Chapter 10 - The Power Of Love And Hope

When one person's spirit touches another's spirit there comes a communication, a contamination if you wish; an influence from the one spirit to the other.

Have you never noticed how when people get together in a crowd, you have a crowd mentality?

There is an influence that begins to affect the whole group. And sometimes you have crowds that are stirred up until eventually they are out of control.

This is because a spirit takes hold of them. The same spirit is communicating with all of their spirits and is affecting them. There is a communication that takes place from one spirit to another.

When you begin to mix with a group of people that are feeling down and miserable and depressed, I challenge you to stay on top and be happy. Just try sitting with a bunch of folks that are commiserating.

Someone says, "Do you know what happened to me this week? I had a terrible time and nothing went right. I feel so discouraged and depressed and down. Everybody's getting on my case.

"My husband keeps picking on me, and my kids are always screaming and shouting and carrying on. Nothing has gone right."

Another person says, "You think that was bad? You should have seen what happened to me this week. I keep getting speeding tickets. Those cops are just out to get me.

My boss keeps getting out on the wrong side of the bed. We had a flat tire on the way to work and I forgot to put the jack in the car."

We can carry on and on and we begin to commiserate with each other. We begin to compare notes, and each one of us has had a worse problem than the other. I defy you to go into that group and say, "Wow, I am really full of joy. I feel wonderful. I'm so happy."

Everybody will look at you and say, "Just get out of here. Can't you see we're having a bad time?"

It will not take you long to pick up their spirit and begin to feel that negativity.

There is a communication that takes place from spirit to spirit.

The Force of Love

You need to pick up love - the kind of love the Bible speaks about. But it is something that can only come from the Spirit of God.

You see, there are three kinds of love. You have probably all heard this many times, so I will not labor the topic. But there are three different Greek words that describe love.

Eros Love

The Greek word 'eros' refers to the love of the passions. Your dogs and cats know how to do that kind of love. There is nothing special about it. It is physical. It changes with the wind and varies from one day to another.

Phileo Love

There is 'phileo' love. That is the love of the emotions. It is the 'feely' love; the love that says, "I feel good and I feel something towards you. You make me feel good so I love you. And I'll carry on feeling good until you say something nasty to me."

That is how reliable that love is, because as soon as you say something bad or as soon as you pick on me and say something negative, my emotions just go wild.

I have to grit my teeth and say, "I'm going to make myself love you."

You cannot do it. It is love of the emotions and you cannot control your emotions. But it is easy to obtain that kind of love from others. Just be nice to people and they will love you in that way.

You end up in performance orientation - performing for people to get them to love you. Be nice to people and become what people want you to be so that you can get their emotions stirred positively towards you.

Then people look at you and say, "You're such a nice person." "She really is great to be around."

Then you go into another crowd and they have another set of rules and standards, so you have to start being nice to them in a different way.

Agape Love

The third kind of love I was referring to is the Greek word 'agape'. It is the word that is used in 1 Corinthians 13, describing divine love.

If you read 1 Corinthians 13 and try to look at the qualities of love from the point of view of your feelings, emotions and passions, you will soon see that you cannot love that way.

And to make it worse, God commands us to love that way. God says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind.

Well God is fairly easy to love because He blesses us all the time, but what about, And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

What about, Husbands love your wives.

You say, "Well, if she's submissive and does what I say, that's easy enough. If my neighbor is friendly and doesn't cause me any grief, that's easy enough. I think with a push I could handle that one."

"Okay, love your enemies." "What?"

"Yes, love that guy who says nasty things and goes out of his way to tear you down. The one who criticizes you behind your back; throws stones through your window; gives you prank calls in the middle of the night.

Love the guy who turns all your friends against you and does his best to make your life a misery." "I must love that person?"

"Hey, don't look at me. It wasn't my idea. Love your enemies."

You say, "But I can't. I can't work up feelings for somebody that I hate."

Who said anything about feelings? Agape love has nothing to do with feelings. Agape love is a commandment.

Love Comes From the Spirit

Where does it come from? It comes from the Holy Spirit. Romans 5:5 says: And hope does not make ashamed; because the [agape] love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.

You are able to obtain that love only one way. You do it by causing your spirit to come into communication and communion with the Spirit of God.

You come into communion with the Spirit of God and the power of the force of love, which is the very nature of God.

The Bible says: God is love. It doesn't say, "God loves."

God is love. It is the very essence and nature of His being. When you come into communion with His Spirit, that love is poured into your spirit and you begin to pick it up.

It is like those objects that glow in the dark. Usually what you have to do is hold them up to the light for a little while.

They then absorb energy from the light. Then when you switch off the lights, that object begins to give out the energy that it has absorbed, and you see it begin to glow in the dark.

Leave it out of the light for a while and it loses its power. You have to recharge it by putting it back in the light again.

