Mike Bickle emphasizes the significance of wholehearted love for God, rooted in the first commandment to love Him with all our heart, soul, and strength. He outlines four spheres of love: receiving God's love, returning love to God, loving ourselves in grace, and loving others, explaining that these stages are interconnected and essential for genuine love. Bickle warns against a superficial understanding of love that lacks the depth of divine encounter, urging believers to pursue a passionate relationship with God to effectively love others. He asserts that true love is a supernatural act that reflects God's heart and cannot be separated from loving others. Ultimately, Bickle calls for a revival of the first commandment as a priority in the church before Christ's return.

Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus. Father, we love you. We love to love you, Abba. We ask you for the anointing of the Holy Spirit, that you would energize our spirit to love you more and more and more. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Tonight we're going to cover our second session on the first commandment course. It's a 12-part series on loving the Lord our God with all of our heart. The Holy Spirit is going to restore the first commandment to first place before Jesus returns. The first commandment was in first place in the early church for a short season and it's going to be a global reality before the Lord returns. Paragraph, uh, Roman numeral one, just a short review from last week. Deuteronomy 6, verse 4 and 5, Moses said, hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, and all of your strength. Now this is traditionally called the Shema Israel and the reason they call it Shema, as you'll see in the notes, the first word here in Hebrew is Shema and so it starts with Shema Israel, hear Israel, and because of those first two words, hear Israel, they, Shema Israel, that's why they call it that, and for almost 4,000 years, not quite, the Jewish people have recited the Shema Israel for twice a day in synagogues or wherever they've gathered around the world and they've quoted this verse. It's the command to hear because the Lord has something to say. He's saying, hear, I want you to know, Israel, that I want you to love me with all of your heart, your soul, your strength. Paragraph B, Jesus comes 1,500 years after Moses and he fills in the blank as to what it was that God wanted them to hear. Now obviously he wanted them to hear the basic command to love God, but in Matthew 22, verse 37, Jesus adds his own commentary and he says, this command, the Shema Israel, is the first and the great commandment. That was a new piece of information. Jesus was saying, this is what you need to hear and the church of Jesus needs to hear this. To love God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our strength, is the first priority to the Holy Spirit. It is not currently the first priority in the church, but it is the first priority to God and he says, hear, O church of Jesus Christ. Jesus added the interpretation or his own exegesis, so to speak. He says, this is the first commandment on God's heart and it's the great commandment to God. It's the greatest lifestyle that you can embrace, is the lifestyle to love God with all of your heart. Surprising over the years, I've had many believers rise up in resistance and complaint about too much focus on loving God and it goes like, what about everything else? And the list is vast. But let me tell you, there's a lot to do about a lot of things, because a lot of things in the Bible were to do, but the greatest thing in God's economy and the thing that moves God's heart the greatest and the thing that he will reward the greatest and the thing that will move you the greatest and the thing that will impact people that you touch the greatest, is if you do the great commandment. And that's what Jesus wanted them to hear. Paragraph D. The session tonight, we're going to be focusing on the four spheres and the four stages of wholehearted love for God. The four spheres of life involved. From the lips of God himself, we're to love God with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, and all of our strength, as we find from the record of the Gospels. And the four stages of which love develops or love grows in our life. First stage, we receive love from God. Second, we give love back to God. Third, surprising, we love ourself in the grace of God. And fourth, in the overflow of an energized heart, we love one another. We love other people far more effectively if we do it according to the stages that the Word of God teaches. Now we don't wait until we perfect stage one, two, or three, until we get to four. We do all four of them simultaneously. But we understand that the fourth stage will be far more effective if the first three are in place and they're healthy. Let's look at them. Roman numeral two, growing in love. The four stages of love in terms of human experience. Stage number one, we receive increased revelation of God's love for us. Beloved, you cannot focus on this subject too much. Again, over