We saw previously that faith is an essential ingredient to using our authority and actually in getting anything from God. Without faith it's impossible to please Him. Whatever we get from God must be received through faith, but faith is only potential energy.

Faith needs to be energized and released before it accomplishes anything. You may have power, but power that is contained doesn't accomplish anything. It's got to be energized and released.

Okay, many years ago when science fiction was still new and they brought out that wonderful movie called Star Trek, the original one, I was young enough to be there when it first came out. It was so exciting to see things that were different and one of the different things was those guns that they used. No longer bullets, but laser guns.

They would take the laser gun and flip a switch and charge it up and then they'd pull the trigger. Amazing power as a amplified light beam shoots out with devastating results. What is laser? It's amplified light, but laser must be charged up first before it can be released.

Now when you receive the Holy Spirit, you received potential power. You receive the power, the very power of God. Before you can use that power, you must learn how to charge it up and then release it.

One of the most powerful things that will accomplish this is love. The Greek word there is agape love. There are different kinds of love, human love, emotional love, physical love, but agape love is divine love, the love of the Spirit.

And so though you may have faith, it's not enough. Your faith needs to be energized before it can be released and before it can bring results. You know, I'd like to speak about the power of love.

I'd like to show you how it works. I would like to show you what it does and how it comes and where it comes from. And probably the best way I can illustrate this and show it to you is to share with you some of my own personal experiences in this.

So I'm not preaching at you yet, but if what I share hits home, the Holy Spirit is taking it and using it to bring conviction, to challenge you and to show you things. Some years ago, quite a while after I'd first been filled with the Holy Spirit and I'd been zealous for the Lord, but things had kind of faded away, but the call never faded away. I always wanted to work for the Lord, but there was never really opportunity.

And it seemed that whatever I tried to do, I got blocked. I tried equipment myself near the church where I was, but I had an apostolic call. I wasn't satisfied with what the evangelistic pastor was doing.

It wasn't enough. I was zealous for the Lord. I wanted more.

I wanted to see more. I wanted to know more. And I probably came across as a little upstart and thought he knew everything.

So the pastor took me and put me there and he said, you stay there. Well, I tried really hard to impress him. I tried really hard to show him what I got, but somehow I think he saw me as a threat and he just kept me there.

While in time, he decided to open a Bible school in the church and all the pastors of the denomination would be the lecturers. Well, I jumped on the bandwagon and I resigned my job and went full time Bible school. I was one of the first students that he had.

I thought I'd lost now. Now I'm coming to his Bible school. I'm studying his stuff.

I'm going to show them what a good student I am. And perhaps he'll change his attitude towards me. You're guessing what happened? No change.

The pastor went on furlough. He was from Canada. They go on a time of break and he sent one of his associates, a friend of his to come in.

This guy came in, he impressed us. So he was the first prophet I ever saw in action. Man, he prophesied over everybody.

I thought, what a man of God. Wow. Imagine what it would be like to have a pastor like that.

The Lord answered my prayer, unfortunately. And he came to fill in from my pastor while he was in furlough and decided he was going to rebuild everything his way. You know, I was rising up.

My teaching ministry was starting to show. I'd even been given the opportunity to teach the adult Bible class in Sunday school. So while Sunday school was on, the adults would gather and I was given an opportunity to teach.

This new pastor sat in. Previous one didn't. He sat in on the Bible class and started to heckle me and challenge what I was teaching to make me look like a fool.

Well, if I thought the first guy held me back, this guy held me back even more. Some young, I won't be derogatory, some young guy who really was not, that's spiritually mature, discovered how to prophesy. And he began to give prophecies in the church.

And he became the pastor's blue-eyed boy. Now, I'm not going to go into too much detail, but I think you're getting a story here. Things didn't go well with me and pastors kind of limited me.

Eventually my pastor came back and it turned out that he couldn't stay. He would have to leave and return to Canada. So they looked for somebody to put in his place to be the new pastor.

I'd served the Lord all my life. I had a teaching ministry. I'd proved I knew the word.

I'd been through their Bible school, but some good-looking young guy who'd been a druggie just a few years before, got saved, came in. He was good-looking. He was tall.

Guess who became the pastor? He did. You know what? You know what he was learning I'd forgotten already? I'm not being proud or arrogant. The guy was ignorant, see? But he had personality.

And so he took charge. What could I say? I thought it was unfair. This guy kept preaching stuff that was just way off-beat.

And I made a mistake of confiding in somebody else in the church. What I thought of him, turns out this guy was one of those yabrus, pastor's pet. Went running straight to the pastor to tell him, you know what, Liz? The saying behind your prayer.

So this young upstart pastor brought this guy and one of the elders, who was also just a little yabru, and they were coming to discipline me. He opened his Bible and he says, the scripture says as he is, but the scripture also says, and I gave him five scriptures back. And he tried it again and I hit him again.

