The Cross They Called a Dangerous Weapon

The Cross They Called a Dangerous Weapon

by Francis MacNutt

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

Last year in Des Moines they took a cross off me at the airport as a dangerous weapon. It was made out of nails and they measured it. It was right down in Des Moines. And they took it off me and they put it on this little measuring rod. And it was more than three inches long. It was three and a half inches long. This poor man. I wasn’t dressed as a priest. I was just dressed in a sports shirt and everything. I had this big cross on and this guy said, “You know, I’m gonna have to take this from you.” I said, “That’s all right.” So he took it and then he began to get qualms of conscience. And I was sitting in the waiting room and he came up to me and he said, “Are you a priest or a minister?” And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “That’s what I thought.” He said, “This is terrible.”

He said, “I’ve done something awful.” He said, “Let’s go to the head of the airport.” So, but they did take that off as a dangerous weapon. So, one way or another, you’re always being stripped of these crosses. But, I’m really happy to be here. As many of you know, I was privileged to be here a couple years ago and a year before that. And, it’s kind of in a way like old home week. And I haven’t even had a chance to say hello to a lot of… It’s really great to see Willie and… And to hear him sing, you know. It really… Just even before it begins, you have a feeling something wonderful is going to happen this week. And, it might just help kind of to get to know each other. It was great. The song that he sang, you know, where everybody was meeting one another. But, how many of you have been here to CFO camps before? Could you raise your hands? Oh, quite a few. How many haven’t been to any CFOs before?

That’s quite a few, too. They said that there wasn’t room for everybody to get in here. And people are still looking for rooms. I know when I came here about three, four years ago for the first time, Tommy Tyson’s suggestion. I was kind of like a freak as a Roman Catholic here. They say that about half the group here are Roman Catholic. Let’s just ask for the different groups. How many of you are Methodists? Could you raise your hands? Great. How many of you are Baptists?

How many are Presbyterians? How many Anglicans? How many Assemblies of God? Or other Pentecostal groups? Okay. Let’s see. Let’s see. How many Lutherans? I asked about the Methodists first. Are there, how many Roman Catholics? That’s quite a few.

Are there any other groups represented? I asked about the Baptists. I asked about them. How many are you from Nebraska? And how many are from out of state? Wow. How many from out of state are from Kansas? And how many from Missouri?

How many from Iowa? How many from Oklahoma? Are there any other states represented here? Texas? How many from Texas? How many from California? Dan Buebler in there is from Florida. Are there any other states? Utah. Utah. How many Utah? Utah. How many Colorado?

Okay. How, Illinois. And how many from foreign countries? Another. Mark is from Bolivia. And Sister is from Nigeria. Any other countries? Germany? Okay. Anyone else? Germany. Oh, this is really great. This is going to be wonderful. Something is really going on, you know, in the world. And it’s extraordinary. There are a lot of things to share just about the kind of thing that’s going on. And, a good deal of it hasn’t even been publicized yet. But I had the privilege of taking Cardinal Suenens, for instance, out to visit Mrs. Agnes Sanford. A couple of weeks ago, we had a whole morning with Agnes. And, we were talking about healing. And, the Cardinal asked for prayer, then, to take this back to the Pope. And, to Europe, to be able to, you know, present this to the European bishops and the European clergy. And, to our Holy Father, Pope Paul. As you perhaps know, the Notre Dame Conference is no more. The next year is going to be held in Rome. This is for the Roman Catholic Charismatic Group. And I heard in Los Angeles… Now, I don’t… I haven’t heard from what source this comes, but this was announced to a group of 3,000 people at a Mass that… Pope Paul is going to celebrate the concluding Mass on Pentecost for the Charismatic Group meeting in Rome next year.

So, if that happens, it’ll be… You know… It’s kind of good, you know. There’s some priests that have a hard time, you know, buying all this, and we’re going to do a big end run, you know. It’s going to come out of Rome.

