UNDERSTANDING THE LOVE OF GOD SERIES

LOVE THINKS NO EVIL

Galatians 5: 16-25 “So I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the work of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outburst of wrath, selfish ambition, dissentious, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are of Christ have crucified the flesh which with its passion and desires. If you live in the Spirit let us also walk in the Spirit.”

Here he talks about the fruit of the Spirit. Notice in verse 22 it starts with a But. That means he is comparing the works of the flesh with the works of the Spirit. And we have see how the fruit of the Spirit is all related to love, which is the subject we are touching on, the love of God. This morning we will go a bit further to see how he contrasts the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. This has to relate to a particular part of our being which is our soul. The love of God dwells in our spirit. I am a sprit being. I have God’s nature in me. And I have the love of God in me. The love of God has been shed in my heart, poured into my spirit when I was born again. So we understand that the love of God is in our spirit man. The love of God in our spirit man must flow and affect our soul. If it’s in our spirit alone is not enough. See the works of the flesh are tied up with the effects that the flesh and temptation have on your mind. All the works of the flesh that are listed there speaks of for example, uncleanness, fornication, adultery, and the things that are committed in the heart, for example Jesus saying that if a man looks at a woman with lust in his heart, he has committed adultery in his heart. He is talking about wrong thoughts. All the works of the flesh start with a wrong thought, a wrong mental attitude that we allow to remain in our mind and to grow and to bear fruit. Wrong thoughts will produce after its kind. So when we talk about the love of God, definitely the love of God has to have an effect on our thinking life and our thought life. That is reading between the lines in these scriptures that we have read here. In verse 16 he says walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

How to walk in the Spirit? It has to have our soul involved. Our soul has to be involved in walking in the things of the Spirit. Romans 8 contrasting the works of the flesh and the works of the Spirit again verse 5-6, For those who live according to the flesh (and that will produce all the works of the flesh mentioned in Galatians 5) set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit, for to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

Again you see the same fruit coming forth. Life, which is zoe and peace. Notice how he talks about the mind. We can be flesh minded or Spirit minded. The only problem is what do we mean by being Spirit minded? If I were to ask you and say tell me what it means to be Spirit minded, some of you say to be Word minded. Well, that’s fair but besides being Word minded it also means to be love minded. That means our minds will only be filled with loving thoughts. Anything that is from God’s nature will be in line with His nature. See the characteristic of God, which is described to us by John is God is love. So everything else that God does, He does out of His love. And if anything is not in the love of God then the source is not God. In the same way, our thoughts can either be filled with fleshly thoughts or spiritual thoughts. Spiritual thoughts are always in line with the Word and always in line with the love of God. To fill our minds with God’s thoughts is to meditate on the Word, confessing and meditating and contemplating upon them.

What about the other areas of our daily life and the thoughts that comes to us daily? How do we divide thoughts that come from God and thoughts that do not? We give you a key. The key is that any thought that has nothing to do with the love of God; any thought that is void of the love of God is not a thought that you have to dwell in. It will hinder faith; it will hinder the Spirit of love from flowing through you.

I Cor. 13: 4 “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil.”

The love of God that we are talking about has to have an effect on your thought life. It is not only affection in a sense. It is not only a choice of your will. It is also the contemplation of your mind. To have this agape love of God in us is to be filled with good thoughts towards everyone around us. God declared in His Word that My thoughts towards you are good and they are precious. God’s thoughts toward us are good and precious. What about your thoughts to each other? They must be good and precious.

Phil.4: 5 “Let your gentleness be known to all men.” We have seen earlier that love is gentle; love is kind. One of the fruit of the Spirit is meekness, gentleness, and then he goes on to say how to have that. How to have this love of God flow through your life? “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Verse 8, “finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things.”