Then she closed his Bible. He said, well, it's no good us looking in the word. He didn't have a leg to stand on.

He had no scriptural basis for what he was doing. And so I didn't have any choice. It was time to leave.

I couldn't continue there. All my hopes, and it wasn't the first time my hopes were dashed. I will tell you my full story one of these days.

Now, the reason I'm sharing all of this with you is not to put these men of God down. With all their faults and failures, they were still my leaders and I was still required to submit to them. But I grew bitter, grew very bitter, very angry, angry with them and angry with the Lord.

Lord, you called me so long ago. I've served you all of my life. And now why does this happen to me? And you know, I just moved away from there and put it all behind me.

So I thought, forgot about it. That's the past. Now I was moving into new places, found a church that did recognize my ministry.

And I hope that perhaps eventually that opportunity may come. Started to move into a new job, which was largely selling. Things weren't going that well financially.

And the one day I felt, Lord, we need a miracle here. Now it was a sales job, so my time was my own. I could travel out, see the customers, come into the office.

So I got down with my wife at that time to pray. And I said, Oh Lord, we need a miracle of finance here. We're in a desperate situation.

Lord, please help me. The Spirit of God hit me like a ton of bricks out of the blue, totally unexpectedly. He zapped me right there and he said, you have got bitterness in your heart against the man who stood against you.

And until you let go of that, I can do nothing for you. You know, when God shows it to you, you see it. And when you see it, it hits you between the eyes and you fall to your face.

And I wept. I wept before the Lord and I said, Oh Lord, please forgive me. Oh Lord, I've entertained bitterness in my heart.

I've stood against your servants and it's sin. It's sin, Lord. And I repent of my sin and I give it up.

Then the Spirit of God began to move on me and I began to feel his presence. Oh, and I could pray now with liberty. In fact, I felt such a powerful move of the Spirit of God upon me that I didn't go to work that day.

I just ended up praying for a couple of hours. And you know, the next day as I got up, I kind of felt still the same thing. I felt his presence.

I felt, you know what? I just want to spend more time in prayer with the Lord. This time as I came into his presence in prayer, I entered into a spiritual realm. And as I was worshiping, even praising him, I suddenly saw him standing right there in front of me, the Lord Jesus himself.

And I could tell as he looked at me that he knew everything about me. His eyes could see right into me. And I knew there was a lot of things I hadn't confessed yet.

I knew there was still other sin there. I was waiting for him to say, and now. And I felt totally secure.

There was no threat. There was no fear. It was just a sense of awesome comfort.

And wow, I feel so good in his presence. As I stood there, I didn't know what to say to him. My passion had always been for believers who struggle.

Still is. Believers of spiritual problems. And so he never said anything to me.

He just looked at me and I said, oh Lord, I really want to minister to all those people who once served you, but their hearts have grown cold and they've fallen away. And I thought he would smile and say, hey, that's great. But he didn't.

He looked straight at me and he said, Les, what makes you think I love them less than I love you? Oh, that hit me like a ton of bricks. I kind of almost felt ashamed that I opened my big mouth and said what I did. But he was saying to me, my love is not conditional.

And then I saw as he sat down as this great big heavenly daddy, and I saw myself sitting on his knee like a little child. And he held me close. And I felt that security and wonderful feeling that a child would feel sitting close to his loving father.

And suddenly I knew what Abba Father meant. Scripture says the spirit that had been given to us causes us to cry out Abba Father. We recognize him as our father.

And in that moment I understood he's my loving heavenly father and he cares for me. Well, I didn't go to work for three days. I just began to move into a new realm of prayer with him, began to move into a new dimension in the spirit.

I found him bringing people to my mind to pray for. And it was so powerful that I knew my prayers would be answered. In fact, I was so confident I used to go to people and say, the Lord led me to pray for you yesterday.

And I want you to know that God's going to do something. And they'd say, well, I hope so. I'm not telling you I hope so.

I'm telling you God's going to do it because he answers my prayer. Well, maybe they thought I was arrogant, but I knew. And it always worked.

When God showed me that, I knew that the answer was on the way. Oh, man, this was a whole new dimension in the spirit that I never knew before. And you know, I got to know Jesus.

The more I spent time in his presence in prayer, I got to know him in a more intimate way to the point where I began to long for him. I fell in love with him. I mean, I really fell in love with him.

You know, some people have never known true love, but many of us have had an infatuation where you fall in love with somebody and all you can think about is that person. And there's stars in your eyes. And you just want to be with them all the time.

You haven't been there. It can happen still. I fell in love with Jesus that way.

I couldn't wait to spend time with him. Just like you couldn't wait for your work to be over so you can get together with your partner, your fiancé, or whatever, because you just loved being with them. Man, my heart would ache.

I'd lose my appetite just thinking about him. He said, but you're a man. You know, I can understand you falling in love with a woman like that.

