Mike Bickle emphasizes the transformative power of divine love and jealousy in the believer's life, describing it as a consuming fire that can dominate every area of opposition. He illustrates that no temptation or challenge can extinguish this divine love if one is yielded to it, and that the anointing to love is the ultimate reward for believers. Bickle encourages a lifestyle of intentional encounters with God to cultivate this love, which not only beautifies and energizes but also protects believers from compromise. He stresses the importance of feeling loved by God and reciprocating that love, as this twofold love is essential for spiritual vitality and endurance in the face of trials. Ultimately, he calls the church to awaken to this reality, as it is crucial for the end-time church to thrive amidst increasing darkness.

You might put the word demanding, comprehensive. Divine jealousy will take, it will take dominion in every area of your life that you've set yourself against that's opposing you. It's flames. He's talking about the flames of divine love and divine jealousy, which in this context is synonymous. Divine love and divine jealousy, it's the passion of God's heart is the idea. It's flames. The flames of supernatural love. They're flames of fire. Or one translation says it's the very flame of God himself. It's the most vehement flame. It's the most vehement, the very flame of God himself. Verse 7, many waters. This is waters of temptation. They cannot quench this divine love. There's an issue in our life that's out of the will of God that's contrary to communion with God and we set our heart against that issue. We come in agreement with the Holy Spirit and we set our heart against that issue. An issue that's rising up in our heart that's hindering our intimacy with God. It's hindering our connection with the Holy Spirit. If we set ourself against that area in agreement with God, I want to prophesy to you these waters of compromise and temptation, they cannot, they cannot quench the operation of divine love in the human spirit. It's the most powerful force in existence. It's the manifestation of divine love, holy passion. The holy desire of God's heart is like a volcanic eruption that nothing can stop. Nothing can stop it that is yielded to it. And that which does not yield to it is destroyed in judgment by the very force of that divine love. It's called hell. The lake of fire is actually an expression of the raging love of God to those who refuse to resist and be crowned with the glory of God's free love. Because the only reason the human spirit was created was to be partners in love, to be lost in love with God. And when a human being, when the human spirit exercises its highest dignity, which is called the free will and says no to divine love, it loses its reason for being. We were only created to be lost in love in this holy, delightful, raging torrent in God's heart, being caught up in it and swept away into the power and the beauty of it. You know, we often speak of eternal life. That's what eternal life is. It's that volcanic desire of divine beauty breaks forth in the manifestation. We receive it in the grace of God. We call that salvation. We get lost in the midst of that and it goes on forever and forever and forever. And my point here in verse 7, many waters, many temptations, many addictions, many issues, unsettled issues. I don't care how big they are. Many waters. It can be a, I mean, a torrential flood of waters of addiction or pain or offense or wrong desire, temptation, call it what you want. Many different categories you could put this in. These waters cannot put out divine love if, if we're yielded to love and we're cultivating it, we're going after it. This is a divine promise. Many waters, not just, well, you know, it's a little temptations we can overcome. Beloved, I want to tell you the good news. Many waters cannot put out divine love. Now water by nature puts out fire. If you get enough water, it will put out fire. However, there's a fire that is transcendent in terms of its relationship to water. It's superior in power to water. It's the divine love. This is a totally unnatural thing for water not to be able to put out fire. And that's the point of this promise. It says in verse 7, nor can the floods drown it out. And this phrase, the floods drowned it is a phrase that's used in revelation chapter 12. I believe it's verse 13 and 14. When it's talking about at the end of the age, particularly at the end of the age in the generation of the Lord returns that Satan would vomit up a flood of persecution against his people, against God's people. And these floods of persecution with the desire to extinguish the life and the love of the people of God. And this verse is, it's the same language and it's the same idea. The floods of persecution cannot drowned out this fiery love if yielded to it, if cultivated. And it says all the wealth of his house would be utterly despised. And that's a proverb. And it means something, I guess the analogy that I use, I use the same one every time. You know, it's like a young couple that, you know, gets news that their little five-year-old girl has a terminal disease. It's not a true story. One little grandmother came up crying, asked me how the girl was. I said, no, no, I told you it's a made up story. She goes, oh, I missed that part. So I didn't, I don't want to take the chance of breaking some grandmother's heart right now. So it's a made up story. Okay. I said, it's like, you know, a young couple, their little five-year-old daughter has terminal disease. The doctor says, you know, we can save her life, but here's the deal. You're going to have to sell your $5 million house and you're going to have to sell your $5 million, all your investment. And with the money you can save her life. So they do it. The life of the little girl saved. Somebody runs into him later and says, that was so heroic. That was so incredible what you did for your daughter. And the couple says, stop. They go, no, no, no, no, no, it wasn't. It wasn't, it was