the years, I've heard people say, well if you focus too much on that, what about the others? Here's the answer from Scripture. The more red hot people get in revelation that God loves them and their response of love for God back, they will become far more fervent and far more consistent with a deeper quality of love for other people. It begins with the revelation that God loves us. John said it. Of course John the Apostle was the theologian of love. I mean he gave more of the biblical principles on understanding love in all four stages. I mean he really gave precise theology. The Gospel of John and the Epistle of John and the Book of Revelation as well. But John says here, as the great teacher, this aged man in his 90s, he goes, we love Jesus because we first understand He loved us. When God wants to awaken love in us, He reveals a lover to us. Let me say that again. When God wants to awaken love in you, back to Jesus, and when God wants to awaken love in you for other people, He reveals Himself as a God of love. The way that He awakens love in you is by revealing Himself as the great lover of the human heart. We can't skip this stage because if we put all of our energy outward in loving, we end up burnt out and bruised and we have no supply to love other people from. Our supply isn't our goodwill and our self-determination. Our supply is a supernatural overflow that comes from encounter. The encounter is a minimal encounter but it's a regular day in and day out. It's a small increment. You don't always feel it. Sometimes you do a little bit and occasionally you feel it a lot. But it's that steady ongoing, and I don't mean steady every minute every day, but just day by day a little bit. We feel the inspiration of God loving us and a little bit of inspiration of loving Him back and a little bit of gratitude as to who God made us in His own sight. And that's the energy that we can love other people from. And when man becomes humanistic, meaning they get focused on love for man in a way that cuts them off from the essentials supernatural supply of encountering the love of God, then they have confidence in their own love and their love will come up short. They'll end up burnt out and it will turn into something other than love. It'll just become a, a masquerading of our own image of being loving but it won't be genuine love at the end. The reason I'm saying this, there's a real movement around the earth today and it's, it's becoming strong in the church and it's a movement of darkness. And it has the word love and man and goodwill in it. And the reason it's dark and the reason it's broken, because it's, it's promoting a love that originates from man without reference to encountering the love of God as though man's love is sufficient and it's a statement of pride and God will prove it to be a false boast before it's over. And it's sweeping the church. The church is, because the language is confusing because the language is the same as the biblical language. Love people. But we love people in an overflow of encounter of loving Him because we don't have confidence we can love sufficiently without regular encounter. It's a statement of humility on our part. It's a statement of need. And when I see people minimizing the need to connect with God, it seems as though they're in love, loving, but in the end of the day in the court of heaven, they're arrogant about their abilities and their virtue. I have no confidence we can pull this thing out without regular, even small, just small increments, if you will. That's not the right phrase. Inspirations of the Holy Spirit in our daily life. Critical if we're going to love well. Well, it begins with encountering His love. Paragraph one, the foundational truth. By the way, the notes are far bigger than we're going to cover. For those that you look at them, you go, wow, because I love to get a lot more notes than we cover for your own personal study. We're only going to get through just not even half of this tonight, just so you know. The foundational truth that equips us to love God is the revelation of His passion and His feeling for us. You can't say this truth enough. Jesus said it, and the way the Father loves me, as the Father loves me, in the same way I love you. Beloved, this is, this is just almost indescribable, except for Jesus described it. I look at that, I go, what? He said in the way, in the same intensity of which my Father feels about me, this is how I feel about you. And beloved, this is the fountain from which compassion and love of mankind flows out of that fountain. There is no other fountain that love will stay steady in. That's the only fountain. Jesus has the same intensity for us that the Father has for Him. This statement, John 15 7, is the ultimate revelation of our worth. This is the statement that gives us the right, every one of us, a billion believers across the earth, with confidence to claim we are God's favorite. I am God's favorite. There's not a question about it. And so are you. Why? Because He loves me in the way that God loves me, in the way God loves God. And that can't ever be in