You know, I can understand a woman maybe feeling that way about Jesus because he's a man, but man to man, that's... See, that's the problem in our thinking. We think of love as physical. We don't realize that the love of God is not physical at all.

It's something far deeper than that. Far deeper than that. I got to the place where Jesus began to manifest himself to me more and more, and I felt a strong conviction and leading in my heart that he wanted me to leave the church where I was, which was the only church now that ever recognized me, where I was involved.

He wanted me to leave. You know, I wasn't sure about that until the one night we came to the meeting. They used to have a prayer before the meeting.

A lot of very zealous people there. And we arrived a little late for the meeting, my family and I, and so we sort of came in and sat on the outside seats, and everybody was praying and worshiping the Lord, loving the presence of the Lord. And I sat there, and I had this strangest feeling.

What am I doing here? What am I doing here? And I got up, and I walked outside, and I looked. One of the first times, and I've had it many times since, where the Lord spoke his word deep in my heart, and he said, you're finished here. I want you out there.

What do you mean, out there, Lord? Out there. Lord, I can't go and do something by myself. I don't have that confidence.

It was so startling, we never stayed for the meeting. We went home, and I had this growing conviction that I need to leave the church. Okay, I'm not going to tell the whole story, because I've told it elsewhere, and I will tell it in more detail.

I'm in the process of writing my autobiography, if anybody's ever interested in reading it. I'll give you these things in detail. But I let the guy who they called to that church, I lost out there, too.

They never called me. They called somebody from the outside. I committed myself to him and said, I'll work with you.

But now I called him. I said, God's told me to leave. He said, where are you going? I said, I don't know.

I feel like Abraham. The Lord said, go out. I'm taking you to a country that I will show you.

Well, where are you going? I don't know yet. We'll find out when we get there. So I left the church.

Well, in my mind, I'm thinking God wants me to start something, right? Next, the Lord said to me, I want you to leave your job. I said, Lord, you're crazy. I can't pay my debts with a job, with a salary.

Now, you're telling me to leave? He said, I'm your provider. I asked God for a sign. I thought I was actually quite safe.

I said, okay, Lord, you pay my debts, and I'll leave. That's how many thousand I need. I thought I was quite safe until somebody came and gave me the exact amount.

And he gave me one more sign after that, and then I couldn't argue anymore. I went in. Oh, my boss, I'm going into full-time ministry.

I'm leaving the job. So there I was sitting at home, no church, no job. I said, okay, Lord, where do I start? Do I advertise? Do I have meetings? He said, who told you you're going to start a church? I said, but, Lord, you know, I need to do something.

You know, the Bible says, if any man will not work, neither shall he eat. He said, I'm your boss, and I want you to spend time talking to me every day and getting to know me. I said, but, Lord, I need to be doing something.

He said, if your boss tells you to sit and talk to him every day, that's his prerogative. Now, you sit and you talk to me every day. So there I was sitting there every day.

I started out praying three times a day, you know, breakfast, lunch, and supper kind of thing. Spending hours with the Lord, getting into the Word. You know, Jesus became so real to me that he was as real as any other human being.

When I sat down, it doesn't matter where I was. He was there. And, you know, if he was there, everything around me disappeared.

You know, I felt you could stick me in a bare room with no chairs, with no furnishings, with no nothing. You could put me in a box. As long as I'm with him, I'm absolutely happy and content.

He began to teach me more about his love. He began to show me his unconditional love. And just so that I fully understood it, he allowed me to get caught in a sin.

I'd never been a big sinner. I grew up as a Christian. I shared this with somebody once, and they said, so did you fall into adultery or what happened? None of those were huge sins.

But I committed what I thought was a really big sin. I told a lie, an outright lie to get to get out of trouble. I felt so bad about it.

And drained and drilled into me as a child that God hates a lie. And I felt horrible. And now I just committed this big sin.

And I wanted to come back into his presence. And I was afraid to come into his presence. I thought, what's he going to say? And so I came gingerly, sat down with him.

There he was, as usual, began to talk to me. So nothing had happened. I couldn't understand it.

Eventually, I opened my mouth. I said, Lord, I really sinned. He said, I know it.

It doesn't change my love for you. He said, I can help you to not be caught in that again, if you want, if you want my help, but I don't condemn you. He said, I paid the price for that sin already.

Oh, wow. He is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Listen, you will never understand that until you get a comprehension of his love.

He began to show me his love. I started by falling in love with him. And then I started to go through all the people, all the other people in my life that had hurt me.

People that when I still thought about them, it was, one of them was my ex-brother-in-law. Oh man, this was a difficult guy to love. He always seemed to be needling me and putting me down.

But the Lord said, you need to see him as I see him, and you need to let it go. You know, people started to come as God brought them to me, and he was one of them. And he came and visited, and he said, Les, what's happened to you? He said, you've changed.

