I was really wrestling with what to speak
on.
It's a very live church, and God gave
me some thoughts again on the subject of
love.
And I wanted to not share the same
words, but just share some similar thoughts.
This morning, I'd like you to turn to
Philippians.
Here was a church known for their love,
and yet what does Paul write to them?
Starting at verse 8, For God is my
witness, how greatly I long after you all
in the tender mercies of Jesus Christ.
And this I pray, that your love may
abound yet more and more in knowledge and
in all judgment.
That your love may abound yet more and
more in knowledge and in all judgment.
That you may approve things that are excellent,
that you may be sincere and without offense
till the day of Christ, being filled with
the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus
Christ under the glory and praise of God.
And I just had this burden this morning,
that we may understand the great need so
often in our own fellowship is just for
more love.
I believe to some degree, and I'm sure
it varies from team to team and place
to place, but I believe that there is
a lot of love and OM.
I've searched my heart about that because knowing
things that happen, things that we are at
times ashamed of as a movement, as the
leaders of the movement.
We can, if we're not careful, we can
become too critical.
But I think as we look at what
God is doing through people's lives, there is
a lot of love.
And I think often we don't see people's
loving actions.
The way we are as human beings, if
a person does ten things or seven things
that are somewhat loving, that are motivated by
the love of Christ and the desire to
obey God's Word, and then one thing that
is unloving and a bit selfish, that is
the thing that is more easily remembered.
That is part of human nature, both among
Christians and non-Christians.
One of the things I guess we have
in common.
And I know that sometimes when I'm ministering
in a local church, that they are a
church that really knows something about love.
In some cases, I'm sure more than we
do.
Sometimes that love is untested.
And I found myself Sunday morning in a
church where I knew there was a lot
of love.
It was a good church.
It was a live church.
And yet I felt this constraint to just
give a plea for more love and talk
about how that would affect their lives.
And from the little feedback, because we had
to run out of there to catch a
plane, at least I did, the others headed
by vehicle toward New Jersey, as they didn't
go with me to Norfolk.
I was given assurance, and then later I
talked to the pastor's wife on the phone.
You know, they felt this was absolutely the
word they needed from the Lord.
More love within our own fellowship would affect
every area of our life.
It would affect every area of our life.
Now, in speaking about love, I'm not saying
we don't need more commitment to the truth.
I think that's always true, and I recommend
you, we won't turn there now, to 1st
John, chapter 2, chapter 3, or to 2nd
John, 3rd John, books that are not read
very much.
There's a strong emphasis on truth, and we
need that.
We need that.
But I just have this desire, and I
wrote these few notes last night, that somehow
we would seek the Lord's face today to
have more love.
What are some of the areas of our
life where this would be affected?
And I wrote down, it would affect, especially,
our attitude.
Again, I'm really out of it here.
I'm just passing through.
I have to leave Monday morning.
I've not had any reports that are leading
me to share this.
I don't have any acts to grind this
morning.
As you can probably guess, I'm only half
awake.
Because of the time zones.
It's somewhere around 2 or 3 in the
morning right now.
But I just believe in my own life
that there can always be more love.
We have so much about this in the
New Testament.
I just urge you to meditate on 1st
Corinthians 13.
If you don't have 1st Corinthians 13, whatever
you may have, or, you know, the radical,
you may be on the radical cutting edge
of discipleship.
You may be strong in the truth in
different ways.
But if you don't have 1st Corinthians 13,
you just don't have it.
It's what it's all about.
The fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness,
meekness, self-control against such.
There's no law.
That, of course, comes from the book of
Galatians.
Very closely tied in with what we read
in 1st Corinthians 13.
Again and again, these very good loving fellowships
go through major division.
I mean, heavy stuff.
It's the most depressing thing I have found
in my Christian life.
And sometimes, O.M. teams have gone through
those things.
And generally, if there had just been a
little more love, especially at the moment of
impact, when the crisis came, when the strong
words came, it's amazing.
After being at this church, I felt led
on the Monday to phone another church that
I administered to when I was back in
the States in June.
In fact, a whole church movement, a thousand
strong.
Again, when I was there, I was so
impressed.
A young movement, fresh movement, very much delivered
from legalism.
The kind of church that I certainly easily
could have related to.