If you have the love of God in your heart or in your life, you will not tolerate an evil thought towards another person. You will not harbor a thought of jealousy to another one. You will not harbor a thought of unforgiveness against another one. For love thinks no evil. Love will not allow that thought to exist in your heart and in your mind. When the Bible says that God’s love is toward all and everyone, what does it means? It means that God is in a position to receive everyone. He does not harbor unforgiveness. God does not harbor evil thoughts against people. He declares onto us in Romans 8 the last few verses. It says nothing can separate you from the love of God. Death, hell, Satan, demons whatever and circumstances, tribulations, nothing can separate you from the love of God. In other words, nothing can cause God to have His thought change against you. When He says that the love of God is to each and everyone, it means God loves everyone, even the lost, even people who reject Him, even people who have died and who are now condemned in the prison of Hades. God’s love has not changed towards them. God’s position of love is towards them. But they have sown evil and now they reap what they have sowed. And their minds are so twisted that there is no way they can come back to God. It has become a part of their nature. Their nature is like the devil. That is why they go to where the devil is. But God’s love continues. God has set Himself in a position where He says I love you. I love you. His love doesn’t change even though you change. There is no shadow of turning with God. His attitude remains the same. His thoughts towards you remain the same. He is ready to receive anyone who comes to Him openly. In the same manner God now declares that we must have the same love to each other.

Do you know that sometimes people can say with their mouth I love you but their thought do not say I love you. That is not agape love. That is plastic love. What the bible says here is that when you have the love of God in your heart, not only do your word say so, but when you are not saying anything and your mind is thinking, it is thinking good thoughts to each other. It is broadcasting loving thoughts to each other. And when these thoughts are released, it releases an atmosphere of agape love to flow between you and another person.

See we communicate to each other at three levels. We can communicate to each other in the level of the physical realm through our voice or to touch. We can communicate to each other in the soul realm. We can communicate to each other in the spirit realm. How do we communicate to each other in the spirit realm? See when someone is ministering under the anointing, do you know that the spirit resonate to the anointing? Spirit communicates onto spirit. What do we mean by the inward witness? The inward witness means when someone’s spirit is touched by the Lord and someone is moving under the Spirit of God from their spirit filled with love, your spirit begin to be filled with the same love. They produce after their kind.

Jesus said in John 6: 63 “The words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life.” In other words, Jesus said that His word contain spirit. When He speaks His word, His word impart from His spirit and every one of us impart from our spirit whether you like it or not. It’s something that takes place all the time. If you have a spirit of unforgiveness and anger and hatred, even though you may not be sharing about that area and that topic, you maybe talking about the sky is blue, the grass is green, yet people will be picking that hatred in your spirit. People will be picking up that anger that is in your heart even though you never mention one thing about that. It comes out. That is why in relationship, for example, we ask husband and wife or your loved ones at home within the same family or people whom you live together with under the same roof. Do you know it’s not so much as what is said as the way it is said that irritate or affects the people? What you say is one thing but the way you say it can communicate something that the other person picks up and reacts to. Many times a person reacts not so much to what you say as the way you say it. Perhaps it could be in an office and your boss comes and say, “Hey, do this thing” or the boss could come and say, “Could you do this thing?” The same command carries a different spirit. And we don’t realize it but our sub-conscious mind picks up more than our conscious mind. Your conscious mind is only about 5% of your total mind. The other 95% of your mind is more on the sub-conscious level. We pick up more in the sub-conscious level than in the conscious level. Now the sub-conscious mind and the conscious mind are in the soul realm. Nothing to do with the spirit realm but in the spirit realm when you are born again your spirit is alive to God. You can pick up something that others cannot pick up because their spirit is dead. We can pick up in a deeper realm, the realm of the spirit. However this morning we are talking about communication in the soul realm. That the love of God must affect your whole being so that when you speak to one another, when you relate to one another, it is an overflow rather than the flow.

What do we mean by overflow rather than the flow? For example, if we have water, for example let this bottle represent you as a vessel of God. For example the water inside this bottle represents the love of God. If the level of the water is only up to this level, way right at the bottom and when you impart that water to another one, you literally pour it all out to fill a cup. You got just enough water in your vessel to fill that cup. For example, this is your soul realm, and then all that you communicate is what it is. It’s not an over flow. What you are giving out is the flow. It is all that you have. What happen when your soul begin to draw from the spirit realm with the love that is inside? And you begin to be filled to overflowing with the love of God. What happens is that when you communicate or relate to one another, they receive an overflow with that love. It carries a greater love. It carries a greater power. Jesus says is like a river that flows. The Spirit of God is like a river that flows. And as it flows to your being, it creates a force that people feel. It’s called the force of love.