You're not the same person you used to be. But how did that happen? You know, the scripture says that they looked at some of the disciples and they took note that they had been with Jesus, because it showed. It showed.

Jesus taught me his love, because he is love. Love is the very nature of God. And when you come to that love relationship with him, everything changes.

I spent nine months living by faith. It was hell. It was difficult.

People misunderstood me. I learned his love, and I learned to walk in fellowship with him. Wherever I went, he was there.

When I finally came to minister to people, I found a new experience. Now, prior to that, I'd been moving in some of the gifts of the Spirit. I would pray with people.

I would prophesy over them. Maybe God would give me a vision or a revelation. It always worked in different ways.

But as I came into that close, loving relationship with him, where he was so real that he was by my side, I could talk to him anytime I like. Oh, you know, the revelations, they come from within, come from without, and you get a word. Thus says the Lord, behold, I say unto you.

Well, now it changed. I began to hear his voice deep inside of me. I'd see him standing there, and I could hear in my spirit what he was saying to me.

And I could ask him questions, and he would answer them. And when I came to pray with somebody, I didn't have to say, Holy Spirit, give me a revelation. I would say, Lord Jesus, tell me about this person.

And he'd tell me. And I'd say, the Lord says, I didn't prophesy. I got it direct from the horse's mouth, as it were.

It was a whole new experience. Never had anything like that before. Well, something else began to happen as I prayed with people.

And when it first happened, I was kind of caught unawares. But as I began to pray with people, I would suddenly feel what he felt for them. Well, already I'd seen that in prophecy, where I'd go and meet people who I prejudged that were very carnal.

And the Lord gave me a prophetic word saying, you are my chosen one. I'm going to use you mightily. And I thought, oh boy, did I ever miss it there? And now as I came to minister to people, I began to feel his love.

I began to feel this overwhelming emotion towards that person, to where I just wanted to put my arms around them and hold them close. Oh, you know, if you're ministering to a pretty young thing, you get this urge to hug her and hold her close. She may misunderstand what you're doing.

But there was no physical connotation whatsoever. It was pure love. And I felt it the same for male or female.

It didn't make any difference. I felt his love. And you know, I found that when I felt that love, as I prayed with people, his love would go into them and heal them, especially when they had a need for healing from inner hurts.

His love would flow out of me into them and bring that healing power. Where was the gift of healing? I didn't even think about gifts. Right there.

God's healing power. He's delivering power. He's providing power.

His favor. All of these things, folks, are contained in his love, because God is love. It's his very nature.

And if you want to move into the fullness, and if you want to take those power gifts, or whatever God has given you, and energize them, you need to get into his love, because his love takes it to a whole new level. I asked the Lord to teach me this, because I was starting to move into a teaching ministry. I thought that I would call to be, to have a deliverance ministry.

I began to identify demons in people. I was ministering some inner healing. I thought, God's called me to deliverance ministry.

And then the Lord suddenly switched me, and he said, you will bring deliverance through the word. You will teach them the word, and the word and the truth will set them free. And God moved me out of this realm of just flowing in the supernatural, into the word.

And over time, that teaching ministry became more developed, as God began to raise me up to teach and to train the five-fold ministry. And my relationship, my loving relationship with Jesus disappeared. It wasn't there anymore.

Now, why? Why and how does this work? Paul said, I'm showing you a better way. And then he gives us 1 Corinthians chapter 13. And I'm sure you've all read 1 Corinthians chapter 13, the chapter on love.

And you said, you know what? There's no way I could love like that. And you can't, because it's not your love, it's his. But Paul does more than tell us what the love looks like.

He tells us what this love can do. And I want to explain to you a part of 1 Corinthians 13, that's been a point of conflict through the years. And different people have taught different things on this.

But the Lord showed me the truth of what this passage really means. And I read from verse 8 in 1 Corinthians 13, agape love never loses its efficiency. But if there are prophecies, they will come to an end.

If there are tongues, they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For our knowledge is limited and our prophecy is limited.

Well, the Baptists love this passage. They say that all of these gifts have fallen away. They're not necessary anymore.

And they take the next passage. So the King James says, when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part shall be done away. And so the non-Pentecostals, they say that which is perfect is the Bible.

Now that we have the scriptures, we no longer need these supernatural gifts. And therefore the supernatural gifts have been done away to bow to the Word, which should take its first place in our lives. Well, Pentecostals can't believe that because we believe in the gifts of the Spirit.

So what does this passage mean from a standard Pentecostal point of view? When that which is perfect has come, well, who is the perfect one? It's Jesus, isn't it? And when Jesus has come and when he is returned, then these things won't be necessary anymore. So one day when Jesus comes, we won't need the gifts anymore. I believed that for years until the Lord showed me that that's also wrong.

Let me show you what Paul was trying to teach you here, which I've never heard anybody else teach on yet. You see, that word perfect means complete or mature. It's got nothing to do with perfection as in sinless perfection.