nothing heroic about it because the anointing to love is the reward itself. And that's what this means. You can give up all the wealth of your house. You could give up all your savings. You could give up all your career. You could give up everything you work for. It would be despised if you were honored for it. If somebody without revelation came to somebody who gave up everything for love and said, you are unbelievable. The person who had revelation and the anointing to love would say, we despise the very recognition that what we did was out of character with just the normal way of love. It's what Paul, the apostle said in Philippians chapter three, verse eight, when he had all the titles, he had all the accomplishments. I mean, Paul, the apostle, before he was converted, he, in the secular natural sense, his career was set. He had the money. He had the honor. He had the education. He had everything laid out for him. And then the surprise of his life comes. Jesus appears to him on the road to Damascus and says, Saul, Saul in Acts chapter nine, he goes, why are you persecuting me? And Saul says, well, who, who are you? I mean, what do you mean? I don't, I don't understand. I love God. And Jesus said, in essence, I am God. And the people you're killing love me. And I'm God was the concept. And Saul of Tarsus is like, oh no, you're God. Anyway, he gets converted. And then his devotion to this man, Jesus led him in a pathway to where all of his natural achievements did not benefit him at all. His platform, all the people that he had honor with despised this quote, new conversion. They didn't say, Paul, you're so devoted to God. They said, you are deceived. He said, I'll lose all my platform. It doesn't matter. All of his degrees, none of them worked in the new world. He was focused on now the love of Jesus. And so there's an anointing. There's an anointing to love. That when that touches our heart, that in itself is the reward we're after. That is the primary reward that God is giving the people of God in time and eternity is the ability to, to get lost in love. And this, this ability to love is to risk is the supernatural ability to receive it from God. But that's not done in there. It's the ability to return it back to God. It's a twofold love. It's a twofold love. It's the ability to receive it, to feel it, to understand it, to make sense of it by revelation. Most believers I know have a very, very small capacity to receive the love of God. They can't understand it. They can't feel the power of it towards them. I'm not saying that to criticize them. I'm saying, I'm guessing in the high 90%. It's very, very normal today in the church for a believer to say, I know technically God loves me, but do I feel it? Is it a source of pleasure in my spirit as a lifestyle? Well, no, not really. I mostly feel rejected or I live in the fear. I'm going to get rejected tomorrow by my friends, by my leaders, by my comrades, by whatever. I just feel like always tomorrow is going to be the day that the hammer drops. No, I don't really can't say I feel the pleasure of love. I mostly live tentative because I'm expecting rejection to hit me sooner or later from God and from people. And I would say that's the predominant way that humans live, believers and unbelievers. It's the natural way of the human spirit to live braced and anticipating rejection. And the Holy Spirit cuts across that and gives us a supernatural power where we can get lost in the current of the river of love, lost in it, where the feeling and the pleasure and the power of feeling loved is more powerful than the tentativeness and the threat of being rejected. It's an absolute supernatural way to live. But I've been in ministry now, full-time ministry, near 30 years. And I'll say this, after 30, near 30 years of ministry, just a year or so short of that, most everyone that I've seen in 30 years, 90, high 90 percent do not touch anywhere close to that realm of reality. And that's within the reach of every single believer is that experience, that way of life. Well, it's not enough. It's not enough for me to feel loved by God. The Bible has more than feeling loved by God. It's feeling love back to God. Oh, I want to feel love from him. It always starts there, but I actually want to feel love back to him. And it's that twofold love from him and then back to him that does something in our human spirit that brings us to the highest place that God ordained for us to live as believers in the Holy Spirit. Of course, we get a little bit of that in this age and we get the fullness of it in the age to come. The pain I feel in my heart as a spiritual, as a shepherd and a spiritual father of many young people is so few of them touch this realm. They have the language for it. And of course, if they hang around here, they have to because we talk about it all the time. Everybody does. They have the rhetoric. They have the language, but they don't have the experience. It's not something that carries in their heart when they're when they close their eyes and lay down at night or when they're under pressure or the threat of something terrible happening. They can't feel that reality in their spirit. And I don't know that anybody feels it a hundred percent of the time, but I know this, there's a whole lot more feeling that God wants to give his people than his people are receiving. Receiving this anointing to love, it's a twofold. Again, to feel it in our weakness. I don't mean just once we fully mature and now we feel love and we feel secure. I'm talking about even in the midst of our weakness and brokenness, knowing in our spirit, we are dedicated to the Lord. We really are the Lord. We haven't, we're not walking it out in the way that we desire, but the desire is real. It's genuine. There's a sincerity in our spirit that's real. It's the operation of God. We know it's real. The full walking out hasn't happened yet. We keep stumbling, but there's a cry in our spirit to be totally God's and it's a real cry in our spirit. Actually, we get that the day that we're born