So… Now, just to know kind of where we are, too. I know not all of you are involved in the Charismatic Renewal, so-called. It helps to kind of know where people are without saying, well, this is better than this, or anything like that. But just to find out kind of where we are. How many of you are involved in the so-called Charismatic Renewal in the churches? Could you raise your hands?

And, how many of you are not too familiar with that? There are about 20% who didn’t raise their hands one way or the other. They’re usually more who are not too familiar than raise their hands. Well, this is great. And I understand that Jerry Durstein has arrived at the airport. I don’t know if he’s arrived here. Are you here yet, Jerry? Good. He’s here. And, Sister Jean Hill is here. And, many other, you know, wonderful friends.

Now, I think it’s good on opening night to talk about something very simple upon which we can all build. And, as you know, since I’ve been here last, the healing ministry has developed a great deal in our own work in kind of unusual ways. I’ve always felt it best for us to teach other people how to pray for healing. You know, and that way you can get out of it yourself. Now, not that you’re trying to get out of it, but the needs of people are so great that you can’t possibly do it. So the best thing to do is to teach others how to do it. And especially we’ve been privileged to give workshops for ministers and priests. And now we have workshops for doctors, on how to pray for healing. We’ve got one coming up in Minneapolis this fall. Three-day workshop sponsored by the doctors themselves. And only doctors and their wives will be able to attend. But they’re getting this together because they want to learn how to pray for healing for their patients. And, they’re getting some unusual problems that only doctors would have. Like, if a patient is healed through prayer, can you charge them?

And, in fact, at our prayer meeting in St. Louis Saturday night, a wife of a doctor came up. And, her husband is in partnership with the doctors in the charismatic movement. And, her husband is not too anxious to get involved because his partner is losing money now because all these patients are getting healed through prayer and he can’t charge them. So he’s afraid of getting involved in this, because it might mean a cut in salary. But I think they’ll come to that workshop too. But all these exciting developments are going on. And one of the things that we see, apparently we are being called into, is to do a lot of praying publicly for people for healing. At Notre Dame, I’m sure many of you heard about this. We’ve been doing smaller things like praying for a thousand people on a workshop. But at Notre Dame, there are 25,000 people at a healing service. And, it was… This is the first time that the conferences felt that they should do something like this. Now, up to this point, it was felt that it was too Protestant a thing to do. Although, as you know, most Protestants don’t do this. It’s something, you know, kind of independent people have done, like Oral Roberts, although he’s a Methodist, and like Kathryn Kuhlman, and kind of…

It’s not really a Protestant thing, it’s a Christian thing. But finally, this year, they decided that they would do something on a large scale like this. And it was like God was trying to make a point with us, because when we asked how many people of this 25,000 felt that they had been healed, something like 70% stood up. And, when I asked them again two days later, in a workshop on Sunday, a group of about 4,000 people, again, about 70% of those people stood up. Now, I don’t know what they were healed of, or, you know, all that, but certainly 70% of people feeling that something really happened to them at that service is telling us something. And I’ve never seen that kind of outpouring. I’ve seen it praying with small groups, where you take plenty of time and really work with those people. But when you see it happen, you know, just praying for a huge group of people, that is incredible. So it’s like God really wants to bless. And there’s one thing that I’ve learned in this, we’ve learned a great deal, but there’s still a whole lot more mystery, and there always will be, when we’re dealing with the things of God, because He doesn’t want us to think that we understand the whole thing, you know, and it’s in our control.

It isn’t. It’s His grace. So there’s a certain limit beyond which you can’t understand. But what I have understood is something which is universally blessed by God, is that more blessings and more healings take place when there’s a real atmosphere of love among people. And, so this is what we’re going to begin to talk, I’m going to begin to talk about anyway, about the love which we can have for one another and which is needed in Christian communities. And then we’ll go through the obstacles and the blocks to that love and get rid of those things. And then by the end of the week, there’ll be just a tremendous atmosphere where, we might not even have to pray for people. They’ll begin to get healed. This we’re seeing a great deal. In some of our retreats, you know, many of the people are healed even before we get around to praying for them. They’re just waiting in line and they get healed on the spot. And I believe that that’s because the presence and the power of the Lord is so strong when there’s a group of people worshiping and praising God and loving one another that it’s hardly like you even have to ask. It’s right there. And Kathryn Kuhlman has recognized that in her services.