It speaks about maturity. And I know that that's what Paul was speaking about because further on he speaks about childhood. So here's the GBM translation.

When maturity has come, then the limitations will be removed. When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I understood as a child.

I thought as a child. But when I became a man or an adult, I put away childish things. For now we see through a mirror, a puzzling image.

But then we shall see face to face. Well, people have said, well, now we don't understand. But when Jesus comes, we shall see him face to face.

But he's not speaking about that, is he? He's speaking about maturity. Now I know partially, but then I will know just as I also am known. What is now and what is then? Now is while I still am a child spiritually.

Then is when I come to spiritual maturity and grow up. Well, what's that got to do with love? Love is the sign of maturity because when you are perfected in love, you are perfected in God who is love and you are walking in maturity. What Paul is saying here in effect, that's why I shared my story with you to try and illustrate it.

He's saying when you become mature in love, you don't need prophetic words anymore. You don't need revelations anymore. You don't need words of knowledge and words of wisdom anymore because you're not hearing from the Lord.

Well, I got a word from the Lord. I got a prophetic word from the Lord. I got a vision from the Lord.

Now you speak to him face to face. Now you speak to him face to face. And that can only come about when you are perfected in love.

And you see that? I don't need a partial revelation that I get by word of knowledge or word of wisdom anymore. I just ask him and he'll tell me what I need to know. Makes things much simpler, doesn't it? You say, but now when you get to the stage, is it yours forever? Is it a permanent condition? I'm afraid not.

For me, it wasn't. I lost it. I walked away from it.

You need to walk in it. You need to maintain it. Because yes, only when Jesus comes will we be free of sin.

Only then will we be able to fully enter into all of these experiences. But we don't have to wait until then to experience this level of spiritual maturity and this level of freedom to move. I lost it when I became a trainer.

And I lost it when I stopped spending time with him. Because I spend all my time in the word now, you see. Before I was in love, I wanted to be with him all the time.

It was powerful. It was strong. I was flowing in his love.

But as soon as I got sidetracked and I didn't have time to pray anymore, gradually, he faded away into the background. And I would often say, oh, I wish I could go back to that place again. I wish I could experience again having his presence there.

Well, the Lord brought me back to where I was. He told me to let go of all the training and all the things that are sidetracking me. He told me to let go of my total emphasis on the word only.

He told me to spend more time in his presence. And you know what? He suddenly reappeared. He's standing here right now.

He's walking with me. He's real. He's here.

I see him all the time. I wake up in the morning and he's sitting in the bed. Hi, Lord.

How are you doing? I wake up to prayer. Our Father who art in heaven. I've been trying to reach him up there.

He's not up there. He's right here, closer than breathing. We just start to become aware of him.

It makes things so much easier. Yeah, we struggle. We struggle because we're not aware of his presence.

And because we're not aware of his presence, we go out into this world and we get sidetracked and we get caught in the ways of the world and we get caught in the weaknesses of our flesh. Jesus now walks by my side. Actually, he's there with you too.

He's just not aware of you. He now walks by my side. And when I'm walking, I hear him say, stop.

I hear him say, turn around. I hear him say, move forward. I've learned to hear his voice.

I've had it so many times. I start to pray and he says, stop, you're praying wrong. I've had it happen where I'm sitting in a church meeting.

Somebody asked me to close the meeting in prayer. They've had a wonderful time of ministry. People went forward and got ministered to and fell under the power and, ah, wonderful things happened.

Oh, there's Brother Liz visiting us. Would you close for us in prayer, please? And I start, Lord, we just thank you for being here. And the Lord says, stop.

Hey, I'm going to be closing in prayer now. The Lord said, there's somebody who wasn't ministered to tonight. I want you to minister to them now.

Now, didn't the pastor do a good enough job? Yeah, the anointing was there. It all happened. How dare I? How dare I? I start to say, there's somebody here tonight.

You're still over me. The Lord hasn't touched it. I want you to just lift your hands now.

I'm going to pray for you right now. Somebody raised their hand and I prayed. I was invited once to a church.

I was pastored by the guy who put me into the ministry. And he saw me, he said, ah, Liz, why don't you come forward and give us a testimony about how you got saved? He was a great big evangelist. Well, my salvation testimony is not so awesome.

I grew up as a Christian. I can't remember when I got saved. So I stand over there, I'm going to go, well, you know what? You know, I thank the Lord.

You know, I grew up as a Christian. I can't remember when I really received the Lord. I came to a time in my life where I began to question my whole upbringing and my commitment to the Lord.

And I wondered if it was all a big mistake and whether I should just let it all go. And as I said that, the Holy Spirit said, stop. He said, there's somebody here tonight is having that exact same problem.

He said, I want you to call it out. I said, the Lord shows me there's somebody here tonight. It's exactly what's happened to you.