again. And when we have that cry, that genuine, authentic cry in our spirit, and I believe vast majority of you in this room, if not every one of you have that cry operating in your spirit right now. My point is in Christ Jesus, in Christ Jesus with a sincere spirit to be his, you have every reason to be able to feel the love of God. If you will cultivate this and go after it, we don't have to live at a distance in the way that we've grown accustomed to. I mean, there's always a certain distance because God is such consuming love. If we got too close, it would totally consume us. But, but I mean, there's a significantly greater measure of impartation of this reality that God has for us, even in these days right now. But God's people, what the, my little point to, I'm just making kind of one little point here. It's this, we need to be focused on this reality and have faith that it exists. And the reality I'm talking about is that there is an anointing to love and an anointing to receive it, to feel it. I'm talking about feel it, not just claim it. I'm all for claiming it when I don't feel it. I've done that a million times. I know what it means not to feel anything and to stand my ground and claim it and to say it is written. Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me so it is written. I know what it means to not feel it and to claim it. And that's biblical to do that. It is biblical to claim it when you don't feel it. And it's biblical to live by the reality of the word of God, even though you don't feel it. It is biblical to do that. It's necessary, but that's not the fullness of what God has. God does have the release of the feeling and the passion of it in our spirit. That release is for us even now. So I know what it means to claim it when I don't feel it. And beloved, you got to do that. I don't want anybody to ever think that I'm saying we don't do that, but we don't want to be limited to that. We don't want to be limited to that reality. We want to have faith and confidence for the breakthrough of the feeling of God's love and passion for us. It is for every single believer in Christ Jesus. I tell you it is. I absolutely assure you from the word of God it is. Well, I've had, I know the other experience too. I know what it means to not feel it and then just give in and roll over to rejection and despair. I know that without even worrying, just give up, you know, and then go to bed and hope for a good day tomorrow. I've done a little bit of that in my day too. So I understand not responding right too, but praise the Lord. There's a new day tomorrow. There's mercies that are new tomorrow. You wake up and there's a new beginning. The Lord says, okay, now let's just push the lead on that. Now you don't feel it again today. Now war for it, go after it, take a stand on it, say no to the lies of Satan, fill your spirit with it. But we don't have to live forever. Let me say it more accurately. We don't have to live all of our life on the earth is what I'm talking about because the eternity won't be an issue. We don't have to live all of our life on the earth constantly warring for this. If we would fill our spirit with this reality, we would begin to have the release of it a whole lot more than we had the withholding of it. It is the will of God that we have the release of this anointing of love, this tenderizing, this ability to feel, to fill it from him and to fill it back to him, not just to fill it from him. I want both of them because both of them are biblical. I want to feel it from him and I want to feel it back to him. And I know what it means to not feel it and to give up and just have a horrible day. I know what it means to not feel it into war for it. I don't know if I break through or not, but at least I didn't cave in. But beloved, those aren't good enough. I want to live with it as the rule. I don't mean I live with it 100%. I don't know anybody does 100%, but I'm talking about it's the rule of our life before God where we feel loved and we feel loved back with a tenderized spirit by the grace of God. That is what God wants his church in this hour of history to believe for and to go after this. And I believe it's our only hope, meaning I believe with what's mounting up in this hour and darkness, the only hope and beloved, it's a good hope. It's a sure hope. It's a great hope. It's real. Our only hope is to get lost in love. And you can call it what you want. You don't have to use my terms, but I'm talking about lost in love. Maybe that doesn't mean something different to somebody. I mean to where the feeling of being loved and the feeling of loving back is bigger than the pressure to get offline or to get off the path. That's what I'm talking about by being lost in love. I don't mean where you're so lost in love. You can't, you know, you can't function in life. I'm talking about where the feeling of being loved and the feeling of loving back is not a hundred percent, but as a majority stronger in our heart than the feeling to get off the path, whether in sin or in unbelief, one or the other. One person gets more pulled off in sin. They want to go do stuff. Another person wants to get off the path more than belief. They want to believe things that are wholly false about them and God. Everybody does a little bit of each, but some of them pick more one than the other. Some people, you know, it's not that their life they're out trying to get away with some big, you know, you know, they're not trying to sneak away to the party to have their big blowout. They just live perpetually in lies and they feed the spirit of lies and their hearts are ensnared and entrapped by lies. They love God and they're not going out just indulging their flesh all the time. They just live in the, in the, the defilement of lies about how broken they are and how off they are and how God doesn't want them and how God's far away and how hopeless and, and other, and other persons, you know, they go, you know, I don't even think about how bad I am. I just, I want to go just, I want to go to the party again