♪
And good morning, good morning.
Happy Tuesday.
If you are watching this live,
I'm so excited to be with you today.
And the topic today,
let me make sure my mute is,
my mic is unmuted,
saying hello to each one of you
who are joining on Facebook Live
or over on StreamYard.
Of course, this is Tuesday morning,
and this is where we gather.
Every Tuesday morning,
we have been in a series
on harnessing your spiritual power.
I love every word of that.
Harnessing, right?
You think about harnessing your,
this is about you.
It's about me.
Spiritual comes from God.
Power, you know,
so often we live as if we're victims,
as if we don't have power.
But God has given us so much power,
but it's being aware of that power.
I love a prayer of Paul,
and I'm going to pray that for us this morning
as we begin this series,
number eight of this series,
Harnessing Your Spiritual Power,
The Power of Love.
Man, could it be more timely?
If you're watching this live,
it is election day.
How is your love walk today?
You know, I'm amazed how much
scripture has to say about love.
So if this is new to you,
I think you're going to just be,
your socks are going to be blessed off.
If it's not new to you,
I think you're going to be reminded,
refreshed, invigorated.
So I'm just so glad you're here with me this morning.
This is like the highlight of the week.
Us together,
just seeing what God has to say
about your spiritual power.
So the prayer that Paul had
that is so powerful
is he prayed that the eyes of our heart
would be opened.
And I was reflecting on this
and he goes on to say,
I pray the eyes of your heart
will be filled with light,
will be illuminated,
will be enlightened.
So that,
why is it important to become enlightened?
so that you can know two things.
Number one, how high, how deep,
how wide is the love God has for you?
And number two, the power, the power.
He asks that we need enlightenment
so that we'll know the power
that is working both in and through you, me.
You, me.
And I wanna ask you, how different would your life be
if like Paul's prayer, you knew those two things?
You knew God's love, the height, the depth, the width,
that you are so loved, so incredibly loved.
You are love.
And that you would know
that you are very, very, very powerful.
Why are you very, very, very powerful?
Because you're the temple of the Holy Spirit.
You have God's power coursing through you.
And remember, this is the same power
that raised Christ from the dead.
And I want you to understand something,
as a little intro, God just put this on my mind.
So many times, I know I did,
we look at Jesus like, well, that's Jesus,
because he's God, he did that.
That's not me, that's not my life, that's Jesus.
And I want you to be reminded of two things.
Number one, Jesus said that we would do these things
and we would do even greater.
And number two, he did all these things.
Scripture says that he emptied himself of his divinity.
He came here as a man,
and everything he did was by the power of the Holy Spirit.
So when he was baptized in the River Jordan,
and he came out, and the Father said in heaven,
this is my son, whom I'm well pleased.
And the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove.
He began his walk on earth.
He started with the temptation,
wrestling with the dark side,
and he left that, empowered and began to do wonders,
to do wonders, miracles, signs, and wonders.
And scripture says that signs and wonders
follow those who believe.
So what keeps us from that is awareness.
I was reflecting on this yesterday.
It's like God doesn't change, he's always here.
His power doesn't diminish on some days
and get stronger on other days.
His love doesn't diminish and get stronger on other days.
He is love.
He can do nothing else but be love because he is love.
And he is powerful because he is God most high,
creator of heaven and earth.
So his love doesn't fluctuate.
Ours does, because we're emotional beings
and we know conditional love.
His power doesn't fluctuate.
Ours does because it depends how tuned in, tapped in we are.
So what is the beginning of all of that?
Awareness.
I think this is why Paul prayed
that the eyes of our heart would be open,
that they would be flooded with light,
that they would be enlightened
because it's our awareness of God
and our awareness of God in us
and our awareness of the love he's placed in us
and our awareness of the power he's placed in us
that opens everything.
And so today, let's get some awareness together.
I'm gonna look over at the comments
and say hello to those of you over on Facebook
and good morning.
Love it.
Welcome, welcome.
So excited.
Say good morning.