For some people they are so blocked up. All they have is a trickle; whatever they do flows from that trickle. For example, your love could be about half a liter in your soul, a trickle. Everything you do, you only allow half a liter to flow per minute. No matter how you try, somehow people sense it and know that’s all you love them, that much half a liter per minute. Your mind sometimes is filled with good thoughts towards others. Sometimes it is filled with anger. Sometimes it’s filled with doubts. Sometimes it’s filled with suspicion. Sometimes you meditate on the Word and you repent then someone rubs you again and you are filled with anger again. But you have learned that you possess what you confess. So you keep your gap shut. But you have not learned that you also have to get rid of the thoughts inside. It is not just sealing your mouth; it is removing the whole volcano. It’s not only sealing the mouth of the volcano. God does not want to seal the volcano; He wants to remove the volcano from your life so that you stop exploding and all the lava flow out onto the people. Burning some or hurting many. What God wants to do is to take out that volcano that is in your soul. God does not just want to change your confession; He wants to change your thought life.

That is why Jesus says that you shall not doubt when you exercise faith because the warfare is in the mind. And He is speaking in respect to love. Loving thoughts are thoughts that are filled with love, joy, and peace. Do you know that depressive thoughts are not thoughts of love? Because it’s the opposite of joy. Yet people would entertain these depressive thoughts. So when that depressive thought fill you, everything you speak will come from that depressive thought. No matter how you try to change your voice, yet that depressive thought will just come out and touch people’s souls at the same soul level. You cannot allow thoughts of depression or fear to dominate you. It’s in your thoughts. When that gets into your thought, it comes out in everything you do and everything you say.

Do you know people somehow sense it? Sometimes they themselves do not know why they react to you that way because it’s at the sub-conscious level where the 95% of their sub-conscious mind are operating and their own conscious mind do not know why they react to you that way. For that reason you will notice that sometimes people don’t change their thought life. They don’t allow the agape love of God to change your thought life. What happens is that they perpetually create the same problem to different people and all their life they are wondering why that keeps happening. Why do people run away from them? Why do people seems to get hurt every time they relate to these same people. And the wonderful thing about it is that the people who get hurt also don’t understand why they just don’t like that guy.

See it’s not at the 5% conscious level. It’s at the sub-conscious level where it eats you up. That is why if you get angry with another person and you meditate on that anger, for example you could be Mr. Habakkuk and you got angry with Miss Jezebel whether rightly or wrongly. So your anger seeps in you. You are not angry against for example Nathan. Anyway here is Habakkuk he is angry with Miss Jezebel, so he has friends who called Nathan. He is not angry with Nathan, but somehow every day he meditates on his angry relationship with Jezebel and the thoughts keep coming and he hang on to those thoughts. It gets into his sub-conscious and he did not ask the Blood of Jesus to cleanse him of his anger. He did not ask God for forgiveness and here he comes to fellowship with his friend Nathan. Everything Habakkuk says is filled with anger, sooner or later Nathan picks it up and if Habakkuk holds on to it for a long time, his relationship somehow becomes strained with Nathan. Nathan will be so fed up with him that he will start avoiding him. And Habakkuk will be left to himself and wonder what is happening here. What am I doing? Why are all these things happening to me? Nobody loves me. This is an important principle here. Anytime you have a wrong relationship with another person, you will end up having wrong relationships with everyone else. You cannot compartmentalize relationship.

For example, a husband is unfaithful to his wife. Do you know his whole relationship with everybody else becomes different, because he did not relate properly to his wife? Or a wife who does not relate to husband properly, you will not be able to relate with other people. One wrong relationship will spoil all the other relationship. One bad apple spoils the whole lot. It’s inside you. You carry it about. You say how come it spread, because you carry it in your soul. You carry that foul stinking thought in your soul and so you bring it to another person. And before long they also get the stink. Sometimes those other guys begin to have the same stink and it spread like a cancer. The next thing you know, you need God’s radiation to kill all those things off. No wonder Jesus says loves one another as I love you. Don’t underestimate your relationship with any single one. If they are wrong, you have unforgiveness against one, it will sub-consciously begin to affect your relationship with others. You cannot run away from wrong relationship because God has come to build relationship until we reach the point where we can love everyone with the love of God. People may hate you but you are able to respond with the love of God. Something grows stronger in you.