any way increased. I am His favorite. For God, for me to be His favorite, and you to be His favorite, we lose nothing, because nothing is diminished in God by loving more people. Beloved, He loves me and you the way that God loves God. It can't increase. I'm number one. I love it. Now here's the difference between me and some of you. Now some of us are in unity on this. I'm running with this. It's not a joke. This is real to me. This isn't like a cute little sermon point. In my privacy of my life, I come before the Lord, I go, Lord, behold, Your beloved, Your favorite one, the one that You love. I love to say that. I've said this for probably 20 plus years. Many, many, many. I love the feeling of saying that. I take it very personal. And I think the Lord says, oh, I take it personal too, because you, you're starting to line up with what I say. Paragraph two. It's what I call affection-based obedience. There's several types of obedience in the Word of God. But affection-based obedience is obedience that flows out of experiencing Jesus's affection and feeling a little bit of that affection back for Him. Beloved, that affection is powerful. Affection-based obedience, it comes out of the revelation that Jesus loves us the way the Father loves Him. It is the strongest. It is the deepest. It is the most consistent type of obedience. You tap into that level of obedience, you will have the strongest, most consistent obedience. It will take you to the deepest places. Why? Because a lovesick person will endure anything for love. Even the early stirrings of love sickness in your heart. Your heart is wounded with desire. You must have more. This is what you live for, beloved. That will carry you far in the race to a life of full obedience. The race that Paul talks about, 1 Corinthians 9. The next type of obedience, I'll call it duty-based obedience. And duty-based obedience is biblical, by the way. All three of these are biblical. They're just a, one is they have a varying impact and effectiveness. Duty-based, where we are required to obey when we don't feel any inspiration. We have a duty to obey the Word of God when we don't feel anything. Well, I've done that many times. A few times I didn't feel it and I didn't obey. How many of you know about that too? I've done it both ways. But duty-based obedience, I don't feel like it at all. I go, you know, in my heart, bah humbug. But, you know, I'm a dude anyway. I'm just going to obey you. And I don't mean just staying out of something wrong. I mean by just, even the positive commands, sitting before you, reading the Word, obeying, serving. I'm going to do it with no inspiration. Because it's, there's a duty in the kingdom to do this. It's not the most powerful, but it is still valid. And then there's the third type of obedience I talk about, which is totally biblical, by the way, because it might at first sound like it's not. Fear-based. Motivated by the fear of negative consequences. Beloved, there are really negative consequences for disobedience that are real. This is not a figment of imagination. It's real. We will really be disciplined by the Lord and we will be more severely attacked by the devil. I don't know if the attack is more severe, but our armor is less protected. Let's put it that way. We're more vulnerable to the attack is a better way to say it. The Bible appeals to fear and shame. It's not the highest motivation, but it does motivate it. It certainly has motivated me many times. The fear of consequences, the shame of getting caught, that's a biblical motivation. It's just not the highest one. Because you will get caught and it will bring shame and it will be horrible. Now the most powerful is affection-based, but we get into this issue of God loving us. We feed our spirit. Our obedience will be the strongest. Now the reason we sin, all of us, is because our hearts are unsatisfied with God. The reason we look for other pleasures, because the inferior pleasure of sin seems more powerful than the superior pleasures in the grace of God when God touches our spirit. So when I feel a draw to sin, it is a signal that my heart is not satisfied with God. And because I understand that, I go, wait a second, something's wrong here. And the Holy Spirit goes, yes, that's right. Come near, come near, come near. Page two. Let's go to the second stage of the four stages of love. The first stage is the revelation that God loves us. The second stage is the impartation or the receiving or the impartation of the Father's love for Jesus by the Holy Spirit. It's a supernatural impartation. Now my favorite verse, this has been my life verse, you can take it, anybody can have it. You don't have to have a life verse, but I just decided to have one about 25 years ago and I've stuck with it. If you're looking for one, I recommend it. Jesus is praying in John 17 26 and Jesus said, Father, I'm declaring your name to them. And here's why. Because when I reveal your name, in other words, what you're like, your heart, God's name and God's heart is synonymous. When I reveal your heart to them, the love with which you love me is