Say where you're from.
All right, let's dig in and look at this study.
I'm so excited to share all of this with you
as we are talking about the power of love,
the power of love.
So I wanna open with a couple of verses
and this is an awesome one right here.
here. It is first Corinthians 1231 and it says,
and yet I will show you a still more excellent way.
And then this is in the amplified.
It says one of the choicest graces and the highest of them all.
And the highest of them all.
So I love that, you know, choicest graces.
If you want, if you want to know the,
the beautiful grace and the highest one of all of them,
it's unselfish love, unselfish love, a more excellent way.
Here it is in the passion translation.
And it really adds some depth and it says,
and now I will show you a superior way to live
that is beyond comparison.
Now I love this.
You see the little A because it's referring to a footnote.
This is in the passion translation.
So what we're looking at today is a superior way to live.
If we take these principles that God has laid out for us,
if we get an understanding, I know for me,
one time God just told me, study love.
I've got like three books of love on my bedside.
I've got a bunch of them in my Kindle that I'm listening to
because if we can understand this,
like if we can truly understand love, God's love for us,
and the love that resides in us that we have to give,
it's the choices of graces.
It's the most excellent of those.
It is a superior way to live.
Now look at this footnote.
This is so cool.
It says, it's a path corresponding to transcendence.
Wow, wow.
Love is the path.
There's another great verse that is also found
that says, until then, there are three things that remain.
So this is part of the love chapter.
And if you look at where this is found in scripture,
this alone is very eye-opening.
It's in the New Testament, it's in Paul's letters,
and it's in 1 Corinthians, okay?
1 Corinthians 13 is known as the love chapter.
But what is so fascinating to me is it is sandwiched
in two powerful chapters about the gifts of the Holy Spirit
that when you are baptized in the Holy Spirit,
you get these gifts, okay?
And I have to tell you that it was 20 years
in my Christian walk before I really got this.
I'd read the Bible cover to cover many times.
I'd been a missionary, a teacher of the word of God,
directing a language school
where I taught Bible and English.
So I was so trained.
I'd gone to a Christian college.
I was so trained in the word.
And yet one day, one 4th of July weekend,
it was freedom weekend for me, for sure.
And God told me to pull down my Bible.
Now you see, I'd gone to the office to prepare a talk
that I was gonna be doing in San Francisco.
And instead God said, no, you're not gonna write that yet.
I want you to pull down the word
and I want you to read these chapters.
And something changed.
Remember I said at the beginning of this, that awareness,
it's like a light switch that flips on.
That's why we call it enlightenment.
It's why Paul prayed the eyes of your heart
would be flooded with light
because all of a sudden it's like
you go from darkness to light,
from not seeing to seeing.
And that's what happened to me
because I looked at these gifts
and I said, that's not what I was taught
because it was about signs and wonders and miracles
and things that we could do.
And I had never seen that in church
and I had not been taught that.
It ended and I said, that's not what I was taught.
And the Holy Spirit said, read it again.
And I read it again.
And I said, but that's not what I was taught.
He said, read it again.
And the third time I said, okay, God, I desire that.
I want that.
And that's the day my life changed.
So that's it.
That's 1st Corinthians 12.
Then it's like there's this, it's a bookends.
It picks up again in 1st Corinthians 14.
But in between 12 and 14, in between all the gifts,
all the miracles, all the signs, all the wonders,
all the healing, all the prophesying,
all the speaking in tongues,
all the understanding of the gifts,
in between there is a whole chapter dedicated to love.
1st Corinthians 13.
And it's so fascinating that it says, you know what?
There's three things on this earth
that are going to remain.
There's three things that aren't going away.
Faith, hope, and love.
There's three things that remain.
Faith, hope, and love.
And he says, yet love surpasses them all.
So above all else, let love be the beautiful prize
for which you run.
And here's what that little B that was the note,
the footnote says.
It says, faith and hope both spring from love.
Did you know that?
Faith and hope both spring from love,
which makes love the greatest virtue of all.