God gave us a close linking with those
people.
Very strong on truth.
Also with a fairly good emphasis on relationship.
But in the last six months, they have
gone through deep, deep pain.
Because of disunity.
Actually, I'm the subject of the inerrancy of
Scripture.
Just coming out of this, a lot of
their people came to mandate.
Quite a few are coming out of Europe.
One of the first major missions thrusts this
fellowship.
The whole new church movement has ever got
into.
It's interesting that this time of deep struggle
and almost split their leadership in two pieces.
Came after I had this meeting with all
their elders about getting involved in world missions.
Because up to now, they had not been
very involved.
And then Dennis Banker went there to follow
up on that visit.
Fortunately, a lot of their difficulties going on
mainly among the leadership and the young people
were, you know, some of them unaware of
it and getting involved and planning and praying
to move out to the mission field.
More love.
This is the message again and again, we
find in the epistles.
And I would ask you to search your
own heart.
I believe probably all of you are committed
to the way of love.
And you believe in love.
You're not going to jump up in the
meeting and say, I don't give me any
more of this love business.
I don't, you know, I got enough of
this in my life.
And I'm not sharing this message to the
exclusion of other messages.
But personally, I feel that if we're going
to make it through the next six months
of heavy pressure, if we're going to make
it through possible transition here in STL to
a different location, if we're going to make
it through the fiery darts of Satan in
the coming months, whatever way he decides to
go at us.
And O.M. has been hit very hard
You know, sometimes the hard hits that we
have because they're involved very deeply in people's
personal lives and their marriages.
They cannot be shared.
But we're being hit.
And we, as we face this growth of
O.M., as it spreads right across the
world, increasing numbers come from greater distances, seemingly
at times with a greater cultural differences as
well.
We're going to need more love.
You know, it's so easy to have miscommunication.
Let me tell you what happened in Messiah
College.
I sent two shipments of books to Messiah
College.
One out of the old motor home.
John Wright sent it.
I had my name on it.
Everything was fine.
The books were sitting outside the chaplain's office,
the man who helped organize the meeting.
The other shipment came later.
The chaplain phoned up the maintenance department and
he said, I'd like you to come up
here and fit a light bulb.
My bulbs burnt out.
While you're doing it, I want you to
take these books and put them in a
particular room.
And he named the room.
The man who took the message was not
the man who came up to fix the
light bulb.
That was the next man.
And in the English language, and we Americans
are especially guilty, we often speak just short
sentence.
We're a nation of abbreviation and of slang.
So when the man came up, he fixed
the bulb and he said, oh, are these
the books you want to get rid of?
Chaplain said, yes.
Take them away.
He'd already told the man on the phone
where they were going.
Let me just tell you, $1,000 of
books, history.
They're gone.
I arrived, where are my books?
These students, they were so embarrassed to tell
the third chief.
They didn't even want to say who was
responsible.
It took me a while to find out
who this was, but it was the chaplain.
And we had a good, we had a
good laugh and a good talk about it.
Wasn't a lack of love on the part
of the chaplain.
I hope it wasn't a part of lack
of love on the part of the maintenance
department.
Maybe they had a bad day.
It was a miscommunication, a language problem.
Different phrases mean different things to different people
at different times.
And I'm sure all of us have had
similar things, right?
Working here in Bromley or Forest Hill.
I thank God that through that little crisis
and they have said they're going to send
me money to cover these books.
I had inventory on them, amazing enough, because
David Teraberry wanted an inventory.
And I had it with me, exact list
of what books they were.
Our raw cost of those books, what we
actually paid, number of them were Operation Worlds,
was less than $1,000.
It was still a heartbreak.
And I'm praying, if it be the Lord's
will, that they would send the money to
cover the books.
I think they'll feel a lot better about
it.
I hope they don't get a copy of
this tape.
But you know, God was about to do
something really big there at Messiah College.
This was a big event for them.
And when we gave that invitation and we
read through the feedback papers from different folk,
we realized God had done something big.
Just right at the beginning, God wanted to
bring an unloving situation.
Satan wanted to bring an unloving situation.
And God, in His grace, overruled, at least
as far as I know.
I don't know things that may have gone
on that I don't know about.