That is exactly what your human spirit is like. If you want to have this force of love, you will need to come into the presence of the light.

Light, Life and Love

Here is something that is interesting. The Bible uses three words that always refer to the same thing. They are light, life and love. Did you know that these three are used almost interchangeably in Scripture?

Switch on the light and the darkness goes. Switch on the love and the hatred goes. Switch on the life and the death goes. They cannot exist together.

You cannot have light and darkness mixing. You cannot have love and hate mixing. You cannot have life and death mixing. You have either one or the other. The moment you put one of those in, the other is displaced.

Bathing in His Presence

The love of God comes to the human spirit when we communicate or fellowship with Him. How do we obtain it? By coming and bathing in His love.

I am not talking about spending hours praying. Most folks when they come to pray are simply bombarding the Lord with petitions and requests. I am talking about coming into His presence just to spend time with Him.

What happens when two people are in love? I mean really in love; a courting couple with stars-in-the-eyes romance love.

We often see them on the beach as the sun goes down. They just stand there and stare at each other, and hug each other. They do not even talk.

You just want to be with the person you love. You want to spend time in their presence. It is almost as though you are feeling a radiation from one to the other.

It is no more than just being with the person, giving forth your love to them, and receiving back from them the love that they are giving out to you.

To experience the love of the Lord, all you need to do is come into His presence and tell Him that you love Him. Tell Him that you love Him again.

Tell Him some more that you love Him. Then just be quiet and listen, and you will hear Him telling you that He loves you.

You will hear it coming up from deep down inside. You will hear Him saying, "I love you. You're special to me. That's why I died for you. That is why I gave my all for you. You are very important to me. I love you."

Listen and you will hear it. Get into His presence and spend time with Him, just like a loving couple. You do not have to say anything. Just be there.

Hold your spirit up into His light and you will find it begins to pour forth. Something begins to take place deep within you.

A charge begins to build up. Maybe you will feel butterflies in your stomach like a person does when they are in love.

You say, "What? With the Lord?"

Yes, I have had it many times where I am so in love with Him I want to burst.

Have you heard that expression, "I love you so much it hurts?"

You have likely forgotten what it is like. Fall in love with the Lord Jesus and you will find it out all over again.

The power of love is in coming into His presence to be with Him and hearing His words of love. Then you begin to tell Him over and over again, "I love you. I love you Lord. Oh Lord, I love you so much. You mean so much to me. You are all the world to me."

Forget about your needs. Forget about your cares and the problems. Just come and tell Him that you love Him, and hear Him tell you that He loves you. It will transform your life.

Manifesting True Love

How will you know when it is there? Well for a start you will be able to love the people that are unlovely without even trying. You will start to glow. Suddenly you will find that those ill feelings have just vanished.

You do not even need to grit your teeth and try. It is just there. It flows. You will be able to forgive the people who hurt you, and you will not have to force yourself to do it. It will just come naturally.

You will become generous. Do you know why? It is because love always gives. You cannot help it. If you have love you want to give. If you love a person you want to give them your all.

The Bible says that: God so loved the world that He ... kept it all to Himself? No, it says that He gave.

You say, "Yes well, He had enough to give. I mean, He's the richest person in the universe. It's easy for Him to give. He has plenty to give.

So when He scratched a few of His blessings out to put them on us, that was a drop in the bucket for Him. Hey, that's like a millionaire giving me $100. It is worth nothing to him."

No, when God gave He gave the best He had. He gave His only son. Jesus said: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friend. God commended His great love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.

Even when we were His enemies, He gave His life for us. Love has to give. And the amazing thing about giving is that when you give something to somebody they cannot help but love you back.

When you are nice to somebody and keep giving and keep giving. After a while they start responding to your love, and they want to give back to you. Because you have blessed them so much, they want to bless you back again.

The Scripture says: We love Him because He first loved us.

If you want to see the force of love go to work in your life, start giving, giving and giving. I will show shortly that faith and love work together. If you want to release the power of faith, you will need love to go with it.

The Force of Hope

Let's get to the last force. It comes from the spiritual capacity of wisdom, premonition or foreknowledge. It is the force of hope.

Do you recognize those three - faith, love and hope? You will read it all over the New Testament, especially in Paul's epistles. He says, And now abides faith, hope and love, these three...

You will find that when Paul wrote to his churches, he commended them for their faith, their hope or their love if these were there.

If there was one that was missing he would say, "Well, I thank the Lord for your faith and I thank the Lord for your hope. And I'm praying that the Lord will show you His love now."

When you read the New Testament try looking for those three and you will see them intertwined all the way.

So what is hope?

You say, "Well, I sure hope that things will get better. I sure hope the Lord provides for us in time. I sure hope this pain will go and the Lord will heal me. I sure hope..."