Faith and hope are temporary, but love is eternal.
So the one thing that is going to remain
is the most important, the highest choice is grace.
So shouldn't we really have an understanding of love?
Shouldn't we study love?
Shouldn't we make love a practice?
So the Jews were, at the time of Jesus,
were very, very, very detailed in recording.
They had the scribes, they had the Pharisees, you know,
and they had a lot of argument and all of that.
And they would kind of, you know,
just argue about how the T's were crossed
and the I's were dotted.
And so they approached Jesus and they say, teacher, rabbi,
which kind of commandment is great and important?
The principal kind in the law.
And it goes on to explain, you know,
there's some commandments that are light,
but which are heavy.
So they're really trying to get in with Jesus
and say, hey, what commandment is important?
And Jesus said, love the Lord your God
with every passion of your heart,
with all the energy of your being,
with every thought that is within you.
And that word love also means worship, right?
And so what's most important?
If you were gonna like bottom line it,
Jesus just bottom line what matters, what's important?
And he said, it's love.
And he says, the first love is love for your God.
I mean, with every fiber of your being, do you love God?
Do you worship God?
Like this is, if you wanna understand the whole Bible
in one sentence, Jesus said,
I'm gonna show you the whole Bible in one sentence.
That's really amazing.
He says it, I'm gonna take all the law, all the prophets,
everything you've ever known,
I'm gonna make it so plain and so simple.
Bottom line, number one, love God with all your heart
and all your soul and all your being.
And he said, this is the great and supreme commandment,
this is Matthew 22, 38 and 39.
He says, the second, the second is like it in importance.
You must love your friend
in the same way you love yourself.
Now that word friend in the Aramaic,
kareb means one who is close to you,
emotionally or by proximity.
So the Greek word is neighbor.
So the first and greatest commandment
is love God with all your heart,
all your soul and all your mind.
Second, whoever is close to you,
whether emotionally close to you,
all those that you love or proximity,
that God has brought into your life by divine appointment.
They're your neighbor, they're your client,
they're your friend, they're your coworkers,
they're your boss.
The ones that God has brought into your life
by divine appointment,
your divine assignment is to love them, to love them.
And you love them.
as you love yourself.
So there's this threefold cascade of love.
So all love starts with God.
It springs from God.
It's toward God.
It's like the top of the waterfall.
Love God, right?
And out of that,
out of knowing how much God loves you
and you start to receive that love,
you begin to love yourself.
And as you love yourself,
that love cascades through you
and you're able to love others.
It's this divine flow.
Starts with God.
Flows into you and then flows through you
to everybody he's brought near you.
Pop in the comment if that waterfall image helps you.
Pop in the comment.
They call it the divine cascade.
The divine cascade.
That out of God's love for us and our love for God,
we learn to love ourselves.
And the more we love ourselves with God's love,
that love flows right to us and right through us
and we're able to love everyone in our proximity.
How amazing is that?
So it goes on to say that this is the bottom line.
In verse 40, it says,
contained within these two commandments to love,
you'll find all the meaning of the law and the prophets.
So if you just want to understand the Bible, there it is.
You can do it all right there, just understanding that.
And we also see in John 15, 12,
Jesus talks about love quite a bit there.
And he talks about his command
and he says, love each other deeply
as much as I've loved you.
And the Passion Translation says,
because we are all branches in one vine,
if we don't love one another,
it means that our fellowship with the vine has been cut off.
To bear fruit must come from loving each other
for the same Christ life lives within every believer.
We're not branches of many trees, but of one vine.
And so again, it's another version of that cascade.
Today, as you go through your day,
as you go through your day, reflect on that cascade.
Think about the top because that's where the water starts.
And what I'm learning is to be open
to receiving the love of God,
because that's where it all starts.
We're so used to conditional love, right?
We're so used to conditional love.
And it's performance-based love, right?
Were you raised with performance-based love?
If you weren't, you're so blessed.
But so many of us were.
Were you a good girl, were you a good boy?