tonight. But beloved, there is an experience of divine love that is a continual, I don't mean 100% again, I won't say that over and over, but it's the rule of our life where it, that feeling is stronger than wanting to get off in sin and indulging the flesh or getting off in lies and unbelief, either direction. We'll hold our spirits steady. We'll hold our spirits steady, put might and power in our spirit. The proverb here in verse 7 says, all the wealth of his house. He would utterly despise the idea that, that it was noble. He gave it up for love because love is so powerful and so great to the person in this, this proverb here that their idea is, I would despise the idea that I did something noble. Again, Paul the Apostle, I didn't actually finish the story in Philippians 3.8. Paul gave up all of these things. And then Philippians 3.8, when he was asked, well, Paul, what do you think about it? He said, I count it rubbish. I don't think I did something heroic. It is rubbish compared to the passion, the volcanic desire he has for me that just crowns my life with goodness. The fact I gave up a few opportunities in the natural that would burn anyway in a few years when I died, that is somehow I did something noble. He goes, rubbish. I have the revelation of what really happened. He came after me. He crowned me with his love, but it didn't stop there. He crowned me with his desire. Then he reworked my own human spirit. He changed my emotional chemistry where I love back with feeling and power by the supernatural grace of God. He goes, I live in love now. And this love will go on forever and forever. This is the realm of life. These are, it's in this realm of love. This is what God esteems and remembers forever. You know, if you give somebody a cup of cold water, living in this spirit, you can go serve way in the background and nobody ever hear your name. Nobody is speak an affirmation to you. You get lost in this room of love. You are so aware of what you're doing is esteemed and remembered by God forever. Your spirit is alive on the inside. The reward is the anointing to love. It's this exchange with God's heart, living exchange with God's heart in the present tense. This is the anointing for the end time church. With all of my heart, I believe we are in the generation that will see the coming of the Lord. I don't know. I've said this for years. I don't know if it's five years or 50 years. I'm guessing it's closer to 50 than five, but then no one in heaven really cares about my opinion on that. They like me up there, but they don't really care about my eschatology and my opinion. But I believe we're in that generation. The reason that matters, because the conflict that the Bible talks about in the generation of the Lord returns, there is going to be an increase of conflict, opposition against the faith. And the only way the church will succeed is by living in this anointing of love, by having this regular exchange of our heart and God's heart where we feel God's heart and we feel love back to God. And it's that feeling of that of that reciprocal reality called love. And again, my point this afternoon is to say that realm exists. It's real. It's biblical and it's real. It is a fact. It's for you. It's for you in these days. You're not going to get it by casually, you know, stopping your life for a few minutes every week and maybe on Sunday morning, going to church and reading a couple of, you know, a 10 minute devotional in the morning. You're not going to live in that realm by doing Jesus on the run. I assure you of that. And most of even what is called on fire Western Christianity is really Jesus on the run. It's about an inch deep. It's so shallow and much of it, not all of it. Some of it, people will, will make it through by the grace of God, but I believe much of it will fall away when the pressure is tough. And I'm talking about on fire. What's called what's called on fire. Charismatic Christianity is Jesus on the run. It's about an inch deep of reality. It's a 10 minute devotional running out the door every other day and going to church and even tithing. Shallow inch deep Christianity will never ever release the feeling of the reality of supernatural love in our hearts. And many people have looked at their experience. They're a little bit, you know, their friends are a half an inch. So they're an inch deep. So they're twice as deep as their friends. And that they're content with that. Beloved, I don't want to be an inch deep in the spirit because my friend is a half an inch and I'm twice as deep. We are in an hour of history where the only thing that is going to work is the anointing to love. Now it takes God to love God. You, we understand that. It takes, you can't love God by just gritting your teeth. You can't grit your teeth and go, oh I want to love you, I want to love you, I want to love you, I want to love you, I want to love you, I want to love you, and go faster, faster, faster, and all of a sudden you love him. We won't love God because of religious self-determination, because we determine to love and therefore we will love. We will love God by progressive encounter. We will, it's like, it's like the onion, one layer at a time, I'm going in reverse. It's like one layer of time, I guess the opposite of the onion, a better example is like working a muscle. It's just, it's a very incremental, very non-discernable increase. It's a series, it's a lifestyle of very seemingly inconsequential encounters with the Lord. They don't seem very dynamic. There's that one dynamic one every now and then, okay I'll give us that, I'll give it to you, I'll give it to me. We have one of those every now and then, but I'm talking about the daily life of encounter, that when it's happening, it seems, if you isolate the day in itself, inconsequential. It seems feeble in its, in that 24 hours, like well, didn't do much, but it's the, it's the same principle as the peeling of the onion, meaning, but the opposite way, it's the working of the muscle and it's indiscernibly growing the strength of the might in