supernaturally awakened and imparted in them. Beloved, can you imagine loving Jesus and the supernatural ability of the Father's love for Jesus? I mean there's nothing higher. I mean how could I love Jesus more than the Father? Whose love for Jesus would I want more than the Father's? I'm telling you, it's a great life verse. Jesus said, I'll reveal the Father's heart to you. I'll declare the Father's heart. I'll tell you what his heart's like. And, and when you encounter his heart, which by the way is stage one, stage two happens, you will love me in a supernatural, with a supernatural ability. Now that love is progressive. It's progressive. It's not one day it's gone, the next day it's, it's mature. It's little by little. We only feel it a little bit along the way and it is progressive, but it's real. Takes God to love God. Takes the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Here's to love God. Here's why you, here's why this is matters, that you know this. Because a lot of folks, because they don't really lock in on this point, they're just kind of waiting to show up in love one day and they're not pursuing it by faith. I lock into this thing. Jesus, Father, I'm going to love Jesus like you love him. He said I could. I pray this verse many times. I ask God for impartation. I wait on the Lord and I'm not, I am not going to receive a lifestyle of less than this. Meaning it's a point of focus because I know that loving Jesus is a supernatural impartation. It is not just if I hang in there in the church, I'll wake up one day in love. No. It's a supernatural anointing that I pursue. Because it's supernatural, meaning it's not natural and it's not automatic. It is supernatural. It's beyond my ability and I will get more of it if I go after it. I don't have it in myself. I've had people through the years, I hope this doesn't sound uh egotistic, but they said, man you're really zealous. Boy you're really going for it. I wish I had your personality. I said, well I don't know, my personality's not that great actually. It causes me a lot of troubles. And they assume that whatever measure of love I have for Jesus is somehow rooted in my personality. Beloved, you can talk fast and talk loud and do all kinds of strange things. That has nothing to do with supernatural movement on the heart. Does it matter what your personality is? Now I don't love Jesus near like I want to, but in whatever measure I've increased it. Not because of personality. You don't get this by being an extrovert personality. You get it by identifying it as a supernatural reality that you get more of if you pursue it. So I say, Lord, if it's supernatural, I need help. It's not natural. Would you give me more of it? And the answer would be, if you keep asking me, I will. So don't look at somebody, don't look at Lou Engle with his energy. Wow, I wish I had his energy or anybody else's. It's not what gives the stirring of the Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit. And you get more if you go after it. Lock into it. Say, I'm not going to live without it in your heart. I'm not going to live without more of this supernatural love. Paragraph two. Now we're, we were created with longing to be wholehearted. Beloved, you were created to be abandoned. And if you're not passionate, if you don't have something to die for, you have nothing to live for. Now a lot of the political movements of history have picked up on that reality. I'm talking about the, some of the great changes of history of political movements of revolutions were led by young people who were willing to die for the cause, a political cause, and it overthrows nations. But when it comes to the kingdom, people end up with this perverse, it's perverse view of grace. That grace means half-hearted, going halfway, getting around to it if you do get around to it, and somehow it's grace, kind of laid back, chilled out approach to God. Beloved, that ideal will keep you barren and bored spiritually for decades. I've watched it for 30 years of pastoring. But you want to go hard after God, and when I mean by hard, I don't mean loud, and I don't mean you have to have my personality. I don't mean personality-wise hard. I'm talking about hard meaning focused, stay with it. You could have the softest, quietest personality, and I'm talking to you. But this kind of laissez-faire, kind of chill out, go with the flow, whatever happens, happens. Well, hey, it's grace anyway. The greatest love affair of all of history is God with the human heart. Beloved, go after this thing. It's yours for the taking. The grace of God empowers us to get ahold of it. The grace of God doesn't give us license to ignore it. The grace of God gives us the power to seize it in an unrelenting way. Don't buy into the perverse doctrine of grace that's filling the land today. It's the doctrine that tells us, makes us feel comfortable with compromise, and comfortable with passivity, and comfortable with neglecting the love of God. But the true grace of God makes us ravenous in our desire, in our focus. We refuse to be denied. We will not be stopped because the grace of