the life and soul of all promises.” Another Puritan, Brooks, develops this idea more fully:
“...it is as if He had said: You will care as much about all that is Mine for your own good, as it belongs to Me for the sake of My glory... My grace, says God, will be yours to forgive you, Mine the strength will be yours to protect you; My wisdom will be yours to guide you, My goodness will be yours to unburden you; My mercy will be yours to provide you with everything you need, and My glory will be yours to crown you. This is a vast promise that God will be our God: it includes everything. Deus teis et ompià ( My God and my everything,” Luther said.
“This is true love for everyone,” wrote Tillotson, “ do for lover all the best what we are capable of." This is what God does for those He loves - the best He can do; and the measure of the best that God is capable of is His omnipotence! Therefore, faith in Christ brings us into a relationship abounding with incalculable blessings - both now and in eternity.
IV
Is it true that for me, as a Christian, God is love? Do I understand God's love as we just said? If so, some questions arise.
Why do I grumble, complain, and resent the circumstances God has placed me in?
Why do I sometimes experience mistrust, fear and depression?
Why do I sometimes allow myself to serve God, who loves me so much, not with all my heart, coldly and formally?
Why is my devotion not always directed only to God, and my whole heart does not belong to Him?
John's conviction that “God is love” led him to draw the ethical conclusion: “If God so loved us, then we ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11). If someone watches me from the outside, will he be able to judge by the love that I show for others - for my wife; to her husband; to family; to neighbors; to the people in my church; to my work colleagues - to learn at least something about the great love with which God loved me?
Ponder this. Look at yourself.
This woman began to doubt whether she had ever had anything from God or not. I told her:
Sister, look me in the eyes and say out loud, “I hate my mother-in-law,” and then check within your spirit. The Bible says that God's love is poured out into our hearts, not into our heads (Rom. 5:5). When you say, “I hate my mother-in-law,” tell me what is going on inside you.
She looked me in the eyes and said:
I hate my mother-in-law.
I asked:
What happened inside you?
“Something is eating me inside,” the woman answered.
I said:
Yes, I know. You see, there is something inside of you that is trying to get your attention because the love of God is trying to prevail within you. But you let your head get the best of you. That's the whole problem - in your head, in your mind.
She said:
I think you're right.
I said:
Of course I'm right. This is the Bible. In your heart you love everyone, don't you?
Yes,” she answered, “I think so.”
But, I said, in your head you allowed all this to affect you. Now you must let your heart, not your head, rule.
A few evenings later, the minister's wife invited Oreta and me to her home for a meal after an evening meeting. She also invited her husband's mother and sisters and their families. This minister's wife had never done anything like this before because she was resentful of them.
We went to her house after the service and had a wonderful evening. I remember how she whispered to my wife and me: “You know, I no longer hate my husband’s relatives, I love them. You were absolutely right - God's love was in my heart all the time. I just let my mind take over because of what happened in the past.”
The mother-in-law was also saved and filled with the Spirit, but she allowed her feelings to control her. Sometimes, when a mother has one boy, she thinks that there is no girl in the whole world who would be suitable for her son. And sometimes she does not try to hide her feelings that very often they just ruin everything!
This minister's wife said to me, “You know, I discovered that my husband's relatives are very nice people. I was completely wrong, and you are absolutely right. There was confusion in my head even before you arrived. But the Word of God allowed me to put everything in order.”
Mountain-moving faith works through love
The woman I just told you about and her husband had three children. One child was their own (the oldest), and they adopted the other two a few years later. The youngest adopted child was a girl. When they picked her up as a baby, the doctor said, “We have examined her, and as far as we can tell, she is perfectly healthy.”
For the first two and a half years, everything was fine with the child. Physically she seemed completely healthy. But then, at about two and a half years old, she started having seizures. Her parents showed her to the doctor, and then to the leading specialist in their region, and he said: “These seizures are epileptic. Your daughter has epilepsy."
After examining the child's brain, the doctor said, “I am an expert in this field of medicine and am considered one of the leading experts in the United States on this disease. I deal exclusively with the treatment of epilepsy and related illnesses. In all my years of medical practice, this is the worst case of epilepsy I have ever encountered."