And I just, I just feel such a,
such a desire to ask you, when the
pressure's on, go that extra mile in letting
love cover, in believing the best, in trying
to patiently find a solution in the midst
of that crisis, rather than perhaps blowing off
steam or saying something that's unkind or developing
a wrong attitude.
God is concerned about our attitudes.
Again and again, when I've been about to
say something or do something extreme, and the
leader of any movement, and the leaders have
the greatest capacity to bring pain.
If it's just a new recruit, we can
often isolate that to some degree and deal
with it.
But if the pain is coming from a
major leader, it has the potential to bring
so much hurt to the body.
And I just want to confess, if it
wasn't at 17, 18, 19, 20 years of
age, this message was hammered into me.
Again and again, I had to repent.
Again and again, I read another article, another
book on love.
In the very earliest days, everybody in O
.M. had to read Theodore Epps' book, Make
Love Your Aim, or Love is the Answer.
Make Love Your Aim is another book by
Eugenia Price.
And though I still fail, I still fail,
I know if it wasn't for this emphasis,
I would have blown O.M. in pieces,
or they would have had to remove me
before I did that.
I would have blown my marriage in pieces.
And I just thank God that this meant
very clear in Scripture.
And with it comes a message of brokenness
and repentance, because when we have these high
goals in the area of love, we will
fail.
We will fail to live up to our
own message.
There's no question about it.
Therefore, plan B has to constantly go into
effect.
Love will cause us to repent.
Love will cause us to go to that
brother.
Pride says, don't go.
Don't humble yourself.
This trip in the United States, I had
to humble myself very severely, at least twice
on the telephone, in repentance and brokenness, for
something that I had done in the past,
didn't realize it had not been cleared up
completely.
And pride, at the moment of criticism, misunderstanding,
pride will try to move into control.
And it's only if love is dominating our
lives that it will, how can you say
it, will conquer over the pride or the
hurt, or other difficulty that there may be.
And I'm not expressing this so well, but
I just say, you know, it works.
Love works.
If we're committed to this, again and again,
we'll be restrained.
At the end of the day, we'll be
so happy that we were restrained.
Jerry Davey here has seen the one or
two number of unloving situations in committee meetings,
board meetings, when Verwer's temperament overheats, and the
words come out that are not thought through.
And sometimes at the end, it's only the
apology or the repentance, sometimes even the tears,
that bring in the flood of blessing.
What a joy to be able to call
up someone that maybe you had hurt with
your tongue, or with your wrong attitude.
I heard again last week, public sin, public
repentance.
Private sin generally just means private repentance.
No one's asking you to, you know, hang
all your dirty laundry out in front of
the STL warehouse.
But if it's a public thing, if you
have, you know, even publicly said something unloving
and unkind, even to an unconverted person, even
an unconverted person, then that person needs your
apology.
I remember once having to apologize to a
man who pumped petrol into my vehicle.
I was very strong against pumping petrol on
the pavement.
Price went up, and this guy was sort
of daydreaming, and a lot of petrol spilled
over, went on the pavement, and I gave
him a piece of my mind.
And then I had to go back and
apologize.
I used some kind of excuse, you know,
under pressure, forgive me, but at least there
was half an apology.
I really recommend you don't go around giving
away pieces of your mind, because you may
run out shorter than you think, and then
after that you have a lot more problems
of just functioning at all.
More love is the challenge of the New
Testament.
There's no situation where a little more love
generally wouldn't help.
There's no marriage where a little more love
wouldn't help.
With it will come the patience.
And if the patience isn't there, as in
my case sometimes, then there has to be
the apology, and brokenness, humility, practical apologizing.
That's all tied in.
That's what it's all about.
It's not you living at some superior level,
always oozing out with love in every situation.
My daughter came over to visit us last
night and shared about a woman raped just
around the corner from where she lived.
We live in a real world.
And it's not a matter of you sort
of always just being, you know, all sort
of loving in a way that sometimes we
get a false interpretation of love.
Love has to be firm.
Love also demands justice.
And if that person is found, I don't
think the woman involved should just sort of
say, oh, well, you know, just as long
as you apologize, we of course, you know,
forgive you.
Of course, if she's a Christian, hopefully she
will forgive, but there must be justice.
And there are the laws of God, and
God has ordained also that there are laws
in the world.