God is moving on my heart. That's the true grace of God. I see this thing emerging in the land. It's getting worse over the decades. I mean, it was happening, you know, 30, 35 years ago when I first started preaching. Boy, it's really growing, and it's like really cool to be in grace. It is a perversion. It is a deception. I don't care how many Bible verses people use. It's not from the Holy Spirit, that approach to Jesus. He is worthy of abandonment. He loves us with all of His heart, and He wants us to love Him because there's dynamic life in the exchange between our hearts. We are created to be wholehearted. We are created to be abandoned. If you have nothing to die for, you really have nothing to live for. And that to me is one of the clear statements of description, not of everybody, but a broad strokes description of the body of Christ in our nation. They have nothing to live for. More money and more honor. Beloved, that isn't enough. That's not a cause to live for. I'm going to get a little bit more honor and a little bit more money. I'm going to use the blessing of God to get more money and more honor. I want to get more on fire, more connected, more encounter, more passion, more lost in God. That's what we want to use, the grace of God. And if He gives me more money and more honor, which I think He's going to give me a whole lot of that, plus persecution and maybe martyrdom. They all go together, by the way. I will give you more honor. Thank you, Lord. I've read the book. I know what that means. Okay. You may end up in prison. Okay. I just want you to know, Lord, I've read the book. I know what more honor means, but it's good enough for me. If you will give me the anointing to love you in a greater way. Beloved, you were created to be abandoned. If you're not abandoned, if you're not going red hot, you end up spiritually bored. And a spiritually bored person, you are vulnerable to darkness and your heart is continually prone to emotional brokenness being repeated over and over and over again because the heart is far more vulnerable to the devil's tactics and to be smashed and bruised and broken with disappointment because we're not engaged going hard after the one that created us. We were never created to be half-hearted. There's nothing more satisfying than the power of feeling abandoned. Oh, it's a satisfying feeling. The power of being abandoned. I love to be loved by God. Well, by people too. I love to be loved. But you know what else? I love to love. I am never more alive than when I'm full, full scale in love. I'm never more alive than in love. And neither are you. You were, you love to love and you love to be loved because you were created that way by God. You'll never be more alive red hot abandoned. I mean on the cutting edge at the very edge of your understanding and strength of dedication and abandonment. They've told me for 30 years, you're going to burn out if you don't slow down. You don't burn out from going hard for God. You get burnt out because you're bored spiritually and you're motivated by the wrong things. That's what burns you out. You get burnt out because you're spiritually bored and you're trying to do the work of the kingdom with a heart disconnected from God and you're wrongly motivated so you're perpetually disappointed by not getting more money and more honor. But if you throw away the money and honor thing, I mean you still want it for the kingdom, but it's not personal to you. It's kingdom. And if you get it or you don't get it, it's not the big deal and your heart isn't bored and you're not perpetually disappointed because the money and honor keeps getting delayed later. Somebody else keeps getting it. They keep getting your spot. Well somebody else got my spot. Now what I'm going to do and the devil has plenty of ideas of what you should do then. You lay that thing aside and you go red hot. You won't burn out. I assure you, you will not burn out if you go, I mean full blast. Our nation is obsessed with playing and resting. Playing and resting but never rested and never satisfied. Forget the play and rest thing. Go abandon for God. Live for eternity. Throw yourself into his heart and the way he threw himself into your heart. You'll never be more alive. You'll never be more satisfied. We were made to love God with all of our heart. Stage number three. Loving ourself. See Jesus said you'll love your neighbor as you love yourself or in the overflow or in like manner. You'll love your neighbor in the overflow or in the way you love yourself. If you don't love yourself, you won't love your neighbor. I use the same analogy for years. The woman testified, she prayed, Lord I want to love my neighbor like myself and the Lord spoke back. That's the problem. You do. You hate your neighbor because you hate yourself. The problem is you do love your neighbor like you love yourself. That's the problem. Now there's two types. There's two approaches or two completely different discussions to be had on this subject of loving yourself because there's loving ourself in the flesh and loving ourself in the grace of God. Entirely