The parents started giving the girl medications. But the attacks continued, although not as severe, because she was constantly under the influence of drugs. Naturally, the woman wanted her child to be completely healed. They began to pray for the girl, and the mother stopped giving her medicine - not because anyone told her to do so, but because her own faith prompted her to do so. And the child felt great.
Days passed without any symptoms of illness. But one day the mother called us and said, “Brother Hagin, could you and Oretha come and pray for my daughter. She's having a seizure."
Mild convulsions usually occur before the main epileptic seizure, and this is exactly what was happening to the girl now. So we went to their house.
On the way there, the Lord turned to me and said: “Don’t pray for the child. Tell his mother what I said to Israel in the Old Testament: “Serve the Lord your God... and I will turn away sickness from you... I will make the number of your days complete” (Ex. 23:25,26). (The Lord said this to the Israelites several times.)
The Lord continued: “Tell her that there is only one commandment in the New Testament. I said: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, so you also love one another” (John 13:34).
“Oh,” someone will say, “shouldn’t we keep the Ten Commandments?” Okay, the new commandment is love. And if you love me, then you don't have to say, "Don't lie about Brother Hagin." If you love me, then you will not tell lies about me. If you love me, you won't steal from me.
You see, if you live by the law of love, then you will never violate any statute that was given to curb sin. You don't have to worry about any other commandments, because if you walk in love, you automatically fulfill all the commandments. It's that simple;
Jesus gave other explanations of the New Commandment of love.
JOHN 13:35
By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.
JOHN 3:14
We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers; He who does not love his brother remains in death.
On the way to this woman, Jesus spoke to me through the Holy Spirit: “Tell her that if she fulfills My commandment of love in the New Testament, then I will remove sickness from among her and make her days complete.”
When we arrived at her house, I conveyed all these words to her. I said, “I’m not going to pray at all. You are now walking in love. You have already established everything in your relationship with your mother-in-law and your husband’s sisters and are walking in love. So I won't pray and the child won't have a seizure. If you walk in love, illness will no longer exist.”
While our conversation lasted, the convulsions released the child. We remained in that city for another three weeks holding meetings, and we know that the girl had no further symptoms or hints of an attack.
Previously, when the girl had seizures, she looked like a mentally retarded child. This had never happened before the disease took hold of her. During the seizures, her coordination was impaired and her gaze was absent.
Five years later, when the child was eight or nine years old, we visited their home again and saw the girl again. She was the best student in the class. She had straight A's in all subjects. Her eyes were shining, she was alive and full of energy.
We asked her mother: “Has she ever had another attack?” She said: “No, nothing like this ever happened to her again. Only once did she start to convulse, but I just said, “Oh no, devil, you can't force this on my child. I walk in love, obeying the Word of God. I keep the commandment of love, therefore God turns away illnesses from us and the number of our days will be complete. When I said this, the convulsions, as if by snapping my fingers, immediately stopped.”
Praise God, this girl has already grown up and got married, has her own family.
If you are not walking in love and forgiving others as the Word commands, then you better start walking in love and get rid of unforgiveness. Faith works by love (see Gal. 5:6), and love never fails. When you forgive and keep a good confession, your faith will produce results and move mountains for you.
Chapter 5
Faith must be released
The Importance of Spoken Faith
For truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, “Be taken up and be thrown into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass— whatever he says will happen to him.
Mark 11:23
Notice that Jesus concluded the statement in Mark 11:23 by saying, “...it will be done for him whatever he says.” The fifth and most important thing you must know about faith is that faith must be released by the words of your mouth.
I remember many years ago I was holding a revival meeting in a small town in Texas. At that time, it was my custom to fast two days a week during meetings. I always fasted on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
In this connection, regarding fasting, someone asked me, “Brother Hagin, do you fast much? What was your longest fast? I replied, “I have never fasted for more than three days in a row in my entire life. You see, while fasting you have to set some kind of goal, and I always received answers within three days.”
But those Tuesdays and Thursdays that I set aside during the meeting period were simply days when I fasted, not to get specific answers, but to draw closer to God. For example, if I ate dinner, I fasted for the next twenty-four hours. I drank water but did not eat.