You know, you just got the people praising God and worshiping Him and loving Him and loving one another. And, these fantastic things begin to happen. So I’d like to share with you tonight something very simple, that it is very true, very easy to grasp, but somehow it’s often left out, at least in this particular understanding of it. And I’m going to talk to you tonight about love as a gift from God. When people come into the baptism of the Spirit, the gifts they talk about usually are the ministry gifts, the nine ministry gifts of St. Paul. You know, healing and tongues and prophecy, and those are very great gifts. But, I think it’s only after we’ve been walking in this way that we have to come back really to fundamentals where the Christian life really is. And those gifts mentioned by St. Paul are manifestations of the Spirit to help other people, basically. Except tongues is also a gift to build us up. Most of those gifts are, you know, prophecy is to edify the group, the gift of preaching wisdom is to help the group. But the things we need to grow ourselves in a very deep way. And those which develop over a long time into the fruits of the Spirit are also gifts from God.

And I think most of us in our backgrounds and the way we have been taught religion have tried to fight to achieve these manifestations, really, of the Spirit, which can fully be ours only as gift if we ask for them. And as I understand the Christian life, and I think this is really solid and is the way we really all understand it if we meditate on the New Testament and the revelation in Jesus Christ, is that the basic thing that Jesus has come to do for us has been to give us His life and a share of His very own life and the life of the Father and the life of the Holy Spirit. In the Roman Catholic Church we call this sanctifying grace. It’s a sharing in the very life of God. And in that life come all the attributes of God. His wisdom, we begin to see things like God sees them, and His love, which is the greatest gift of all, which is even more than a gift, so much so that Paul calls it a way. It’s a whole way of life, the way of love. And it’s much more than human love, because it’s a sharing in the very life of God Himself, in His love for people, which is so much stronger than our own.

And I know the way divine love or charity was presented to me as I was growing up as a Christian, it was pretty much to the effect that there are all kinds of people out there. And God has given you a commandment that you’re supposed to love everybody.

And so you say, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to love everybody.” And you look out there, and there are not too many likable people that you see out there. And so you’re always striving to do something. And even the people you live with frequently, and this seems to be like the hardest thing of all, the disagreements and the problems we have right within our families and our communities.

Someone was just quoting to me in the car, I think it was on the way to the airport, Father Willie Sherwood, you know him? The Anglican minister from North Carolina? He was staying at our place. And he was the one who, he was quoting G.K. Chesterton. And Chesterton said that Jesus told us we’re to love our neighbor, and He also told us to love our enemy. And he said they’re probably the same person.

And more and more we seem to be called on to pray for healing of marriage relationships. And it’s like there are not too many completely happy marriages. There are always these problems that get involved in marriage. And the way it was presented to me was that God has given us this big commandment that we’re supposed to love one another. And so you look out there and you say, “Okay, God loves this person and so I’ve got to do it.” And so you try to do it. And inside you have this feeling that you really don’t like them very much. But you try not to do anything that would indicate that dislike or anything that would hurt them. And what happens frequently is we just maintain silence but that feeling is there. And we don’t know what to do about that feeling. And it’s really hard. Mark Twain, I’ve used this many times but it’s so true. Mark Twain once said, “I don’t hate anybody. No, I don’t hate anybody. But if I ever do, I’ve got the other guy all picked out.”

