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Posts Tagged ‘Power of Love’

A Blocker to Love

Posted in Love of God, tagged , , , , , , on October 26, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[Printable version]

Scripture reading: 1 Corinthians 13

Can you imagine the following scenario? Somebody went to the store and lifted the store. You know, what we call shoplifting. When he went home, though, his heart smote him and he repented of what he did. He decided to go back into the store and drop back the thing he had stolen. He didn’t tell anybody. But he came to church, and because the gift of God is without repentance, when he came to the congregation, and especially having just repented, the Spirit of God moved upon him and he gave a word. But while he was pilfering, you were around the aisle in the store, and you saw him. “I won’t hear anything from that man,” you said. And you came in the church and told your best friend. But it so happened that your best friend had a best friend, and your best friend told her best friend and her best friend had another best friend and the best friend… until the whole congregation had been told. So when the man got up and the Spirit of God spoke through him, everybody dropped the curtain, refused to hear him. Who lost? You lost, because you listened to the voice of slander.

That is why Paul called the voice of slander diabolos, devils. It is just like the demons that go from one place to another carrying evil. You are ordained of God to carry good tidings. You are not ordained to carry negatives. If the brother stole something and you saw him, go to God and pray to God and say, “Lord, help that brother.” And you take him to one side and say, “You know, I saw you when you stole that thing and pushed it in your pocket.” Then the brother would be able to say, “I am sorry, but I repented and took it back.” But if you never said anything to him and went and scattered it, then you destroyed the work of God by the power of hate! If that brother had been your natural brother, you would not have told anyone.

Hate is a blocker to love. If you find out that you cannot love God’s people as you ought to, it is because you have allowed their wrong deeds to affect you and you hold it in your heart. Can you understand that? Love thinketh no evil. How could love think no evil when there is evil? You say, “But I saw the evil.” Love thinketh no evil. Love rejoiceth not in iniquity (I Corinthians 13:5-6). That is, the person gets hit because he was wrong and you said, “He had it coming to him.” That is not love. He had it coming to him, but you are sorry for him. If it were your child, you would think of him differently. Why do you think that your children do so many wrong things? God is trying to teach you how to deal with children who are rude and do wrong things. God is trying to teach you how to deal with the people of God. You love them just the same. They do a lot of wrong things but you love them just the same and you conquer them by love.

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.” (I Corinthians 13:1-2) Don’t you see how God separates the gifts from love? “I have great gifts. I can preach. I can teach. I can do this.” You are nothing. God help you. God help us.

I just want to tell you that love lifts us up out of the darkness into the light. Just begin to love and God will lift you up.

There was a man, Brother Smith, who wrote the last verse of the song, “The Love of God.”

Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth (all the grass you see around) a quill and every man a scribe by trade.
To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry,
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.”

That is not an idle dream. Those are the last words he wrote and died. They found them in his prison cell. Do you know what happened to him? He was a rich man; he had a lot of money and he began to talk about the love of God. His children committed him to the asylum because they wanted his riches, but he loved them just the same. He loved them just the same. Praise be to God. Let us be the children of love.

There is love that we are supposed to have for one another. The scripture translates it as bowels of compassion, that you have a feeling for the person. You feel it way down in your heart. God is talking about love. You can’t be mad with the people you love. If you have love, you don’t get mad with the people. You will get sad when you see them doing wrong things, but you won’t get mad with them. May God help us to be the children of love.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, July 2005, pg. 47-49)

Thought for today: The love lifts us up out of the darkness into the light. Just begin to love and God will lift you up.

Read Full Post »

The Great Big “IF”

Posted in Love of God, tagged , , , on October 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[Printable version]

Scripture reading: Deuteronomy 6:1-9

Love is my life force. It is a power. Somebody believes that love is passive and just says, “Oh, I love you so much, I can allow you do to anything.” Love is not passive. Love is a force. Love is a power.

What about love and the marriage situation? We marry someone and then we say, “Oh, I don’t love him/her anymore.” Or, “Because this person is so annoying, so nagging, so terrible, and makes my life miserable, I don’t love him/her anymore.” Do you know what you are saying? If I tell you what you are saying, you are not going to believe it. You are saying you don’t love God. That is what you are saying. You don’t love God. Let me tell you: no matter how awful the person is, no matter how horrible the person is, the love of God in you should be crying out, “God, have mercy upon him/her.” Amen.

I know there are cases; I have seen cases where somebody captured somebody else. I am not talking about righteousness. I am talking about sin. The man goes out of his way, sets a trap for a woman, captures her, binds her up, marries her and then, of course, she becomes a prisoner and her life is miserable. God has to intervene to deliver her out of his hand. I have seen that happen.

