Tell Them I Love Them (3 page)

"For we walk by faith [we regulate
our lives and conduct ourselves by our conviction or belief respecting man's
relationship to God and divine things,
with trust and holy fervor; thus we
walk] not by sight or appearance."

2 Corinthians 5:7 AMP

Once when I was reading that Scripture, God started speaking some dynamic things to my heart.

I am trying to walk by faith. In every single thing in my life, I want to walk by faith. And the
Amplified Bible
says in 2 Corinthians 5:7 that

"...we regulate our lives and conduct ourselves
by our conviction or belief respecting man's
relationship to God."

In other words,
I am only going to be able to
walk in faith based on what I believe about my
relationship with God.
Do you understand that? A person who believes he is unrighteous might as well forget walking in faith. A person who believes he is an old worm in the dust and God does not love Him might as well forget the faith walk, too. A lot of people are trying to walk in faith, but they don't have these other things in their hearts.

Galatians 5:6 says, faith works by love. God put this in my heart: "Everybody thinks that this Scripture means that if they don't love other people, their faith won't work. That isn't what it means at all. What it really means is if they don't know how much I love them, their faith won't work." Faith will not work without love. But it isn't your ability to love other people. It is your letting God Almighty love you.

There is a big difference in that. Trusting God and walking in faith is leaning on Him and trusting Him for everything. You can't do that with someone if you don't know he loves you. You might as well forget it. You are never going to be able to trust God if you don't know He loves you.

If you really knew how much God loves you, you would have less trouble receiving a healing.

You would have less trouble receiving your financial needs met.

The reason you can't receive is that you don't really believe, totally, that God is giving it to you.

You might say, "I want to believe that, but how do I believe that?"

You have the love of God inside you, and all you need is to begin to recognize it when He shows you. The Bible says,
"We love Him,
because He first loved us"
(1 John 4:19). It would be impossible for you to love God if you weren't assured of the fact that He loved you first.

It is all down inside you, in your heart. It is in there!
God loves you! You are wonderful! You are
beautiful! You are precious! You are tremendous!

God loves you!
Nobody in all the world will ever love you like God loves you.

You don't
need
anybody but God, but He will give you other people in your life. The truth is that if there were nobody but you and God, you would get by fine. God will be your best friend. He will be your mate if you don't have one. He will be your mother or father if you don't have one.

God loves you that much. That's how you can believe Him for anything. He loves you so much that you know He wants you to have it. And until you know that God wants you to have it, you are never going to be operating in enough faith to receive anything.

Faith works by letting God love you.
It doesn't work by your ability to go out and love somebody else. Let God love you and go around all day just telling God, "Oh, God, I know You love me.

Hallelujah! Father, I praise You. I magnify Your name."

Smith Wigglesworth was a great apostle of God. Someone asked him if he had long seasons in prayer, and he said, "I rarely ever pray more than 30 minutes, but I rarely ever go 30 minutes without praying." He said once that if he went more than fifteen minutes at one time without having some communication with God, he had to repent.

We are trying to get things from the wrong end. You can't make it happen by your works. God will bless you because He loves you. He will give to you the same way He gave you your salvation.

You are not going to get a family member, or anyone else, saved by working at it. Let God love you. Then, by the time you see the family member, you will be ready to love him. The Bible tells you that if you will love them and stop trying to win them with your words and all your fancy ways, you will draw them to Jesus. The Spirit of God will draw your family through His love. But you can't love others if you don't let God love you first.

Ephesians 2:8 AMP says,
"For it is by free
grace (God's unmerited favor) that you are
saved...."
Do you realize that you did nothing to get saved? Most of us were just as rotten as the day is long when Jesus saved us, and it certainly was not based on our good works or our ability to do anything right. It was because of only one thing: God loved us so much that he gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believed in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16.)

Grace can also be defined as God's willingness to use His ability in your life to meet all your needs. Just as God, by grace, gave you enough faith to get saved, He also, because of His love, gives you the faith to believe He is your healer. He gives you the faith to believe He is your provider.

If the faith He imparted to you for your salvation was enough to save you from all your sins, that same faith is on the inside of you to meet all the rest of your needs all your life. If you believe that God loves you, and really begin to know it, then you will begin to really trust Him.

You will be convicted of the truthfulness of God's Word. You will
know
that He would never lie to you because He loves you.

According to the
Amplified Bible,
"faith" is

"the leaning of your entire human personality
on Him"
[God]
"in absolute trust and
confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness"
(Col. 1:4). As you allow God to love you, you will learn to love Him and trust Him, and you
will
have faith.

God loves
you!

5

Freedom From Fear

"There is no fear in love [dread
does not exist], but full-grown
(complete, perfect) love turns fear out
of doors and expels every trace of
terror! For fear brings with it the
thought of punishment, and [so] he who
is afraid has not reached the full
maturity of love [is not yet grown into
love's complete perfection]."

1 John 4:18 AMP

We usually go along just fine in faith, confident that God loves us, trusting Him. Then all of a sudden, something attacks us.

The big stealer of faith is circumstances—those bad things that happen to us. You don't have much trouble believing God loves you until the circumstances make it look like He doesn't.

Then the devil comes in with fear and condemnation to separate you from the very thing that will set you free—God's love. "Well, what about this?" he says. "I thought God loved you. So why are bad things happening to you? You must have done something awful. God is really mad at you."

