The Bible says, God’s love has been poured into our hearts so we have no excuse not to love our fellow man. In the second, of the three-part series, Carl deals specifically about our need to forgive people, as this is a demonstration of God’s agape love. Forgiving and forgetting are synonymous in the eyes of God. By recalling the grievance, we allow an open door to the devil. In truth, holding on to unforgiveness only hurts us, not the person who wronged us. Do yourself a favor, let go of the past and allow God’s love to comfort you. Let’s join Carl now…
Here is a complete transcript of the broadcast (below)…
Friend, let’s go into part two of our live session on love is the way to victory. People are looking at me like, what? You want me to take my authority, Pastor? Listen, you can sit there listening to that junk all day, or you can tell it to shut up in Jesus’ name, walk out of the door, and have a lovely day, amen? Three people want to try that. Romans 5.5 says, “God’s love,” and this is the excuse, well, I don’t feel God’s love. Well, it says here in Romans 5:5, “it’s been poured out in your heart through the Holy Spirit, who’s been given to you.” The King James says the love of God has been shed abroad in your heart. How did that happen? When you accepted Christ. He came to live inside of you. He made his abode with you. I just don’t feel like Jesus is living inside of me, Pastor. Yeah, but you don’t go by your feelings. You go by the word of God, right? That’s the truth, isn’t it? Some days we don’t want to get up. I know I don’t. I’m like, oh man, my back’s stiff. I don’t want to get out of bed. You ever have days like that? No, heaven forbid. Nobody in the room. But you know what? We’ve got to tell our flesh, you know what? Amen? Like Smith Wigglesworth said. Someone said, Smith, “how are you feeling today?” He said, “Smith Wigglesworth doesn’t feel. He tells himself how he feels.”
Right? Yeah. Okay, so 1 Corinthians 13, 4 through 8. The famous passage. I’m going to read snippets of it. “Love endures long and is patient. Kind, never envious. Doesn’t boil over with jealousy. It’s not boastful. You’re like, wow, that’s a long list. I can’t do half of it. I understand that. Because the Holy Spirit, again, inside of you is the one who’s going to do it. Right? Stop thinking it’s on your to-do list. I must be vainglorious. No, I must not be vainglorious. I must not be boastful. You know, see, people write it down. They say, this is my not to-do list. I’m not going to do these things today. So they’re focusing on not doing stuff. And what do they do? They end up doing the stuff that they’re trying not to focus on. Because whatever you focus on becomes reality for you. Right? Focus is important in life. We don’t want to be focusing on not doing stuff. We want to be focusing on Jesus. And then by walking in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Right? I try not to think about doing the vacuuming. I’m not going to do the vacuuming.
I’m not going to do the vacuuming. And lo and behold, it starts to take over. I want to get in the closet. I need to vacuum. Because I try to stop thinking about it. It’s just a mind game my wife plays on me, man. She’s amazing. So love is not conceited. It’s not arrogant. It’s not inflated with pride. God’s love in us does not insist on its own rights or its own way. It is not self-seeking. And here’s the kicker. It takes no account of the evil done to it. Whoa. Some people are taking a record. Right? I didn’t like the way you spoke to me on the 28th of September, 2013. You’re going in my little book. And later on, I’m going to remind you of that little book. How many people are like that? Nobody. How many people used to be like that? An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, right? Old Testament-ish. There’s a new law, and the law is the royal law, my friends, which is loving your brethren and loving your enemy. Man, this is hard, Pastor. I know. It is hard. But the truth is, God’s going to help us. Amen? The agape love is unconditional. It comes from the Father. It’s supernatural, as Sid would say. Welcome to my world where everything is supernatural.