your spirit, but we stay with it. It feels feeble, it seems like in the moment, it's not that dynamic, but a month and a year and 10 years comes and goes and all of a sudden you're in a new flow in your inner man. So we don't get this by religious self-determination by gritting our teeth, we get this by an intentional lifestyle of small encounters with God. And again, I'm all for the big one, I'm all for the, you know, the big steps, but mostly our life in God is baby steps. Every now and then we get to do a big step where something big happens in the spirit and like, whoa, but beloved, I can't make the big step happen and neither can you. I mean, these giant encounters, you can't make the angel appear, you can't make the Holy Spirit fall and you can't make, you can't orchestrate the big steps, but you can put yourself in a position for those little incremental baby steps that seem feeble in the 24 hour period if they're isolated and studied, but collectively they build the muscle and we develop a lifestyle of encounter with the Lord and it builds and builds and builds. And we look back a few months, a few years, a decade or two goes by, whatever, you don't want to try to measure it. You know, someone says, well, how long before you can tell? I go, it doesn't work that way, you know, you can't put it in the oven for 30 minutes and know for sure it's done. It doesn't work that way. You go after it, but you determined, here's what you determined. You determined it doesn't matter how long it takes. You're in this thing until the end. That's the spirit of how this thing works. Like, Lord, I'm not giving you one year. I'm doing this till the day I die and meet you face to face and I hope I get more breakthrough than less breakthrough, but one thing's for sure. I burnt the bridges. I burned the boats. I'm not going back the other way. I'm living a lifestyle of this till the end. That's the spirit of which these small incremental steps, these small incremental encounters that in themselves do not seem profound, but over time we develop this thing called the anointing to love. It's a free gift of God, but it's given to the people who hunger for it and position their life to receive it. It is the free gift of God. It takes God to love God. You can't love God by gritting your teeth, but you can position yourself to receive more of this. It's called word and prayer. There's other things as well, but you know, the simple steps, it's like people ask me all the time, how do you do it? I go, you knew how to do it in your junior high youth group when you were 14 years old. There's no mystery of how to do it. You just stay with it. There's no substitute for times in the word and prayer and fasting. There's no substitute for that and a spirit of obedience. You can have failure. You can stumble. God is so kind. You can get up. You can push that big delete and he will take you up right where you left off if you're for real. Again, in our spirit, we declare war on those areas of compromise and unbelief, but as we're yielding to them and being overcome by them, we stand up and push delete. We feed our spirit on the word of God, and we keep going forward in confidence. There's no mystery of how to do it. And if you think, man, I just wish I knew how, and I've heard that for years and years, like you just start reading your Bible, do it a half hour, an hour or two a day, pray in tongues for a while, fast a day or two a week, say no to everything that you know that has unbelief and compromise in it, and you'll show up in a few years totally different on the inside. And bless your enemies along the way. No, it's really important to bless your enemies along the way, really critically important. No mystery. But I am, I'm pained as a shepherd of the body of Christ by how much of the body of Christ is not developing this lifestyle of encounter. Well, they, and I think I mystified a little bit. I don't know what I really think, but I go, why, why are so few doing this? I mean, you don't, it doesn't need a spirit of a revelation to know trouble is coming down the road. It does not need a great encounter to know sin is becoming more sinful in the nations. I mean, sin is abounding. Just look at on the horizon, there is a storm of darkness about to crash in upon the planet. There's 10, you know, you get making up the number, 10 categories of that darkness from sinful practices to perversion at levels we've never known before to violence, to terrorism, to famines and pestilence. There is a storm of darkness about to break on the planet or storm of trouble. Let's put it that way. It's not all, not all of it is darkness, but a lot of it is. And some of it isn't. There's a storm of pressure coming and the scripture makes it clear. There's a great revival coming to the church's greatest day is right up, is right around the corner. Our greatest day ever is around the corner, but the most difficult day of the human race is right around the corner too. And yet the church in the West is as asleep right now as I could ever imagine it. The leadership in the body of Christ in the West, there are certainly examples. I mean, there might be thousands of examples, but there's tens of thousands that are not the examples. I'm not trying to say there's only three or four people that are committed. I mean, there's thousands of leaders pressing in the direction I'm talking, but tens of thousands not. It's not my business to know who is and who isn't. It's my business to take care of me and my little sphere here. But I look across the body of Christ and I am pained by the lack of discernment in the casual approach to the future that the body of Christ has and the contentment to live in this spiritual superficiality consumed with externals in a consumer culture in the church. It's like, what on earth is going on? It's not just it's foolish because of the hour we're living in, it's holy below our dignity as born-again believers in the new covenant. Here's the God of, and I say this in the most positive sense, outrageous desire and emotion who set his