Then you lose your confidence before God, and He can't help you if you are not confident. You can't be confident, or full of faith, if you don't know that God loves you. And if you receive the devil's load of fear and condemnation, you don't know how much God loves you.

First John 4:18 says a tremendously powerful thing
"...perfect love casteth out fear."
I meditated and meditated on that Scripture, trying to figure it out, and one day God finally dropped it in my spirit. Perfect love casts out fear, and God
is
that perfect love. And when you know how perfect that love is toward you, there is nothing in all of creation that you can be afraid of. It is impossible to be afraid if you have a personal revelation that God loves you.

It is impossible to fear failure if you know that God loves you. You can't fail if you are dependent on God. The only way you are going to fail is if you are dependent on yourself. If you know that God loves you, you will not fear failure. If you know that God loves you, you will not fear rejection.

God's love is of such magnitude that it covers everything. Do you think that the same God that saved you and set you free is going to condemn you? Satan is the condemner. God will convict you of sin in your life, and He will show you the way out. The devil will condemn you and tell you there is no way out.

In the
Amplified Bible
this Scripture reads:

"There is no fear in love [dread
does not exist], but full-grown
(complete, perfect) love turns fear out
of doors and expels every trace of
terror! For fear brings with it the
thought of punishment, and [so] he who
is afraid has not reached the full
maturity of love [is not yet grown into
love's complete perfection]."

1 John 4:18

A lot of people think that Scripture means that if you can love me enough, then you will not be afraid of me, or if you can love somebody enough, then fear will leave your life. But that isn't what it means.

It means if you let God love you, then you will not be afraid. You have to let God love you if you don't want to have fear in your life.
Receive God's
love for you right now by an act of faith.
Go ahead.

Reach out in faith and take all of God's love for you.

Right after God gave me this revelation on His love casting out fear, I had to put it into practice.

We had been having car trouble, and we thought the transmission was going out in our car, and we have a big transmission! It would probably have cost four or five hundred dollars to replace it if it was completely out, and we didn't have the money.

So we just kept driving it.

God ministered to me that morning and said,

"Joyce, just go around all day loving Me, and let Me love you. You don't have to do anything else.

You don't have to be a woman of great faith. All you have to do is go around loving Me and letting Me love you. Just all the time. Let Me love you."

So, I was going around building myself up in my most holy faith and was singing, making up songs to God and having a wonderful time. Then all of a sudden, I heard my husband back in the garage. But he had gone to work about 45 minutes before! He opened the door and said, "I never could get the car out of first gear. We are going to have to take it in."

I just shut the door and started laughing. It was not something I decided to do. It just came out. It just rose up out of my spirit, and God showed me that it was because I had been letting Him love me all morning that I was able to laugh. Letting God love you opens the door for faith to come out of you. I just began to laugh, and that was faith.

Abraham laughed the laugh of faith. When God came to him and told him he was going to have a son, Abraham backed off and laughed, saying, "Glory! I believe it." Now Sarah laughed the laugh of doubt and unbelief, and God corrected her, but He didn't jump onto Abraham. He didn't call Abraham down for laughing because there is a laugh of faith.

When the devil comes against you and what he is trying to do seems so foolish and so ridiculous, and you know your God so well that it doesn't scare you, you laugh in faith. You know that God loves you, and He has it covered.

So as I was laughing about my transmission, God spoke something to my heart in a still, small voice, but it was very powerful. He said to me three times, "If you operate like this with Me, Joyce, I'll never disappoint you." It was like it just came through the atmosphere of my house. "I'll never disappoint you. I'll never disappoint you."

If you will lean on God and let God love you and you love Him, you can forget all the work of trying to operate in faith. You just let God love you, and you love Him, and He will bring it to pass. The love of God will rise up inside of you and cast out all the fear.

God loves
you!

6

Love Reaches Out

"And this command (charge, order,
injunction) we have from Him: that he
who loves God shall love his brother [believer] also."

1 John 4:21

You are God's special child. He told you that in Deuteronomy 7:6. If you will start to act that way, it will begin to change the world. You will go into the supermarket with a smile on your face and grab your grocery cart and say, "Everything that I touch is blessed. Hallelujah! They're blessed to have me in this store today. Glory!" Just go whistling through the store, singing, being special wherever you go.

When we begin to know how special we are and start acting like God loves us, we can win the world for Jesus. Love will spread like wildfire. But it is not going to do any good to go around saying you are a Christian, then growling at everyone.

You say, "I'm a Christian—I'm a Christian," but when a car cuts in front of you, you say, "Come on, dummy, get out of my way. Don't you know I've got to get to church? I'm going to be late for the meeting, you nut."

That's the kind of stuff we do sometimes. Are you ready to grab hold of victory? Just reach out there in the spirit, and grab hold of victory and say,

"Devil, you have led me around with lies and fear long enough. I am a special person, and I am going to have victory in the name of Jesus because God loves me, devil, and there is nothing you can do about it!"

God's love inside of you will set you free from fear, and you will not be afraid to reach out to others with love. God wants you to believe it when He says He will do greater works through you because Jesus went to His Father. Do you really believe God will use you? God will give you what you believe Him for. You can't be afraid to step out.