But that love is inside of you. That supernatural spirit of God is inside everybody. It says here, believe the best of every person. Love never fails. Okay? Believing the best of every person, that’s not easy to do. When someone’s absent, we would see this in work. Someone would make a mistake. Engineers make mistakes. This only happened probably three times in history. But when they do, some people will just jump on the bandwagon. Like, oh, well, you should see him on his spreadsheets. It’s awful, man. I mean, he’s always making mistakes, and then they don’t even save correctly. So when you reopen them, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the guy will just walk in the room, and he’ll be like, oh, how’s it going, Dave? And so you’ve got to be careful, man, what you’re saying about somebody else, right? Because slander is a sin. Slander. We’re slandering the reputation of somebody. And so we’re supposed to believe the best. I think Joyce Meyer came up with this statement, but it’s so powerful. Hanging on to unforgiveness is like drinking from a poisonous well and hoping the other person gets sick, right? And quite commonly, when you approach that person who’s ticked you off, like a year later, you’re like, look, man, I’ve been really upset about what you said to me. And he’s like, what’s your name again? I mean, have you ever had that? No. I mean, those guys have forgotten what they said. It’s not even something they’re thinking about. But you’re like going over and over in your mind at night.
Oh, man, I just wish I didn’t say it. Just, this is not a comedy show, no. So command that thing to go in Jesus’ name, right? It’s only hurting you. It’s not hurting that person is the point, right? I’m not condoning what they did. It may have been awful. That’s the truth. However, the longer we hang on to it, the more we’re giving them an influence over our lives. We don’t want to have something influence over our lives. It’s too short to be constrained, right? We want to do the stuff. So, loving our enemies. Only by allowing God’s love to work through us can we love our enemies. This is mentioned twice in the Gospels. If it’s mentioned twice or more, it’s important. Jesus said, you’ve heard that it has been said that you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies.
Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you and pray for them that spitefully use you and persecute you. Now, this is not talking about the national level. We have governments. We have armies. We have armed forces. Romans 13, to deal with threats on a national level. And there’s a time for arms and there’s a time for war. I’m not saying there isn’t. I’m talking about on the personal level. What’s amazing is when you walk in this love, which is a supernatural force, you’re pouring hot coals on your enemy’s heads. That’s in Romans 12:20. It says, “therefore, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.”
If he’s thirsty, give him a drink. In doing so, you will heat coals of fire on his head. What happens is when you love your enemy, you mess with his conscience, right? Now, there’s a stage in life where people go beyond. Their conscience can get seared. They can go into reprobation and they don’t care anymore. And that’s a dangerous place to be. But if they still care and you have forgiven them for the wrong that is obvious, that causes them to do something. They’ve got to make a decision. Do I hang on to this offense or do I let it go? Do I approach him? Do I reconcile? There’s lots of decisions to make. And I was in college one time. It was like the first week. We were playing soccer on the pitch. And, you know, guys are guys. And it’s like, okay, I’m going to prove I’m the biggest stud here on the pitch. So I’m going to foul everybody and break some legs. So one guy was going around, like, tackling like a rugby player, even though he’s playing soccer. And he did it to me, like, three times. But for that day, I was pretty calm for some reason. Normally, I wouldn’t be. But I just let it go. And at the end of it, he’s like, why didn’t you do anything, man? I just went into you, like, three times.
Like, no big deal. Tackle wasn’t that hard anyway. You know, after that, right? After that, we were buddies. He was a really good friend, Richard. He came from Jersey. And we were just great buddies the whole three years. I mean, you know, if I had gotten in his face and we started having one of those old Welsh fellowships, I mean, things could have got bad. But choose the high road, amen? Choose the high road. How many are going to do that? Maybe tomorrow. You never know what’s coming down the road, okay? There’s many opportunities to get offended. And we just don’t know what’s next. And God can be preparing us for what’s to come. I’m not prophesying that, okay? I’m just saying life happens. So love affects the conscience. It invokes a response. Satan desires that you walk in the flesh, right? The works of the flesh. Do we need to spell them out? No, I don’t think so. But we’re in a multidimensional sin war. It consists of sin, the flesh, the devil, and demons. Friend, you’ve got flesh. There’s sin. The devil is not all-knowing. He’s not all-seeing. He can take a night off because you’re flesh, man.