heart on us and he wants us to feel it and he wants to unlock our hearts so we feel it back so that we're beautified in that reality of that reciprocal exchange of heart and we live transcendent lives in the midst of this. It's not just that the hour is serious, it's that the dignity we have as born-again believers demands a radical abandonment, but if that doesn't get our attention, the hour is dark around the corner and the greatest revival in history is around the corner too, but it's going to be given to people who are going all the way for God. And it's, we call it the term we use here a lot and maybe you say it the same term or maybe a little different, we call it the bridal paradigm of the kingdom. The bridal paradigm of the kingdom and what I mean by paradigm is a perspective or picture, the bridal picture, the bridal perspective, the bridal mindset, that's what I mean by paradigm, is that we are wanting to cultivate in our little world here a understanding of fasting, prayer, martyrdom, commitment through the lens of a lovesick bride so it gives a complete different feel to all of those ways of life. It's energized by being lovesick. The reward is the power to love. It's our glory to get lost in this reality. This beautifies us. When this two-fold love, the anointing of it, grows even a little bit, I mean from just a little bit to a little bit more and a little bit more of that, it beautifies us, meaning the very best of who we are as human beings in the grace of God comes out. Beloved, when you get lost in love, the very best of who you are comes out. It's manifest, tenderized, joyful, radiant in your spirit, even under persecution and disappointment, living transcendent. It beautifies the end-time church to be lost in love. It's absolutely stunning. The world has no grid for it. They look at this guy in verse 7, they go, all the wealth of his house, he lost all the wealth of his house, all that he worked for, he lost it. He doesn't even care. He's so caught up in another realm, in another reality. It beautifies us to be lost in love. The very best of who I am, the very best of who you are comes out in this reality, in this anointing, and this anointing is for you. This anointing is for now. This is sure. This is a focus that I believe God wants the end-time church to have. Oh, you got to give me some water. You know what? I appreciate that. You poor ladies, every one of you cough, go clear your throat because you're thinking I need to, but I have this real bizarre job. I scream all the time, which doesn't make any sense at all. My wife tells me, don't scream. I go, I know, it's really dumb. It's not even the anointing, it's just fun. It just, it doesn't make any sense at all. So I appreciate the water, but I got a bigger problem, but I'm going to get, I'm going to get a hold of it one of these days, I really am. For those that hear this tape, somebody brought me a glass of water. You know, being lost in this love, not only does it beautify us, the best of who I am, the best of who you are comes out in this reality. It beautifies us, but it energizes us. It gives us, even when our body is weary, there's an energy in our spirit to give ourselves more. There's an energizing of the human spirit that comes by the anointing to love. Absolutely true. It protects us. This anointing to love protects us from compromise. When I feel loved and I feel loved back, sin looks very different. And offense towards people who rip me off or disappoint me looks very different when my spirit is tenderized. Sin looks very different when I'm tenderized on the inside. This anointing protects us. It beautifies us. It energizes us. It protects us. It tenderizes us. Beloved, we talk in the scripture, talk about the end time church being unified. You know how we're going to get unified? We're going to get unified because our spirits are tenderized in love. And then we don't major on minors anymore when our spirits are tenderized. Right now we are so captured because it's the way of the human heart. It's the way of the natural mindset. We are so derailed when we hear somebody says we're off base. Think about it for a minute. So-and-so says you're off. That really didn't have any power, really. Not really, but we give it so much power. Someone took $5,000 from us and they told lies about us. So now we're going to live the next five years derailed. That's what I call majoring on minors. When our spirit gets tenderized, we live in another place, another Roman god, they say, you know, those guys, you know, your friends that they whisper behind your back. It doesn't have the sting. It doesn't have the power. It doesn't have the sting power because our spirits are tenderized. It's like putting water on a hard ground. When the ground water is moist, I mean the ground is moist, you can pull the root system of the weeds right out of the ground if it's moist and tender. It's amazing how big things, how little things do not appear big when our spirit is tenderized. When I have this anointing to love, I can hear harsh criticisms even from co-workers and my spirit doesn't miss a step in its flow in God. When I lose this tenderizing, the smallest things derail me for a short time and sometimes longer than a short time until I go, wait, wait, wait. I know it's not just that I'm smarter than this. My dignity is to live in another realm than this. I'm not living like this. No way. I'm not going there. My dignity is to get into the anointing of love and stay there. It's my, it's my inheritance. And this anointing to love will embolden us before persecution. It says in Revelation 12 verse 11, they do not love their life even unto death. When our spirits are lost in love, you know, I've said this, not just because it's a woman's conference, but I've said this quite a few times. I go, there's no more powerful force in the natural realm than a woman in love. You get a woman in love, I mean she may do crazy things if it's a demented love, but a woman in love is the most powerful force on the planet. In the natural, it really is. There's, I