different realities. Completely different. Paragraph one. We'll never love our neighbor more than we love ourself in the grace of God. What I mean by loving ourself is number one we know what we look like to God. We know who we are in Christ. We know what we look like to God. Now the devil and religion tells us that God wrote us off but that's not the truth. God is lovesick over you. I mean what I mean is for real. His heart was sick in a human sense. Those are human terms. His heart was in turmoil in him to come after us and he became a man. Beloved, that was casual. His heart was turning within him for us. It's what I call heart sick. Lovesick. He said I can't endure it without her at my side. I will pay the price. I will win her for myself. Father I will win her for you and the father's heart was churning and the son's was churning. Churning in love is what I'm talking about and Jesus became man and he'll be a man forever. Beloved, for God to become human forever. He didn't become a human for you know to put on the robes of humanity for 33 years go to the cross and get back up to heaven and say boy that was a wild run and lay humanity aside. He'll be human for billions and billions and billions of years like you will. It's a huge decision and not only will he be human he'll be Jewish human for years and years and years. He's the line of the tribe of Judah and he always will be. He will always be a man from the tribe of Judah. Always. It's amazing. His heart is churning. He's heartsick. He's lovesick. He had to have us. Beloved, I want to be lovesick back. I want to say I have to have you fully. He loves us. Well it's not just who we are in Christ. That's a great subject. A vast subject. That's not my point tonight to break that down. But beloved when we see ourselves like God sees us it's fantastic. But it's more than that. We also value who he made us in the physical. Who he made us with our personality. I'm not talking about the flaws, the marks of sin in our personality or in our body. I'm talking about he made you strategically and it is a a great pressure in the in the western culture of the people who hate their bodies. There's a lot of focus on women who hate their bodies but men do too. All these eating disorders and all this massive pressure because people hate what they look like. They hate it and they're completely disconnected from what God thinks about what they look like. Look what it says. Our personality and our gifting. Psalm 139. You formed me. Here's what David said, in the inward parts of my mother's womb. Verse 14. I thank you for it. David doesn't say I wish I was taller. I wish I was faster. I wish my hair color was different. He goes I thank you. Face value. I take it as a marvelous stroke of genius that only you have the full insight into why you made me this way. I praise you. Why? I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. It is marvelous and my soul lays hold of this. I know this well. Beloved, when your soul believes well that God created you fearfully and wonderfully. I don't even mean you particularly like the color, the size, the hair, the eyes, whatever. That's not the point. You go up a step. You trust the sovereignty of God. He knew what he was doing and he had billions of years in sight thinking of you. And he knew. David said I know this well. This thing's got a hold of me. I don't think it's an accident that David had this free spirit of abandonment to God and he was at peace. More than at peace, he rejoiced with who he is, who he was as a person. Say well doesn't the Bible say he was handsome? Yes. But the most beautiful women in the world are the most insecure women in the world. I'm sure that can be qualified and you need to say a few more phrases on it. Let me say it maybe slightly different. The most beautiful women in the world are among the most profoundly insecure human beings on the planet. Met a few beauty queens in my day. I mean that were celebrated famous ones. I was struck. I mean I heard it but I was struck by my personal encounters with them how profoundly insecure and preoccupied they were with being ugly. It was just remarkable. Remarkable. I'm talking about people been on lots of covers of magazines. I've met a number of them. Not a lot but a few but it struck me each time. Profoundly preoccupied with the fear of being ugly and how bad they look. I thought is there any end to this? Well it's the rich guys always want more money. I guess that's how it is. My point being David was operating by revelation there you never have enough money and you're never pretty enough, strong enough, fast enough, thin enough, tall enough, short enough, whatever enough. You're never enough because there's somebody more in a minute. It's not about David wasn't talking about looking in a mirror. He was talking about a spirit of revelation when he said my soul knows this well. My frame was not hidden from you. In other words it wasn't an accident. When I was made in secret I was skillfully wrought. I was strategically and skillfully made by your hand. How precious verse 17 are these thoughts to you and