Lets think of it in a positive term. For example, you go through a very difficult situation. Without justification you get hurt, you get bruised, you get slandered, you get blacklisted and all kinds of thing happen. But you have learned about the love of God and you know that if you are not able to love, you learn to draw the love of God in your life. So you overcome that situation. Your soul says react but your spirit says love, meekness and you keep showing love in return. And because of your strength that you have gathered in relating to a difficult situation, suddenly you have a greater ability to deal with other people.

For example, Mr. X hurts you very much. At first you react back, suddenly you come to see God’s Word that talk about love. What happens is you begin to grow in love. You begin to learn how to love. You begin to love without your feelings. You begin to choose to love and you allow the Spirit of God to flow through you. So Mr. X gives you a punch. You give him a present. Mr. X slaps you on the left cheek and you give him your right cheek. Didn’t Jesus say that? Turn the other cheek. So Mr. X sends you a time bomb and you send back a present. And you keep reacting back with love. Something begins to happen inside you. And in your private life you say I am not going to do what I feel but I am going to do what I believe. If you talk about your feelings, a baby volcano was about to erupt but because you knew the Word of God, you meditate on the word, the devil comes to you and says; send Mr. X a stink bomb. You say no I will not. I reject that thought. And you say I think about sending Mr. X a sheepskin. After sometime something changes inside you. You have allowed loving thoughts to fill your life. Your vessel starts overflowing. And because you are able to stand in love in that situation, suddenly your relationship with Mr. A, Mr. B and Mr. C and with all the other people take on a deeper level. When you learn to relate with one person, it affects your relationship with all other people. The law operates, whether it is a bad relationship or good relationship.

So remember it’s dangerous to foster a wrong relationship or to harbor wrong thoughts in your life or to harbor wrong relationship. Some of you may try to hide but you cannot hide from God. Neither can you hide in the end from each other. It will erupt in you. You cannot say I am loving to everybody I know in the church. But to people outside the church, you could have come from another church that has hurt you and you harbor that unforgiveness. Do you know that you would prevent your relationship with others too until you release them in forgiveness. Do you know that the way I react when I get slandered or when I get persecuted? The way I react to other people is going to affect the way I minister here in this place. But if I could react to them in love, the way I minister and love each one of you will increase to higher degree. You may not even be involved in that situation but my relating to them and then relating to you affects our relationship. We cannot run from wrong relationship. We have to face them and change them. And the place to start changing is in your thought life. You will know a wrong relationship when you have thoughts about another person. Isn’t it wonderful to come to a place in life where all you think about everyone is good thoughts?

I had to make myself do it in relationship to other places or other churches though they may disagree with me in certain areas. I had to choose to think good thoughts towards them. Sometimes people come to me with bad thoughts about them; I wouldn’t want to sit down because I know they have done something wrong to me. And then comes another person who gives some bad report about this person who spoke ill of me. Will I say, “Good, good, good, give it to them.” No, but because of the spirit of love I will tell them you must love. I also will not tolerate you speaking bad about my enemy. Because it will foster wrong things, so as a result of that attitude it increases my ability to love each other. That is why we have to learn to love one another with agape love. Learn to relate with people deeply because every person you relate to deeply, you invest on other relationships. For example, I may not know James. But I learn to relate to him and show the love of God to him. In doing it, my love level increases and then I will be able to love another brother or sister better and at a higher level. Don’t just love generally. I mean it’s a wonderful thing to say I love the world. God so loved the world. But the person under the same roof you hate, yet it’s a paradox the one under the same roof is preventing you from releasing love to the world. And the day you start changing and learn to love those, whom you see, like I John tells you, you began to love those whom you see, love those whom you relate to.

Don’t think about spiritualizing and say this department of my life I am going to put it aside. I just can’t bear it and then in this relationship for example church relationship. You are going to say I love you with the love of the Lord. Somehow that relationship is going to affect here. And when you learn to relate deeply to those around you, all of us got a circle that we mixed around. We can only relate deeply to a few. Even the Lord Jesus could relate deeply to twelve or so of His disciples. Because we are limited in body and in time, it’s not possible to relate deeply to a million people yet those relationships that you develop properly within the circle of your work or the circle of your life, if you relate properly it’s going to cause you to relate very deeply to the multitudes. You never run away from them. Start in your thought life and start with those around you and start now. Think good thoughts.