But I am talking about us, Christians. I never believed that I would live to see divorce in our midst because I believed the love of God would stop any divorce; the love of God in you would stop a divorce. You gave yourself to this person and you both decided to spend life together. There was so much love there at the beginning, but afterwards things got sour and the devil walked in. Your power of love should reach out to that person. Now, if that person was totally against everything that God says, everything that God wants, you couldn’t stop him/her from divorcing you, but that has nothing to do with the love of God that is in you which should never turn to hate. It should never, ever, ever turn to hate. Do you understand what I am saying? There is an unseen power beyond what we can conceive within us and that power lies in our capacity to love. If you have a loved one and the loved one is sick or hurt or dying, by that power of love you will be able to command the deliverance for that person and he/she cannot die. Unless it is God’s will that that person should be taken home.

One time, I had an experience with my niece. She was maybe the second convert in my family, the second one that was saved in my family. She was so calm; she was such a peaceful person. Unlike my sister, her mother, who was full of life and words and everything else. I have never heard her raise her voice; she was what I call a good Christian. She had a lump in her breast and felt that she should go to the doctor. So she went. The doctor operated on it and the thing scattered all over her body. Within a month her body was full of cancer. I went to God and said, “God, save Joan.” When I asked God to save her, I felt that Joan was saved, delivered from this. But she got worse and worse and worse. The doctor said, “She can’t live to see the morning.” I said, “Doctor, you are wrong. God is going to save her.” I was in denial. I really believed God was going to save her. They called me at 5:00 a.m. and said that she had died. The most I could say was, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord. This is God’s will.” But I remembered 5 years prior to that; I was woken up by God one morning very early. God gave me an urgent message to tell Joan that she must immediately quit the job she was in. She was the head nurse in some hospital. It was too much of a pressure on her and God said she should quit right away. So I rushed down to Ft. Lauderdale where she lived, called her and her husband, and told her she must quit right away. God Almighty said she must quit right away. She said, “But then, I have bills to pay and then I have…” Listen, brethren, if you love God, you are going to do what God says to do, and it is God’s responsibility to pay your bills! I don’t know how to further express it.

Sometimes you come to the meeting and a strong word of prophecy goes out to you. When you hear the word, something happens in your heart. Don’t forget it! Don’t forget it! It was the Word of God to you. But sometimes, after we get the Word of God, we argue. We calculate it out and argue it out and say, “Well, you know, maybe I have to do this and maybe I have to do that.” And then, at that moment, you take a turn. I guarantee you that my niece would be alive today; but there is that big “if.” “If you will hear My voice and if you will do what I say to you, then your life will be prolonged for many days. If not, then I will take you home and you will be just as happy in heaven.”

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, July 2005, pg. 44-46)

Thought for today: There is an “if” that is on top of all of us. That great big “if.” And God said the key is the love of God.

Read Full Post »

A Blocker to Love

Posted in Love of God, tagged , , , , , , on January 24, 2020| Leave a Comment »

[Printable version]

Scripture reading: 1 Corinthians 13

Can you imagine the following scenario? Somebody went to the store and lifted the store. You know, what we call shoplifting. When he went home, though, his heart smote him and he repented of what he did. He decided to go back into the store and drop back the thing he had stolen. He didn’t tell anybody. But he came to church, and because the gift of God is without repentance, when he came to the congregation, and especially having just repented, the Spirit of God moved upon him and he gave a word. But while he was pilfering, you were around the aisle in the store, and you saw him. “I won’t hear anything from that man,” you said. And you came in the church and told your best friend. But it so happened that your best friend had a best friend, and your best friend told her best friend and her best friend had another best friend and the best friend… until the whole congregation had been told. So when the man got up and the Spirit of God spoke through him, everybody dropped the curtain, refused to hear him. Who lost? You lost, because you listened to the voice of slander.

That is why Paul called the voice of slander diabolos, devils. It is just like the demons that go from one place to another carrying evil. You are ordained of God to carry good tidings. You are not ordained to carry negatives. If the brother stole something and you saw him, go to God and pray to God and say, “Lord, help that brother.” And you take him to one side and say, “You know, I saw you when you stole that thing and pushed it in your pocket.” Then the brother would be able to say, “I am sorry, but I repented and took it back.” But if you never said anything to him and went and scattered it, then you destroyed the work of God by the power of hate! If that brother had been your natural brother, you would not have told anyone.