You've served the Lord for years and you're wondering whether it's all worth it. Nothing's gone wrong right in your life. And you're wondering, why do I even bother serving the Lord? I should just give it up.

He said, if you want to speak to me afterwards, I'll be here. Sure enough, at the end of the meeting, this lady came to me and she said, that was me you spoke about. You see, you must hear his voice all the time.

And when you hear his voice all the time and you're aware that he's there, he's there to help you. And he's also actually there to help you overcome sin. He will never ever condemn you.

And even when you sin, he's still there. And if you bring it to him, he'll say, let me show you how to stop doing that and to overcome it. Now, I like to call this the gentle breeze of Jesus.

It's a term that I got from a man by the name of Maltari, who was involved in the Indonesian revival many years ago. Maltari wrote two very powerful books. First one was called Like a Mighty Wind, where he shared the amazing miracles and signs and wonders that God began to do in Indonesia.

And then he wrote a follow-up called The Gentle Breeze of Jesus, which kind of what came after the revival was all over. And what Maltari taught the Lord showed me. You see, it's like this.

I'm walking down the road with Jesus. You ever find you're walking along and you see somebody, maybe somebody's crippled or something wrong with them. You think, oh, I'd love to just go lay hands on them and say, be healed.

So many people's needs out there. You're speaking to somebody and you're not sure what you should share with them. Well, you know, it becomes simple now because Jesus is with you.

And so you meet this person and you say, Lord, you have a plan here? Or can you tell me, Lord, what do you want to do for this person? And the Lord may say, I want to touch them. I want to set them free. Tell them this, lay hands on them and pray for them because I want to heal them.

It kind of becomes very simple. I just obey his leading. He does the healing, not me.

See, he does the deliverance or the victory or whatever it is. It makes life so much simpler. I'm trying to get in the spirits, get the anointing, get the anointing.

And now it's time. While the power is moving, come and let me pray for you. Oh, Jesus didn't work that way.

He had his time with the father. He came back fully charged. See, and if you've had your time in his presence, you come back.

He's coming with you. Jesus said, the father is always with me. Jesus said, I do what I see the father do.

Now, all I do is I do what I see Jesus doing. Okay. I want to end now by showing you how to experience his love.

I've shared some of my story. I'm moving to a new level in this now because he's back. I'm growing in this, but you see, I'm not special that he chose me alone for this.

He wants this for every one of you. And Jesus is about to leave. He said to his disciples, I'm giving, I'm asking the father to give you another comforter, somebody to take my place.

And he will reveal me to you and teach all the things I've been telling you. And he'll be your comforter from now on. But folks, there's one starting point and for me, I shared with you what my starting point was before I can learn to walk in his love.

I've got to let go of my own anger and bitterness and my own judgments of other people. I've got to deal with my own hurts and anger and bitterness. I'm going to read you a passage.

You want Colossians chapter three, verse 12 onwards. It says, put on therefore as the chosen ones of God, holy and loved by him, hearts of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with each other and forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against someone else in the same way that Christ forgave you, so you should do the same.

And in addition to all of that, put on a garper love, which is the ligament that holds everything perfectly in place. You see, love is like the ligaments and the joints. It holds it all together.

Now, there are people who hurt you. You're probably justified in being angry and being bitter and being disappointed with them. Usually when I share this with the people say, well, you know, I'm not bitter.

I don't hate him. I just don't like the guy. Okay.

If somebody comes to your mind and you feel negatively about them, you have a problem with bitterness. End of story. Yeah, but don't you know what he said? You know what she did? I don't care if they stuck nails into you.

They were knocking nails into Jesus. He said, father, forgive them. They know not what they do.

If you are not prepared to let go of your anger and your bitternesses and your hurts of the past and what people said and did to you, you're not going to experience this love because it can't live in the same place as bitterness. And you need a relationship with the Lord Jesus. When the comfort of the Holy Spirit was given, he was given to reveal Jesus to you.

Now, I just want to clarify something and I'm going to teach on this in some detail. But there are people who are teaching us that we need to have a relationship with the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is not an influence. He's not a thing.

He's a person. Okay. So we need to know him as a person.

So we don't call him the Holy Spirit because that makes him a thing. We have to call him Holy Spirit. Have you seen people say that? Well, Holy Spirit told me.

You know what? Holy Spirit is not a name. Don't be stupid. Trying to get all spiritual now.

Well, Holy Spirit told me. Shows me your ignorance. The Holy Spirit, Jesus said, will never speak about himself.

He said he will speak about me. The Holy Spirit, the comfort that was given you, was given to reveal Jesus to you. And look for a relationship with the Holy Spirit.

Look for a relationship with your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Because the scripture says, there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Jesus said, no man can come to the Father except through me.

And who is it that baptizes in the Holy Spirit? It is said in the day of Pentecost, Jesus ascended and he took this and he shed it forth. He baptized you in the Holy Spirit. People want to access God as though he's three different entities.