And there is a time when love must
be firm, and it's a hard balance to
find.
And only perhaps when you're a parent will
you discover how difficult it is to find
that balance.
Of love and firmness.
I believe love, our commitment to love, also
will bring a greater call to purity.
We don't always connect the two, as we
see increased immorality and impurity in the Church
of Jesus Christ.
We may ask, where does love fit into
this?
And I was thinking through this, and I
realized that if I really love a sister
in Jesus Christ, and the last thing in
the world I will ever do is in
any way be involved in bringing her into
any kind of impurity or getting involved in
impurity, what may look like love is loss.
What may feel like some great wonderful experience
that seems to be from God, I've actually
had people when I've counseled them justify impurity
because the feeling was so wonderful, and they
hadn't had it.
Married men, married men justify immorality because they
hadn't had that wonderful feeling for a couple
of years.
I was just reading another book on the
plane, just part of the book, just again
exposing, completely exposing the idea that you can
build anything in your life on romantic love.
It's a con!
No marriage was ever built on romantic love.
It's got to be agape love.
It's got to be a love that's got
much, much more than what comes out of
these deceitful films that paint this brand of
romantic love.
No wonder the marriages in Asia, which are
brought into being through the parents where the
person is, the marriage is arranged, are actually
proving to hold just as well as marriages
that are based on choice by partner in
our Western world.
I'm not saying one is better than the
other.
Probably most of you would definitely feel the
Western way was better, but our statistics aren't
any better, and I just insert this that
tied in with this whole area of morality
and purity.
If you think here at STL and ICT
you can get into any kind of lustful
and moral relationship and cover that up, you're
going to be in for the shock of
your life, because let me tell you, you're
going to have to live with it, and
it may be months, but sooner or later
you will not be able to bear the
pain, especially if revival comes and the Holy
Spirit works in a special way.
You will not be able to bear the
pain of that hidden iniquity and sin and
impurity that was done in the dark, and
I believe it's something we need to realize
is tied in with this message of love.
Love will bring things into the light.
Love will deal with things fully rather than
trying to engage in cover-up, and then
lastly, in the moment that remains, love, of
course, will affect our unity on every side
in our homes, in our offices, where we
live.
We may not think the problem we have
right now in any situation is a problem
of lack of love, but I believe if
you search more carefully you'll discover that more
love in that situation will help you resolve
that problem quickly.
The problem may not be priority love.
No, it may be practical.
It may be an area of justice.
It may be an area of communication, but
a little more love, whatever the problem is,
won't hurt.
It won't hurt, and it may help to
find the solution a lot quicker.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your Word.
Even to the Philippian believers that tells them
that you wanted more love in the midst
of an already loving church, and there was
this plea for prayer that their love may
abound more and more.
I thank you, O God, that again and
again, when I've been about to make big
mistakes, it's your message on love that has
restrained me.
I thank you that the times I didn't
do the right thing, or I sinned or
failed, that it was your love that helped
me come to repentance, and your love that
lifted me up when I was down, down
on myself, down on the movement, down on
others, that your love lifted me up and
brought me back to sanity, stability, and maturity,
and we want to know this ongoing work
of love.
We know it is supernatural, but we know
you will not force it on us, that
we will have to repent.
We will have to deal with sin.
We will have to call sin for what
it really is, and all of its ugliness,
and all of its power to deceive, to
destroy, to bring confusion.
We think of the degree of gossip that
gets loose when love isn't in control, and
innuendo, and judgmentalism, and we know this is
one of Satan's primary methods to slow us
down.
Then we know when we do fail, if
we don't know how to appropriate your love,
we get in the grip of depression, or
discouragement, and fail to fight back to that
position of maturity and victory.
Think of your word that says our sins
will find us out.
Oh Lord, don't let us ever engage in
cover-up.
Help us to keep an open life, and
an open book before you, and before those
leaders that according to your word have been
assigned as guardians of our walk with yourself.
Be it our pastor, or be it our
leaders in this spiritual movement that you have
called us into.
Therefore our God, we do recommit ourselves to
this high and lofty calling of doing everything,
and of saying everything with love.
Help us in the midst of miscommunications to
be able to let that love cover, and
to talk things out in a way that
will honor you.
We ask in Jesus name, Amen.