these thoughts to me. The thoughts of what? The thoughts of who I am and my physical man and in my personality and my gifts and in my limitations. Beloved we need to begin to rejoice in who God made us. Who we are in Christ and who we are even in our physical person. I don't mean who I am in my character. I want my character better but who I am and all my limitations. The Lord says don't charge me with air. Don't charge me with making a mistake in your life. I did not. That's the voice of the devil. Paragraph two we need to love who we are in the grace of God. We need to come to agreement with God. To come to agreement it is a dimension of holiness. It really is. We think of well if you go to a prayer meeting and we witness to somebody and pray for the sick, feed the poor. That's loving God. Beloved loving you yourself. I'm talking about in the grace of God is an act of worship to how brilliant and how wise and skillful God is. It's an act of worship. So next time you look in the mirror say well you know Lord I don't see the whole picture right now but we have billions of years. You're radically committed to me. Hey thanks let's do it. Let's go for it. This is the day the Lord has made. Let me be glad and rejoice. Yes David said I praise you. Beloved this issue of loving ourself in the grace of God who we are in Christ to answer our failures and who we are in our imperfect humanity and our imperfect personalities. I'm not talking about the moral parts of our failure of character. I'm talking about our gifts and our passions, our mental abilities, our physical abilities. I'm not talking about the moral virtue parts of our character right now because we always want to improve those. We just say by faith I worship you. I love who you made me. I don't see it but I trust you and that's good enough for me. I tell you it will awaken your heart in love in a surprising way for God and for others as well. Paragraph three. We must not secretly wish we were someone else whether physically or spiritually. I'm talking about somebody else's gifting. If I could only sing like Justin Rizzo. Now I would like to sing like Justin Rizzo. I actually would. If I could only lead, if I could only make money, if I could only preach, if I could only teach, if I could only pastor, if I could only prophesy spiritually. Why? Why are you going there? You know what that will do? It will just short circuit your ability to connect with God in the present tense. Don't secretly wish you were someone else physically or spiritually. Now in virtue and character I wish I was more humble like and you can name that's good to aspire to be like somebody in character but not in physical or in spiritual giftings. There's a disconnect at the heart level. There's a serious disconnect and that disconnect short circuits if you allow let me use a secular concept our ability to flow in love and to stay and to stay sustained in loving because all four of these stages work together. I have it number three. I'm just going to say it again. We charge God with air when we want to be somebody else. Somebody else's gifting or somebody else's physical or some uh physical features or somebody else's personality. We are charging God with air. Again I'm not talking about character virtue. We always want more of that. Get your eyes off of others. That's called envy. That's I know that's it's it's a mean word but that's what it is. It grieves the spirit and disconnects us from love and get your eyes off your failure. Wanting to be somebody else and despising yourself. Guaranteed way to short circuit the grace of God in your life. Beloved we we have this incredible invitation to love. We got to get on with love. Stage four to love others. Now there's a this is the glory. This is the capstone. This is the greatest expression outwardly when imperfect people by the love of God love imperfect people. I mean it's easy to love God who's perfect and who's invisible. He's perfect and he's invisible but to love a physical person who's who is imperfect that's next to us. That's a challenge. That that takes supernatural power. That's more than religious sentiment. That's the power of God and what Jesus said John 13. He said if you love one another by this the unbelievers will know there's a supernatural operation of grace in your midst. They'll know something supernatural is happening because it is very unnatural to love. Now it's natural for a mother to love her child in that sense. It's natural to have sentiment. I'm not talking about sentiment. It's natural to hear someone's story and tear up. It's natural to be moved at a testimony and give a hundred dollars. That's natural. That's not what I'm talking about. No those are tokens of love. I'm talking about to interface with somebody on a regular basis and walk out 1 Corinthians 13. Patience, long suffering, blessing with them. That is supernatural. That's not natural. I'm gonna talk about sentiment. I'm talking about the power of God. By this verse 35 all all will know meaning the unbelievers. I remember I did this a couple times and I quit doing it. It was not very effective