And yes, well, we know the Father. What does the Father look like? Well, you know, he's this old man with a beard. Some people will say, well, you know, Moses said that he wanted to see God's face.

And God said, you can't see my face. You can only see my back. So God must have a face and a back.

Nonsense. So the Father never has his own form. See, and Jesus has his form.

And the Holy Spirit, what does he look like? Don't be stupid. The spirit doesn't have a form. Jesus said, I'm flesh and bone.

I'm not a spirit because the spirit doesn't have shape or form. Stop trying to look for this Holy Spirit person. His name is Jesus.

There's no other name under heaven given among men by which we can access God. It's no Jesus. You'll get to know the spirit.

It's no Jesus. You'll get to know the Father. But how can I start entering into this relationship? Start becoming a more aware of Jesus.

Before he brought me into this place, one of the things I began to do was to imagine Jesus with me. I'm driving in my car. I imagine he's sitting in the passenger seat.

And instead of praying to him, I talk to him. Hey, Lord. You know what? He took back.

Have you ever tried that? So he's sitting right there next to you now. Imagine anywhere you like. He's right there.

That's the last time you talk to him. But you know what? You didn't even notice him. You didn't even pay attention to him.

You just carried on as though he's off in heaven somewhere. But he's not. He's right inside of you.

And he's right next to you. He's closer than you can breathe. Why don't you take the time and the effort to start asking him to make himself more real to you? And when you do, perhaps like me, you'll fall in love with him.

You get so excited about him. You won't think about members of the opposite sex even for a while because you'll be so in love with him. You'll be so enraptured with him that you can't talk about anybody else except him.

You can't think about anybody else except him. And then you take him with you wherever you go. Develop your spiritual sensitivity.

Pray in tongues a lot. And then listen to your spirit. Obey the promptings of your spirit.

We taught this in our prophetic course on the Urim and Thummim. Every believer has this. Learn to listen.

When you feel that, oh, no, I shouldn't do that, obey it. Yeah, well, maybe it's my imagination. Yeah, well, go ahead and do it.

And then you make a big mistake when you say, oh, okay, I should have listened. You see, now your first loss when you did that is you failed to enter into a new experience of hearing his voice. Every time you obey that prompting, you get to hear it better next time.

You develop it until eventually you become so sensitive that you can't walk down the street without him saying. You can't walk into a shop and buy something saying, hey, Lord, what do you think? Do I look pretty in this dress? Do I look fat? Ask him and ask your husband or somebody else. He cares.

He'll tell you. And you know what? He'll always be positive. He will never condemn.

Ever. Spend time in praise and worship. Start by telling him how wonderful he is.

That's praise. Then start telling him how much you love him. That's worship.

And ask him to bring you into the presence of his glory. And you'll see Jesus change. You'll change from ordinary man, loving, caring man.

He'll start to glow. And he'll start to radiate. And he'll look like John saw him on the Isle of Atmos.

So magnificent, you're afraid to even come close. It's the same Jesus. He's just now beginning to reveal his power and his glory.

And then he's going to take you even further. He's going to take you up into the very throne room of the father himself. I'm going to be teaching you in time how to do that and how he will teach you to do that.

But you've got to start by getting to know the comforter, Lord Jesus, and getting to know his love. Ask him to baptize you with his love. You know that faith is both a fruit of the spirit and a gift of the spirit.

We can develop faith by walking in the spirit, but there comes a release of a power called the gift of faith. Well, it's not listed amongst the gifts, but there's also an anointing of love. I know because I've experienced it.

There's the love that we develop in the spirit, but there comes an anointing of love where suddenly he gets you to love somebody who you thought was ugly before. Let me tell you how to practice this. Next time you're sitting doing nothing, maybe sitting in your car, sitting somewhere you see people walk by, strangers, and you look at that person you think, I didn't want to meet them.

Jesus loves them the same way he loves you. Stop right then and say to the person in your heart, Jesus loves you. Therefore, I'm going to love you as ugly as what you are.

Practice it. You'll find you end up loving the whole world. Start by loving Jesus first, but as you learn to pour that love out to others, it's so easy to be critical.

I find it very hard as a trainer to do this because I have to address the flaws, but we can still do it with love. Look for the good in people. Try and see them through Jesus' eyes.

That's how the love will develop. Then as he puts that anointing on you, pour it out to others. We need to walk in maturity.

That means walking in love. You need to learn to hear his voice as you see him there with you. That's available to you right now.

You can function without the gifts just by being in his presence and in his love. You want to find out more about love, go and read John's epistles. He was the apostle of love.

You know that all of the apostles except John died through martyrdom. Some of them real agonizing deaths. John is the only guy who grew old.

Tradition says they tried to throw him in a tub of boiling oil and he escaped. They tried to kill John, but they couldn't kill him. Why do you suppose that was? He had a cocoon around him called love.