mean, you cannot resist effectively that force. And God's raising up a corporate woman in love called the bride of Christ. She will feel clean. She will feel beautiful. She will feel loved from him and she will feel loved back to him. Imagine a billion believers. They feel clean. They feel beautiful. They feel loved and they feel love back. It will be the most powerful group of human beings on the planet in history. It's called the end time church. This anointing of love will do something in our spirits. We will be bold before persecution, even before physical death. There will be a boldness in our spirit, which is the power of love. Well, I'm going to end with this. It says here, verse six and seven, Jesus had set me as the seal on the heart. He says, this seal is a seal of fire. It's a seal of love. Let me put yourself in the position, is what he's saying, for me to progressively, it's not a one-time deal, for me to progressively seal your heart with the anointing of love. Let me seal you. Let me strengthen. Let me impart this seal. Because in the ancient world, a king would have a scroll encased in wax and he would put his seal, his signet, he would take his ring and he would put it in the wet or the hot wax as it was drying and his signature would be on that scroll. He would seal a scroll, but the seal was always wax. God is saying, let me seal your heart with fire impartation, fire impartation. He goes, put the seal, put yourself before me. It's an incremental thing. It's a lifestyle of encounter. It's taking, you can't do this on the run. It's a lifestyle. It's intentional. We're clearing out the clutter of our life and we're letting the seal, the seal grow on our heart. It's the gift of God. It takes God to love God. It's the operation of God, but he only gives it to the people who sit before him and seek it. So once you get it, you can never claim it was your work. It was always his gift, but you did have to sit in his presence. I say this like taking our cold heart and putting it in front of the bonfire until our heart falls out. You know, it's like maybe our heart is like, you know, a pound of frozen hamburger. We're in the presence of God. It's like nothing is moving. And over time it falls out and our heart becomes tender over time. That's the same idea. Verse six, put me as a seal, sit in my presence and you won't earn it. You won't make it happen, but you will put yourself in a position to receive it. And it will be a supernatural anointing. That's what the seal is. It's not a wax seal on a King's document. It's a seal of fire upon the King's bride, on the King's heart, upon Jesus' bride. He says it's a vehement flame. It's the very flame of God. There is no power that can stop it. If you go after this thing with all of your heart, there is no sin that will derail you. There is no persecution that will drown this thing out. There is no rejection that will get you off course. This thing will utterly overflow the floods and the waters that come against it to extinguish it. Beloved, let's go for this thing. Again, my point this afternoon is to just call us to it, to say this realm exists. Let's be focused. Let's go after it. Let's get into the way of this. It's not going to happen one day, one time. It's a lifestyle of encounter. We call it a life of prayer. Now, Misty, come on up. Worship team. I read this. I was telling a story 45 minutes ago. I read this. It was July 88, 16 years ago. It's on a wedding card. I go, man, that is so, that's such a neat verse. I never, I can't remember ever reading it before. I go, Song of Solomon. I had never read the book of Song of Solomon. I'd been in the ministry for about 12 or 13 years at that time, but I'd never read the Song of Solomon. I was like book of revelation guy, life of David, book of Romans. That's the kind of stuff I was into, the real stuff. I go Song of Solomon. Wow. I open it up. I see there's eight chapters. You know, I think, well, whatever. And I go to the last verse, I mean, chapter eight, verse six. I'm reading it. And what happens? I'm there reading it. And suddenly I begin, it was one morning, early morning after our, after our morning prayer meeting, I was just in my office looking through the mail and I just started reading this. And I started saying, Jesus, be the seal of love. Be the seal of love on my heart. Be the seal of love. Lord, come and release love in me because again, it takes God to love God. And I understood that without God. So, you know, even your desire for God is God's gift to you. Even your little desire today, my little desire, my desire is not near strong enough, but whatever it is, is still the gift of God to me. My desire for him is his gift to me. And I was saying, Lord, I want more. So I began to weep. I mean, I was just undone. And I was there and I pick up the phone and the receptionist at the church, I said, man, something's happening. And I said, the Lord's just touching my heart. If somebody calls, please don't answer the phone. I mean, don't just have them wait. Now I'm not proud of this next statement, but in near 30 years of ministry, I've only done that one time ever. And it was that, it was that morning. So it's not like something I did very often. I wish I had more reason to have done that, you know, so I'm not proud of that point, but it's the only time I've ever done it was that morning. So that's how definitive it was such an unusual thing happening. 