If you were a good girl, if you were a good boy,
you got love, you got smiles and hugs and kisses
and rewards or allowance or whatever.
But when you messed up, you got a scowl, you got a glare,
you got a tough voice.
And as a little kid, you felt love was withheld.
And maybe you had parents that were so in their own problems
that they couldn't love you, period.
I mean, my mother was so in an alcohol bottle
and addicted to drugs,
she didn't have the ability to love.
And you don't understand that when you're a little kid.
But love is so conditional in this world,
but not God's love, not God's love.
Agape love is unconditional.
And so the first step is,
this is not love that you have to try to deserve.
This is not love that some people get and some don't.
This is not love that when you mess up, it goes away.
This is a love that has loved you with an everlasting love.
And so that first part of the cascade
is being willing to open your heart
and just to accept the fact I'm loved.
When I mess up, when I'm sad, when I'm great,
wherever I am, I'm loved.
God loves me so much.
God loves me, God loves me, God loves me.
Some of you need to hear that this morning, you're loved.
And as that love begins to flood your soul, you can't help.
You can't help but love back.
And so that love flow begins to flow through you.
You finally start loving and accepting yourself.
You stop beating yourself up, judging yourself, criticizing yourself
and others.
And that love just begins to fill you up
like that second cascade of the water fall and it flows through
and you're able to begin to love others.
Leave a comment. Let me know if that helps you.
You know, the power of this love is confidence.
When you get this, you're going to have a lot of confidence.
I love this verse in Romans 828.
And we know with great confidence, great confidence
that God, who is deeply concerned about us,
causes all things to work together as a plan for good.
For those who love God, when you start having this love walk,
you can stop resisting and you can get in a flow.
And no matter what happens all around you, you know, Psalms 91 says,
though, a thousand fall at your left side and ten thousand at your right.
You keep going because your eyes are on love
and you know you're loved, you know you are loved.
And you know that the one who loves you orders your steps.
The one who loves you has you.
He is the good shepherd.
He's the one that leads you to be beside still water.
See, he makes you lie down in the beautiful pastures.
He anoints your head with oil.
That's the Holy Spirit.
He prepares a banqueting table, not a little tiny morsel,
a banqueting table where in the presence of your enemies,
it doesn't matter what people are saying.
It doesn't matter the noise because you have the good shepherd.
And so we know with great confidence
that God is is deeply concerned and he's working everything together for our good.
And what's so cool about that is that the power of love
then breaks the spirit of fear in your life.
You see, faith and fear cannot coexist.
And love and fear don't coexist.
Scripture says here is a beautiful verse.
The more love, the less fear, because it says love has no fear
because perfect love, the more your love is perfected,
it expels all fear.
It expels all fear, perfect love.
Expels all fear.
First John 418.
Another translation says perfect love kicks fear right out the door.
You can picture one of these giant boots just boom, fear.
Boom, you're out of here.
My love is big enough.
That what shall I fear?
Scripture says, if God before us,
if my God says he loves me no matter what,
if God before us, then who in the world can be against us?
Another versus what can separate us from the love of God?
Nothing, nothing can separate you from the love of God.
It is glue.
God is a relentless lover
who will pursue you till the very last breath that you take.
There is nothing you can do to make him love you any less.
There is nothing you can do.
To separate you from his love.
Impossible. Sticky glue forever.
He chases you.
Do you remember in the Garden of Eden when when when Adam and Eve had sinned?
And do you remember that they were afraid and they were ashamed?
Two of the things most crippling things, right?
They had shame.
They they covered their nakedness with their big leaf and and they were afraid.
They tried to hide behind the.
So here they are hiding like we do from God.
Hiding fear, shame, guilt, remorse, hiding.
I just don't want to see God.
I'm hiding because I don't feel good about myself.
And what did Jesus do?
He chased them down.
Adam, my son, where are you?
Where are you?
I love you. Where are you?
Do you think that he, God, didn't know where they were?
He's omnipresent.