How do I start? I can help you with a few examples. For example, you could begin to send forth thoughts of love to people, to those whom you love and those around you. See when I relate to people, I consciously try to focus my thoughts. I like to look at people the way God looks at them. And I like to sense what God’s thoughts is flowing towards them. And so the first thing that helps me to position myself is that when I look at another person, I will say God how do you look at that person and let me know your love towards that person. What I do is I broadcast thoughts to that person, thoughts of love and that person’s soul picks it up. It is not telepathy because telepathy means that everything is communicated openly and understood. But it’s more that influence, the atmosphere. Perhaps you could understand if I give a negative example. For example, if I have a bad thought or unforgiveness and hatred and it’s festering inside of me and all I have is unforgiveness. Even though I may not meet that person and when I meet that person I put on my plastic smile but my thoughts are saying you rascal. And I may be shaking hands with that person, my mouth is saying, “Praise God,” but my mind is saying, “You rascal.” Do you know that the other person can pick it up? You may not have said “you rascal” with your lips but the other person as he shakes your hand picks up your animosity. He did not hear “you rascal” but somehow he picks up in the soul conscious mind you hate him. It’s very difficult for human being to lie, their conscience react and their whole body reacts. That is why they have the lie-detecting machine. Even though a human being try to lie a part of their body gives way. Their bodies tensed up. Something reacts in them. And the strange thing is that the sub-conscious mind seems to be able to pick up all the small, small evidences.

When people fall in love, they seem to know before that fellow says it. Their sub-conscious mind pick up that extra longer look, that extra smile, that extra touch, that extra time, it may even vary a split second but the sub-conscious mind picks it up without our conscious mind knowing it. So that is what I call a physical communication in a small way. At the same time there is a level of atmosphere created in the soul realm that the person picks up. So all of your being when you come to a person saying I hate you, but you put on a plastic smile and you are saying I love you, people pick it up. Then when you relate to crowds and you put on a plastic smile yet the crowd can pick it up after a long span of time. Now that is on the negative side. On the positive side when you are filled with loving thoughts towards each other and as you come to people before you say anything your thoughts say I love you. Before I say anything with my lips the person picks it up, because my mind will send all the hidden messages to all the small, small reactions in my body. It could be the way you look, the way you touch, the way you say. You cannot hide as it comes out in many ways.

I have a book by a Christian magician. It is not psychic but it was a skill he developed to pick up all these what he calls hidden but it’s actually minute detail. So being a Christian he began to talk about Christ after he performed an act of magic. It’s all tricks but one day a guy rang him and says how good are you. Then he said over the phone, you pick up a set of cards or anything and you take one out. Now I want you to read out all the cards you have taken out. And I will tell you which one you pick it up. And he picked the exact one. The guy was stunned. He has learned to be sensitive even to the variations and even to the voice. So when the other guy began to speak the card that he pulled up, he began to read it out. When he came to the card that he held, there is a slight change in his voice. The normal people cannot pick it up but he is trained as a magician and he could pick up the slight change in the voice and he could say that’s the card, which a normal average person is not trained in that area. This is just to show you how there is an unseen communication going on. It all starts with your thoughts. What you think towards others.

So the Bible says think good thoughts. Think thoughts that are lovely, thoughts that are beautiful, thoughts that have virtue. Get rid of all the wrong thoughts. Love thinks no evil. Love thinks good thoughts. Love thinks loving thoughts; love thinks joyful thoughts. Love fills your soul. Let love in your spirit fills your soul with loving thoughts in your soul. Start broadcasting thoughts to each other, loving thoughts. Don’t broadcast thoughts like “you rascal, you dumb bell, you snake.” Before you meet people, send thoughts to them. I love you, I like you, I love you with the love of the Lord.

I have many people come and tell me it changes. Many years ago I already started preaching about this. There was a banker. He has migrated. He was a manager in Southern Bank. He started practicing it in his own bank. Some were believers and some were not. But he broadcast loving thoughts to them. He began to say, “I love you and Jesus loves you.” He said that there was a change in his relationship with them. People picked it up. Not only the atmosphere of the thoughts but when you position yourself to love others, there are unseen signals; hidden signals are being sent forth to. In your action, in your voice, in your eyes that people are picking up. And when they pick it up, they respond. Everyone responds to love. Love towards people helps them to open up like a flower and you can bring out the beauty and their fragrance in their life.

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