Forget it; you are not hoping at all. That is not hope. Hope is not negative. Hope is positive. It is a positive expectation.

Why? It is because it comes out of a premonition in your spirit. It comes out of a spiritual foreknowledge and assurance that what you are looking for or believing for is going to come to pass.

It is a visualizing of the goal. Hope paints a picture in your mind where you can see and literally hold in your hands the thing that you are believing for. Hope is positive and strong.

Well where do you get it from? Do you obtain it by trying hard? Do you obtain it by forcing pictures in your mind, forcing yourself to visualize this thing? Where does hope come from?

Romans 5:3 and 4 says: And not only [so], but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation causes patience;
And patience, experience [dokimazo]; and experience [dokimazo], hope:

Hope comes from endurance under trial. You were not expecting that answer were you?

If you want to develop hope you had better get ready to go through the fire. Because you see the Scripture says that tribulation causes, or produces patience. What is patience? Patience is persistence or endurance.

When you learn to hang on to your faith and hang on to your love, in spite of circumstances, you begin to develop an anchor of hope. You hang onto it strongly, and you learn through experience.

What happens when you hit a disaster for the first time? You go to pieces, but you learn that after a while it came to 'pass,' it did not come to 'stay.'

You learn after a while of going through experiences like this that you did not die. Actually God had a plan in this, and He worked it out and brought you through the situation.

And when you face a similar situation in the future, you learn to go back on your experience, from previous tribulation and from previous problems.

You look back on them and you say, "Hold it. I remember this happening to us before and God took us through. We are still here today. We didn't die then; we survived. God brought us through."

You can stand firm. You are not caught by surprise anymore. When it comes upon you, you say, "Hold it, I can handle this one. I've been through this one before."

It is endurance under trial. You begin to learn. If you had never been through this before you would go to pieces. But you have been through it before and that makes a difference.

The last time you went through it you fell, you picked yourself up and you went again. It came upon you again, and you fell a little bit, but you picked yourself up.

The time after that it came upon you, and you had learned a little bit and you said, "Hold it, I'm not going to give in to this thing now. I am going to face it."

Eventually you come to the place where when that problem comes upon you, you stand firm and you say, "I'm not budging. I'm facing this one squarely in faith now."

Can you see what I am talking about?

How can you develop it and strengthen it? You do it by filling yourself with the Word.

Romans 15:4 says: For whatever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. 

In other words, we can learn from other people's experiences too. We can learn from our own experiences, and we can learn from the experiences of others. 

How do you know when it is there? When you are not moved by what you see or by what you hear. When you expect your faith to work, even though it looks impossible. Even though there is no sign of any movement, you expect your faith to work.

Putting the Three Forces Together

These are the three spiritual forces - faith, love and hope. And as you release those forces into the earth, they will go out and accomplish, and bring about that creation from your human spirit. 

How do you use them? There are various different illustrations. I always like to use the one of a rifle, or a gun of any kind. There are three important parts that must function before you are able to hit the target. 

Firstly, you must have a bullet in there. You must have a charge.

What happens if there is no bullet? You can pull the trigger and go, "Pow, pow," like the kids do, but you won't anything. But once you put the bullet in, you are ready now to fire. 

On the other hand, you can take your rifle with the bullet in. You can walk around with it and hold it and go 'bang.', but you will not hit anything - not until you pull the trigger. 

You could also take your rifle and carry it on your shoulder with the bullet in. You could pull the trigger and shoot up into the sky. Perhaps you will hit the moon.

Or you can point it into the ground and shoot it there. You will probably shoot your foot if you are not careful, but you will accomplish nothing with it. 

No, to make full use of the weapon you have to aim it at something.

You need the gun sights on the barrel to hold it in the right direction. And you have to aim it perfectly on your target before you are able to hit anything. 

Then when you put the bullet in, you cock it and hold it trained on the target and pull the trigger, you will have success. 

I hear people saying, "Well I have faith. I believed in God and I trusted. I know so-and-so who is a real sister of faith, but she died of cancer."

"I know brother so-and-so. He's a real man of God. He is so full of the love of the Lord. I can't understand why he is starving and God is not providing his needs." 

Well he knows how to pull his trigger, but he didn't bother putting the bullet in, or he didn't know how to aim it. It is as simple as that. 

If you want to obtain results using the forces of the human spirit, motivated by the power of the Holy Spirit, you will have to learn that these three forces must work together as one. 

They are like the three primary colors of light that must be mixed together to make the purity of white light.

They must flow together and work together as one, because if you do not have all of them working together you will accomplish absolutely nothing. 

In Section 06 we will see how we can take those forces, use them together, and release them to bring about a creation from the Spirit.

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Way of Blessing Part 1 - Discovering Your Blessing - Chapter 10 of 26