He's omniscient.
He knew exactly why did he ask that?
Why did he speak that?
So they would know that there's no place you can go
that God's love is in,
that no matter what you've done,
he's still chasing you down.
Relentless lover will not let go.
And this love covers a multitude of sins.
Look at this verse.
This is an amazing verse.
It says, above all, constantly echo
God's intense love for one another.
For love will be a canopy over a multitude of sins.
That's 1 Peter 4, 8 in the Passion Translation.
I love that idea that we echo God's intense love
for one another, right?
It's like, it just, you know how an echo goes?
It starts, let's just say God starts it.
I love you, right?
But the echo, I love you, love you, love you,
love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you.
Right?
Like what a cool metaphor that we echo God's love.
And the footnote there says the Greek verb echo
can also mean maintain, possess, keep,
or to be so closely joined to something
that you become its echo.
You know, we've seen another metaphor is reflection.
We're a reflection of God.
We're an echo of God.
We're an extension of God.
We are God living out in flesh.
And so we join ourselves so closely to God's love
that we echo his forgiving.
We echo his fervent love toward one another.
How beautiful, how beautiful.
This is agape love.
And we're gonna pick up with this next Tuesday.
This is agape love.
This is a term that is defining unconditional love.
It's the highest form of love, of charity,
of love of God.
So as you go forth today,
I love for you to think about those two metaphors.
The metaphor of the waterfall,
that at the top of the waterfall is God.
He's our source.
He's a never failing, never ending source.
And he is love.
He can be nothing else but love.
So in the top of this waterfall,
this cascade is love.
And the second part of the waterfall is us.
And it says in scripture
that he has poured his love into our heart.
So this never ending source of unconditional love,
you can't make him love you any less.
It's unfailing.
He never leaves you.
He never forsakes you.
You cannot separate yourself from his love.
Nothing can separate you from his love.
So this source of love is being poured into your heart.
And as we open our heart to receive it,
it just keeps pouring and pouring and pouring.
And it spills right through us
into the third cascade of the waterfall,
which is to our neighbor.
What scripture defines as anyone that God has brought close,
both emotionally or in proximity.
Everybody he brings into your sphere
is a divine appointment to allow God's love
to pour from the source through you and to that person.
Think about that cascade of waterfall,
that beautiful waterfall.
And think about the metaphor we just saw with the echo.
God has poured love.
He has spoken love.
He is love.
And he's saying, I love you.
And I want you just to hear God's voice saying, I love you.
Agape love, unfailing, unconditional.
I love you.
And you're so closely tied that you become an echo.
And so he says, I love you.
And it says, I love you.
I love you.
And it goes out to the ends of the earth,
through you, to your neighbor.
neighbor, to their neighbor, to their neighbor,
for 1,000 generations.
The power of love, unlimited, unsurpassing,
cannot be measured.
The amazing, amazing love of God.
Well, we're going to pick up talking next week
about this unconditional, undeserved love,
this agape love that was given to us so freely.
And we're going to really dig in and understand this love
and meditate on this love, talk about this love,
think about this love, receive this love.
I pray today you're receiving this love
until you're so full of love that you can't help but just
spill out everywhere you go.
I pray today that you've been filled up.
I pray as love has just filled your cup today.
And we'll pick up next week and dig even deeper
into the love that is guiding and guarding your life, that
is leading you, that is protecting you,
that is teaching you, that is healing you.
That love, that unconditional love, you can't earn it.
You can't push it away.
It's there.
I love you.
I'm so glad you're here.
And I can't wait to see you next week.
By the way, all of these studies, plus Prosper TV,
plus many, many, many other studies
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Make sure you go in there, get all the free goodies
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Put that in the code, and you'll have access
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New things are added every single week,
and I just plan on this being an amazing resource
when we talk about just allowing what God flows into me,
allowing it just to flow out to bless you.
So I pray you're blessed today.
Go forth and love, know you're loved,
unconditionally, and make it a great day.
We'll see you next week.
God bless you.