Hate is a blocker to love. If you find out that you cannot love God’s people as you ought to, it is because you have allowed their wrong deeds to affect you and you hold it in your heart. Can you understand that? Love thinketh no evil. How could love think no evil when there is evil? You say, “But I saw the evil.” Love thinketh no evil. Love rejoiceth not in iniquity (I Corinthians 13:5-6). That is, the person gets hit because he was wrong and you said, “He had it coming to him.” That is not love. He had it coming to him, but you are sorry for him. If it were your child, you would think of him differently. Why do you think that your children do so many wrong things? God is trying to teach you how to deal with children who are rude and do wrong things. God is trying to teach you how to deal with the people of God. You love them just the same. They do a lot of wrong things but you love them just the same and you conquer them by love.

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.” (I Corinthians 13:1-2) Don’t you see how God separates the gifts from love? “I have great gifts. I can preach. I can teach. I can do this.” You are nothing. God help you. God help us.

I just want to tell you that love lifts us up out of the darkness into the light. Just begin to love and God will lift you up.

There was a man, Brother Smith, who wrote the last verse of the song, “The Love of God.”

Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth (all the grass you see around) a quill and every man a scribe by trade.
To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry,
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.”

That is not an idle dream. Those are the last words he wrote and died. They found them in his prison cell. Do you know what happened to him? He was a rich man; he had a lot of money and he began to talk about the love of God. His children committed him to the asylum because they wanted his riches, but he loved them just the same. He loved them just the same. Praise be to God. Let us be the children of love.

There is love that we are supposed to have for one another. The scripture translates it as bowels of compassion, that you have a feeling for the person. You feel it way down in your heart. God is talking about love. You can’t be mad with the people you love. If you have love, you don’t get mad with the people. You will get sad when you see them doing wrong things, but you won’t get mad with them. May God help us to be the children of love.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, July 2005, pg. 47-49)

Thought for today: The love lifts us up out of the darkness into the light. Just begin to love and God will lift you up.

Read Full Post »

The Great Big “IF”

Posted in Love of God, tagged , , , on January 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »

[Printable version]

Scripture reading: Deuteronomy 6:1-9

Love is my life force. It is a power. Somebody believes that love is passive and just says, “Oh, I love you so much, I can allow you do to anything.” Love is not passive. Love is a force. Love is a power.

What about love and the marriage situation? We marry someone and then we say, “Oh, I don’t love him/her anymore.” Or, “Because this person is so annoying, so nagging, so terrible, and makes my life miserable, I don’t love him/her anymore.” Do you know what you are saying? If I tell you what you are saying, you are not going to believe it. You are saying you don’t love God. That is what you are saying. You don’t love God. Let me tell you: no matter how awful the person is, no matter how horrible the person is, the love of God in you should be crying out, “God, have mercy upon him/her.” Amen.

I know there are cases; I have seen cases where somebody captured somebody else. I am not talking about righteousness. I am talking about sin. The man goes out of his way, sets a trap for a woman, captures her, binds her up, marries her and then, of course, she becomes a prisoner and her life is miserable. God has to intervene to deliver her out of his hand. I have seen that happen.

But I am talking about us, Christians. I never believed that I would live to see divorce in our midst because I believed the love of God would stop any divorce; the love of God in you would stop a divorce. You gave yourself to this person and you both decided to spend life together. There was so much love there at the beginning, but afterwards things got sour and the devil walked in. Your power of love should reach out to that person. Now, if that person was totally against everything that God says, everything that God wants, you couldn’t stop him/her from divorcing you, but that has nothing to do with the love of God that is in you which should never turn to hate. It should never, ever, ever turn to hate. Do you understand what I am saying? There is an unseen power beyond what we can conceive within us and that power lies in our capacity to love. If you have a loved one and the loved one is sick or hurt or dying, by that power of love you will be able to command the deliverance for that person and he/she cannot die. Unless it is God’s will that that person should be taken home.

One time, I had an experience with my niece. She was maybe the second convert in my family, the second one that was saved in my family. She was so calm; she was such a peaceful person. Unlike my sister, her mother, who was full of life and words and everything else. I have never heard her raise her voice; she was what I call a good Christian. She had a lump in her breast and felt that she should go to the doctor. So she went. The doctor operated on it and the thing scattered all over her body. Within a month her body was full of cancer. I went to God and said, “God, save Joan.” When I asked God to save her, I felt that Joan was saved, delivered from this. But she got worse and worse and worse. The doctor said, “She can’t live to see the morning.” I said, “Doctor, you are wrong. God is going to save her.” I was in denial. I really believed God was going to save her. They called me at 5:00 a.m. and said that she had died. The most I could say was, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord. This is God’s will.” But I remembered 5 years prior to that; I was woken up by God one morning very early. God gave me an urgent message to tell Joan that she must immediately quit the job she was in. She was the head nurse in some hospital. It was too much of a pressure on her and God said she should quit right away. So I rushed down to Ft. Lauderdale where she lived, called her and her husband, and told her she must quit right away. God Almighty said she must quit right away. She said, “But then, I have bills to pay and then I have…” Listen, brethren, if you love God, you are going to do what God says to do, and it is God’s responsibility to pay your bills! I don’t know how to further express it.