but as a pastor you know the I'd always you know have the guy or the gal come from the other church and say hey we want to join your church. Cool. I was always a little bit ornery. I'd kind of ask them a question and kind of knowing what they were going to say one of three things because that's what they always say you know the same two or three things. Why? Well because our church doesn't have love in it. And I just was kind of ornery. I jumped out there a few times. I quit after a few years of doing this and I said it doesn't have love in it. Well of course it doesn't have love in it. That's the ultimate supernatural manifestation. That's the capstone. That's the top of the mountain. What are you talking about? That's the supernatural power of God to you. Whoa whoa whoa I backed off of that after a few years. What they mostly meant is people didn't give me what I wanted on my time frame. That's almost always what people mean when a group didn't have love. They don't give me the money or the honor I need on my time frame. That's almost always what it means. And it has to do with sentiment. You know you go in there and the room's not friendly. I said let's bring love up to a whole another level. Besides this kind of sentimental low standard that kind of anybody measures up if you're in a good mood with them and by the same standard they fail. It's just it's so it's a moody standard that isn't real. I don't have love. It's the ultimate accusation. Beloved love is I'm talking about substantial manifestations of consistent love in close relationships where there's true patience and humility and bridling of the tongue and only blessing is a unusual work of grace of a thousand people have that. It's like it happens but it's like wow not how dare you that you don't. You bow down and worship when you see that happen. It's because the definition of love is so low. But it typically means sentiment. But I want to talk call us to something far more than the definition are people giving you money and honor or friendship based on your time frame. Love is way more than that. And and and over the years of pastoring most people evaluate love based on those two criteria. They give them the hundred dollars or the thousand. They give them the embrace. The whole group is loving. The guy doesn't the whole group is not loving. It's really uh out of sync with truth. And my point isn't to try to correct the whole world on that. The point is I want to lift the standard of reality as to what love is to a supernatural level. So we're going for something that's not just sentiment. It takes the power of God. So when we talk about needing to love Jesus, be loved by Him, love Him, love ourself. It makes sense because we're aiming at the right definition of love that can only happen by the power of God. I'm talking about a sustained valuing and serving of close relationships that bless us, that honors consistently. And there there is that around the body of Christ. But I tell you it is remarkable when hundreds of people do it together. It's not it's not a given. It's awesome. It's wonderful. I want to live like that. And loving Jesus has to end in loving people like that or it's not loving Jesus. Paragraph E, our foundational premise. We're going to end with this by the way. Told you I gave you a lot of notes. Foundational premise. People who love Jesus will love each other far more. Far more. You get people focused on receiving the love of Jesus and focused on going there. Those people over time will love themselves. The entire emotional atmosphere of a company of people will change. And then they will begin to love one another at a whole nother level of consistency and depth that transcends just sentiment. Because sentiment doesn't get the job done. I'm not interested in sentiment. I'm interested, I mean sentiment is nice but that's not a high enough standard. I want the kind of love that is supernatural, that is the overflow and the outworking of encountering a supernatural man. He's fully God, fully man. It's impossible to love Jesus and not love people. I've had people over the years say, well this group is in the first commandment, this group is in the second commandment. I go that is the absolute most illogical thing I've ever heard. You can no more separate your heart, your liver and kidney and brain in separate places in the room. You cannot separate. You cannot do the first commandment without it resulting in the second. And you can't do the second unless you've done the first. I'm talking about the biblical definition of the second commandment, not the not the sentimental humanistic definition. I'm talking about the staying steady in the first Corinthians 13 level. The greatest anointing, I'll end with this sentence, the greatest anointing we can operate in is the anointing to walk in the two great commandments. And there's a stage, there's four stages, they go together and we do them all together. We don't you know do one and then we do the other. We do all four of them simultaneously. Amen. Let's stand. For more free downloads from Mike Bickle, please visit mikebickle.com.