10 minutes later, the phone rings. I'm weeping. It's amazing. You know, how close you are, how close I am to getting in the flesh. In one second, I was mad. Here I am lost in love. And but I picked the phone up and I went, I was gonna, I was still so undone. I was in conflict. You know, I didn't have enough strength to get real mad, but I was just like, hello? Like the receptionist said, I know you didn't want a phone call, but he says, Bob Jones, who was a prophetic man in our church at that time. And now he's in North Carolina. He said, he said, he heard the audible voice of the Lord for you. And he goes, I thought you would want God in if God called. He goes, and I said, the recession is curse. He goes, it was a guy. He said, uh, I didn't know what to do. He said, he heard the audible voice of God. That sounds like God wants to talk to you or something. And you wasn't listening or something. I didn't know. I said, good, good. If somebody calls with the audible voice, always let the, always let it in. I go, that was good. I go, I didn't think about that. Actually, I told him that later. Cause it actually happened in about five seconds. He goes, so-and-so Bob Jones says the audible voice of the Lord. I thought you'd want me to let him in. And later we joked about it. So within seconds, I go, hello? Bob says, I'm in a big hurry right now. He says, I heard the audible voice of God, like thunder wide awake. He said, call Mike Bickel and give him song of Solomon chapter eight, verse six and verse seven. I'm on my knees sobbing and weeping over this. And a man calls me on the phone and says, I've heard the audible voice of the Lord right now. And he said to call you right now. He says, let me tell you about this verse. The Lord told me two things. He said, number one, this is what he's going to release this anointing upon the body of Christ worldwide. This is what he's going to release. He said, number two, he said, this is your calling for the rest of your life. He goes, whatever this verse ends up meaning to you, when it's all said and done, you will be on this verse, the rest of your life. This is the calling. And it's the call that we could call the bride of Christ, or we could call it the call to, uh, the passion for God or the first commandment to love God with all your heart. You can, there's many ways you can call wholehearted devotion, lovesick worship, call what you want. And so, uh, he was done and he said, this verse is really critical for you. Really, really critical for you. Now, of course he didn't know I was reading. We hung up in 90 seconds because something was happening on his end. He hung the phone up and I was just reduced. I was so absolutely blown away. I was excited. I called my wife on the phone. I said, Diane, you're not going to believe this. I was reading the song of Solomon. I wrote songs and Bob Jones called me. She goes, unbelievable. Okay. You know, now it's still, you know, nine o'clock in the morning, eight or nine in the morning. I am so excited. I read the song of Solomon for the first time in my life. Cause this is going to be my life calling. I am in total despair when I read the book. Cause I, you know, I think it's going to be like awesome. And I go, this is more bitter than death. I go, this is absolutely terrifying to me. I got home later that afternoon. Diane goes, Oh, this is the greatest day of your life. Cause that's what I told her at nine in the morning. I go, it's the greatest day. She goes, I go, no, this is really horrible. She goes, didn't you hear the audible voice of God? I mean, through the prophetic man, I go, yeah. She goes, I don't understand. You were so excited at nine. I go, have you ever read song of Solomon? She goes, well, no, not really. I go read it. You'll know why I go, this is a really bad day for me. I told the Lord, because my father, some of you know this, uh, my father was a world champion boxer. So I grew up in the boxing ring and with, you know, and with in taverns and bars with professional boxers. And I told the Lord, I said, Lord, this isn't really who I am. This is not, this is not my culture. It's not my background. All of our family friends were guys with stitches in their eyes and broken nose, but no, really they were all boxers. Everybody was, I go, they were all mean, tough guy, redneck against everything kind of guys. I go, I just, and the Lord, I began to study the song of Solomon, just saying, Lord, I'm going for this anyway. It doesn't look good, but you know, eternity is going to be here in a little while anyway. So I'll just do it. And I did not know my life was about to get transformed by the passion of God in this book. Well, it's 16 years later. And I want to say this, that was the greatest day of my life. I just did not understand it. I did not understand that in this realm of the, of the anointing of love was where, you know, it was like, I speak at men's conferences and I tell them, I go, man, this does not, that will not undermine your masculinity. It will establish your masculinity. It will cause you to be everything God made you to be. It's the same with women. Anyway, let's stand. We're just getting in with this. There are some of you in this room right now, you know, everybody wants more of this, so you wouldn't be at a conference like this. So if I said who wants more of this, I mean, who doesn't, why would you come all this way if you were not into this kind of thing? Of course you do. But I want to say this, I want to invite people to come up here because I talked to Bob and the Lord, even more important than Bob in this, I said, Lord, there's, there's other people that are going to have this lifelong focus because this is my lifelong focus. It's the subject of the bride of Christ. It's, it's in the end times, but it's the bride of Christ in the end times. And there are some of you, your singers, your teachers, your disciples, your songwriters, your writers. Maybe you teach a home Bible study. Maybe you teach children's ministry. Maybe you teach a home group. It doesn't matter. You don't have to have a public Sunday morning platform, but if you are called in your spirit, you say, I believe I'm called to song of Solomon eight, six, maybe that's not the verse you'll use all the time. You're called to bring the body of Christ. And as much as God gives you people to speak to into this reality, to prepare them as the spirit of the bride say, come in the last days, I'm going to invite you to come up here. If you're one of those people who say, I know that I know this is my primary ministry, because I know it's my primary ministry. I want you to come stand on these, these lines here. Just go ahead and stand on the line. So that this