John is the apostle of love. He was always lying there on Jesus' breast. He got soaked up in that love.

That love gave him long life. You want to live long? Walk in love. You want to live free of sickness and disease? Walk in love.

You want to walk free of spiritual bondage? Walk in love. You want to walk in financial prosperity? Walk in love. Except that one's going to cost you because love always gives.

Nobody's ever ended in prosperity without learning the art of giving. Because when you give in love, you get back. See, but it's still walking in love.

Trust that you were challenged a bit today, as well as inspired, motivated. I've given you hope that there's more. There's more that you've never entered into.

And you know what? It's not going to cost you. So much, except the willingness to let go of your bitterness. That's not a bigger price to pay, is it? Your willingness just to be with him and to love him.

Your willingness to take him with you wherever you go. Oh no, that's going to be a challenge, isn't it? Are you going places where perhaps Jesus may not be comfortable? Would you dare to take him in there? Would you leave him outside? You see, his very presence is going to change your life. It's going to change the kind of life you live.

It's going to change the things that you do, because you don't want to hurt him. You don't want to displease him. You don't want to upset him.

It's not a case of thou shalt and thou shalt not. It's a case of, Lord, I love you so much. I don't want to do that anymore.

Even though I enjoy doing it, I know you don't like it. So I'm going to stop doing it. I'm going to pray now, and I want you to just reach out to the Lord.

I want you to examine your heart and some of those that you still find hard to forgive. And I want you to sacrifice that to him. I want you to wrap up all of your angers and all your disappointments in people and give them as a gift to him.

Let him set you free. He'll bring you peace. Lord Jesus, by your Spirit, I ask you to move upon your people, not with condemnation, not with judgment, but with soothing encouragement.

And as they let these things go, Lord, you will pour your healing oil in to soothe and heal all those wounds that were caused. I ask you now to reveal yourself to each one afresh in a new way, that you begin to pour your love and manifest it through each one of your children, that you'll bring them to a place of walking in your presence day by day, tapping into your power by your presence day by day, and becoming a blessing wherever they go, because love always desires to bless. I ask, Lord Jesus, that by your Spirit, you would now come upon each one with that love anointing that you've shown me so many times, that your love will descend like a cloud, like a garment that comes over them, that they can literally feel that love come upon them, set them free.

May each one have their own unique experience with you. May each one come into that intimate relationship with you in their own way, seeing you each in their own way, but in a real way, Lord, that makes you tangible and real. I know that you desire to do that, Lord.

And I know that you that have heard this word, you desire it too. I can sense that even in the Spirit. Some of you are just yearning and crying out for this.

You're saying, Oh, Lord, Oh, Lord, I want this. The Lord says, I'm not going to deny it. I'm going to give you everything that you desire.

Just reach out and take it. Because I'm right there by your side right now. I'm right there with you.

And as you continue to reach out to me in love, I will manifest my love to you, says the Lord. I will reveal myself to you in ways that you have never known before. And I will take away all the conflicts and the hurts of the past, that you will remember them no more.

And I will take you into a new road of blessing that you have never known before, says the Lord, for it delights me to do that. I am your Lord and your Savior. I am your lover.

I am the one who will withhold nothing from you, says the Lord. You are my beloved. You are special to me.

You are my special treasure. You are my prized possession that I will boast in, that I will hold up to the world and show with pride. You are mine.

I will withhold nothing from you, says the Lord. Oh, I feel that love anointing coming even now. I feel it flowing out.

Just receive it. He's touching you now. I can sense he's doing some amazing things here, some amazing things.

He's reaching deep down inside. Hallelujah. And he's starting to saturate you with his presence so that you begin to feel it more and more.

Hallelujah. Oh, hallelujah. Oh, hallelujah.

We've gone on a while, but I don't want to stop yet because I just feel that lovely presence, that lovely, wonderful, like it's fresh dew coming down upon us now today, the dew of his presence and his love. Oh, Jesus, I love you so much. I love you so much, Lord.

I can't get enough. And I ask that each of these, your children, will come to know that love that passes all understanding. Oh, we'll walk in it and revel in it.

Those who've never known true love in this life, those who've been hurt by people they thought they loved, find that your love is consistent and unconditional and abundant. Oh, thank you for it. Oh, man, God is moving, moving very deeply.

You who are watching this now, just reach out to him. Let him touch you now and saturate you and fill you with that wonderful love. If you've never been in love before, you're going to fall in love now.

You're going to fall in love with the King of Kings. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Thank you for it. Thank you for it, Lord. As we each go our different ways and into this world now, I ask that that cloud of your presence, that garment of love that you've placed on each one will continue, that they will sense it and be aware of it, and then they'll start giving it away to us.

Let it spread till your whole body, Lord, is covered with it. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for it in Jesus name.

Amen. Amen.

Post A Review For This Book