Sometimes you come to the meeting and a strong word of prophecy goes out to you. When you hear the word, something happens in your heart. Don’t forget it! Don’t forget it! It was the Word of God to you. But sometimes, after we get the Word of God, we argue. We calculate it out and argue it out and say, “Well, you know, maybe I have to do this and maybe I have to do that.” And then, at that moment, you take a turn. I guarantee you that my niece would be alive today; but there is that big “if.” “If you will hear My voice and if you will do what I say to you, then your life will be prolonged for many days. If not, then I will take you home and you will be just as happy in heaven.”

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, July 2005, pg. 44-46)

Thought for today: There is an “if” that is on top of all of us. That great big “if.” And God said the key is the love of God.

Read Full Post »

A Blocker to Love

Posted in Love of God, tagged , , , , , , on July 9, 2018| Leave a Comment »

[Printable version]

Scripture reading: 1 Corinthians 13

Can you imagine the following scenario? Somebody went to the store and lifted the store. You know, what we call shoplifting. When he went home, though, his heart smote him and he repented of what he did. He decided to go back into the store and drop back the thing he had stolen. He didn’t tell anybody. But he came to church, and because the gift of God is without repentance, when he came to the congregation, and especially having just repented, the Spirit of God moved upon him and he gave a word. But while he was pilfering, you were around the aisle in the store, and you saw him. “I won’t hear anything from that man,” you said. And you came in the church and told your best friend. But it so happened that your best friend had a best friend, and your best friend told her best friend and her best friend had another best friend and the best friend… until the whole congregation had been told. So when the man got up and the Spirit of God spoke through him, everybody dropped the curtain, refused to hear him. Who lost? You lost, because you listened to the voice of slander.

That is why Paul called the voice of slander diabolos, devils. It is just like the demons that go from one place to another carrying evil. You are ordained of God to carry good tidings. You are not ordained to carry negatives. If the brother stole something and you saw him, go to God and pray to God and say, “Lord, help that brother.” And you take him to one side and say, “You know, I saw you when you stole that thing and pushed it in your pocket.” Then the brother would be able to say, “I am sorry, but I repented and took it back.” But if you never said anything to him and went and scattered it, then you destroyed the work of God by the power of hate! If that brother had been your natural brother, you would not have told anyone.

Hate is a blocker to love. If you find out that you cannot love God’s people as you ought to, it is because you have allowed their wrong deeds to affect you and you hold it in your heart. Can you understand that? Love thinketh no evil. How could love think no evil when there is evil? You say, “But I saw the evil.” Love thinketh no evil. Love rejoiceth not in iniquity (I Corinthians 13:5-6). That is, the person gets hit because he was wrong and you said, “He had it coming to him.” That is not love. He had it coming to him, but you are sorry for him. If it were your child, you would think of him differently. Why do you think that your children do so many wrong things? God is trying to teach you how to deal with children who are rude and do wrong things. God is trying to teach you how to deal with the people of God. You love them just the same. They do a lot of wrong things but you love them just the same and you conquer them by love.

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.” (I Corinthians 13:1-2) Don’t you see how God separates the gifts from love? “I have great gifts. I can preach. I can teach. I can do this.” You are nothing. God help you. God help us.

I just want to tell you that love lifts us up out of the darkness into the light. Just begin to love and God will lift you up.

There was a man, Brother Smith, who wrote the last verse of the song, “The Love of God.”

Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth (all the grass you see around) a quill and every man a scribe by trade.
To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry,
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.”

That is not an idle dream. Those are the last words he wrote and died. They found them in his prison cell. Do you know what happened to him? He was a rich man; he had a lot of money and he began to talk about the love of God. His children committed him to the asylum because they wanted his riches, but he loved them just the same. He loved them just the same. Praise be to God. Let us be the children of love.

There is love that we are supposed to have for one another. The scripture translates it as bowels of compassion, that you have a feeling for the person. You feel it way down in your heart. God is talking about love. You can’t be mad with the people you love. If you have love, you don’t get mad with the people. You will get sad when you see them doing wrong things, but you won’t get mad with them. May God help us to be the children of love.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, July 2005, pg. 47-49)

Thought for today: The love lifts us up out of the darkness into the light. Just begin to love and God will lift you up.

Read Full Post »

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