Then I went further in God and made spiritual progress, fasting twice a week every week. Then finally the Lord told me to stop doing this because holding meetings with two services a day and fasting two days a week will make you very tired after a while.
The Lord spoke to me:
I am more pleased with your life of fasting than with your days set apart for fasting.
I asked:
Lord, what do you mean by “a life of fasting”?
The fact is, He said, that fasting will not cause changes in Me, because I am the same before you start your fast, during your fast and after you finish fasting. I won't change. Your fasting will not make Me change. But, He said, fasting may help you to constantly keep your flesh under control. You can control your flesh all the time and not eat whatever you want.
So for years, for most of my meetings, I would simply eat one meal a day in the middle of the day, and then sometimes have a small snack after church.
While I fasted on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the meeting season, I spent one of those days almost entirely in the church building, reading the Bible, walking on the stage, in the aisles of the hall, praying and waiting on God or meditating on His Word.
Quite often I re-read the entire Gospel of Mark. This did not require much time - after all, there are only sixteen chapters. So I could read it completely,
I don't know why, but the Gospel of Mark has always been my favorite. I believe the reason is that it was this Gospel, Chapter 11, that lifted me from my sickbed, when I was a Baptist boy with an almost completely paralyzed body, two serious heart problems and an incurable blood disease.
And then one day, on my knees, I read the Gospel of Mark. I got to the 16th chapter, and began to read the end, where Jesus said: “These signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak in new tongues; they will take snakes; and if they drink anything deadly, it will not harm them; They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17,18).
I stopped reading, rose from my knees and sat on the floor in front of the benches. I began to ponder the words of Jesus: “These signs will follow those who believe...” I thought about this. I did not think about the Gospel of Mark, chapter 11, but this was not the place that occupied my mind then.
So I sat there, meditating on the Gospel of Mark, chapter 16, and finally I just lay down on the floor and continued to think. In the Old Testament Scripture says, “Be still and know that I am God...” (Ps. 45:11).
Finally, I came to a state where my mind simply calmed down, and at that time, within myself, in the spirit, I heard these words: “Have you noticed that in the Gospel of Mark (11:23) the word “say” in one way or another form is repeated three times, but the word “believe” is repeated only once?”
You see, God doesn't speak to your mind and He doesn't speak to your body. God is Spirit and He communicates with you through your spirit. And you communicate with God through your spirit. To do this, simply calm your body. In the evening you go to bed and your body calms down. But your mind can continue to work and work.
But in this case, I managed to calm both my body and my mind, and as soon as this happened, the Lord spoke to me. Within me, in my spirit, I immediately heard the voice of the Lord. It was not like a voice that could be heard by the ears. I didn't hear it with my natural hearing.
But somewhere inside me - and it was as real as if someone was speaking to me physically - I heard these words. When I heard them, I remember jumping to my feet and loudly saying, “No. No, I didn’t notice it!”
It is impossible to tell how many thousands of times I have quoted the Gospel of Mark (11:23,24). On my sick bed, almost at the point of death, I spent almost all nights delving into these verses. I said them over and over again. Therefore, it is impossible to count how many times I have quoted these verses, but never noticed what the Lord told me.
The same thing can happen to you. Perhaps you read certain chapters and verses for years, and then one day as you read them, something seems to jump off the page and you begin to see things in the Word that you have not seen before. You feel so stupid and wonder why you didn't notice this before.
You see, you cannot understand the Bible with your head. You must receive revelation in your heart. That's the reason you haven't seen it before - it just hasn't hit your spirit.
So I told the Lord, “No, I didn’t notice it.” I quickly flipped back the pages of the Bible to the Gospel of Mark (11:23) and there I read:
MARK 11:23
For truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, “Be taken up and cast into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, whatever he says will be done for him.
That's how it was there. I saw it. The word “say” appears three times in various forms in this verse, and “believe” SCH just once.
I told the Lord: “Everything is right! I’ve never noticed this before, but that’s exactly how it is!”
Then within myself I heard the following words: “My people are mistaken mainly not in the matter of belief. Their mistake lies in their proclamation. They were taught to believe, but faith must be released by the words of your mouth. You can have what you say."