That’s enough to get you going into sin by itself. But Satan goads or baits us into the works of the flesh. That’s what he does. Fornication, sex outside of marriage, adultery, hatred, wrath, strife, envying, getting drunk, getting wasted, etc. There are works of the flesh. And once we sow into them, we’re going to reap corruption. We’re going to have a door open to the devil all day long. And friend, it’s very hard to live like that. You’re going to find it’s going to be hard to receive from God, to have peace in your heart and everything else. Galatians 6:8, like I said, “He that sows to the flesh reaps corruption.” This is a law in effect in the New Testament. And there’s about seven laws. Faith is a law, the royal law, the law of sowing and reaping. There’s several laws even in effect in the New Testament. So what happens is we sin and we get into the flesh. And then we’re like, God, you don’t exist. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, right? For like a week, a month, however you want to go. What’s happened there, friend, is you’ve broken fellowship. You’re still in relationship with the Father, but you’ve broken fellowship. It’s time to get back into fellowship. You see the difference? If I have an argument with my wife and we just stormed off into separate rooms, the cat would probably be in the middle.
She would just stay there. But we go off into separate rooms. We’ve broken fellowship, but we’re still in relationship. Do you see the difference? You’re still saved, right, in God’s eyes. If you have an argument with him or you get into the flesh, you’re still in relationship. You’ve just broken the, hey, how’s it going, God? Yeah, I’m going good, chilling out, yeah, all that stuff. The stuff you normally say to him, right, whatever you say. It’s time for some people to get back in fellowship in this room. I feel like God’s wanting to speak some stuff so into you, speak vision into your life. And people are like, yeah, but there’s this issue and I can’t resolve it, so I don’t want to talk to God until I resolve it. Friend, he wants to talk to you now so you can get out of it. He’s the one who’s going to help you get out of it, right? That’s what we do is we cut the communication line to the very person who can help us, right? That’s what we do because we’re stubborn and we’re prideful. Amen. So here’s the bait. Don’t take the bait.
Don’t ask me how this came up, okay? Satan baits us to give him place. Ephesians 2:7 says, “don’t give him place.” If you give the enemy place, you’re giving him legal ground. Once he has legal ground, it becomes the judicial court in heaven. There’s a prosecutor and a defender. Jesus is the defense attorney, amen? His answer is always, no, he’s covered in the blood. He’s covered in the blood. I died for him, amen? Yeah, but he sinned. Yeah, but if he confesses his sin, he will be cleansed from all unrighteousness and all is well, amen? So it requires you to get right with the Father, amen? The onus is on you to get right. The power of binding and loosing is on earth. Matthew 18:19, right? The famous charismatic scripture, right? Whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven. That word loose in the Greek is allow. Whatever you allow on earth is allowed in the heavenly realms. If you allow offense to upset you and you get into unforgiveness, God will allow that to happen in the spiritual realm because you allowed it.
Wow, that’s a little prickly. But it’s truth. We don’t want to be allowing stuff that’s going to hinder our faith walk. You are a fisher of men, but don’t become a fish yourself by taking Satan’s bait. Here’s the bait. Take your fancy. What’s your personal besetting sin? Which one do you struggle with the most? Okay, they’re all the well-known ones. Just look at them right now. How do we not take the bait? By staying in God’s love. By focusing on the Father in heaven. You know, friend, we’re all baited into the flesh in some way. We each have a weakness that is probably unique to us. But, friend, God can help you in that besetting sin. Look at your past. Look at what you’ve struggled with. And then say, Lord, I want to change my life. It starts with your thoughts. It then enters into your words. And then finally your deeds. God can reprogram you, friend. And I’ve seen it time and time again down the years in ministry. Join us for part three tomorrow. Until tomorrow, good night, God bless. And remember to spread the good news.
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