Now, that trying to do something is good but that’s really like living under the law. And I didn’t really realize this until about five years ago meditating on the scripture. Maybe somebody told me about it and really hit me. But the old law is love your neighbor as yourself. That was before the time of Jesus that that commandment was there. And I didn’t realize this either. In the Old Testament it says an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And I always thought, well that’s kind of harsh. That kind of condones retaliation and vengeance and things like that. But according to scripture scholars what that really means is that there’s a tendency to go beyond an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And according to the development of the Israelites of that time it was holding them back actually to say just an eye for an eye. Not two eyes for an eye. And I think we can see this in the Mideast now. There’s a guerrilla raid on some apartment house in Israel. The next thing you know, ten bombers go out and bomb out a village over in Lebanon. And you get this escalation of vengeance. “You did this to me, and to prevent you from doing that again I’m going to really put the fear of God into you, and we’re going to double the punishment that you gave to us.”

So actually in the Old Testament saying an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was the beginning of putting moderation into that, and it was really holding back, it was God holding those people back from taking vengeance. But when Jesus came it was a whole new walking, and He said, “You have heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I tell you, if you have any anger in your heart, it’s going to go hard on, and you’re going to be called up before the judge.” You can’t even hold anger in your heart much less take an eye for an eye. And the new commandment which Jesus gave us at the Last Supper, the new one is, “I want you to love one another as I have loved you.”

Now think about that one. Think about that one. That is beyond us. That is something that we can’t achieve by willpower and by striving and by trying to reach out. We can’t do it. I can’t love you like Jesus loved you. That is ridiculous. I can’t do it. And the only way it is possible is if I really share the very love of God and enter into union with Him. And then I can begin to love people as Jesus loves. And in that love is the love of enemies. That was something which was also new, which is the main thing contained in “love one another as I have loved you.” The love of our enemies. And I know I can’t do that. That’s beyond me. And I need to ask for that as gift.

Now one of the things that struck me, and this has been striking me deeper and deeper, it began coming to me about three years ago. Maybe I talked about it here. It just keeps hitting me more and more. That this is one of the things that we don’t usually ask for in groups, Christian groups. You have altar calls where people give themselves to Jesus and prayer rooms where you pray for the baptism of the Spirit, and people come up and ask for the gift of healing or they ask that they may receive the gift of tongues, but very seldom, at least in my experience, have people as a group really prayed for the gift of loving one another as Jesus loved.

Has that ever struck you? And it’s like one of those things where there can be no harm done. Now sometimes when people pray for the gift of tongues and they don’t receive it at that time, the way it’s ministered can create, you know, kind of a judgment on a person. But this is one gift where when you pray, you know, I’ve never seen any harm done.

And yet, so seldom do we pray for that kind of a thing. And I find that when we do pray for it, it’s like God begins to pour out all these other gifts in great, lavish abundance. I know several times I’ve prayed for married couples who asked that I just pray for them that the love between them would go on increasing. Something real simple and wholesome like that. And at least three instances I know of, the people without even mentioning it were physically healed.

Now that’s something. One instance was a minister and his wife who had been missionaries down in Mexico and had been much persecuted by the Catholics down there. And I was speaking at a mission in Texas. In fact, there was a CFO. And afterwards the minister and his wife came forward and they wanted me to pray for them because they had this kind of anger naturally because they’d been so persecuted by Roman Catholics in Mexico. And they also prayed that the love between them would increase.

And as we prayed for that he reached down here and said, “My gosh, it’s gone.” And I had no idea what was gone. I said, “What’s gone?” And he said, “My hernia.” He said, “I contracted a hernia when I was down in Mexico and the thing just disappeared. It’s not there anymore.” Well, that’s the kind of thing that we see take place. Now, I’d like to share a few other things about this because it is… I don’t know how we missed it. You know, we all know that this is important. You know, that’s missing from no one’s education, the idea that we should love one another, although we seem to have a hard time doing it.

But why did we miss this idea of really praying for it, that this might be poured out and increased among us? Now, how did we miss it? I know it was in my theology that this is what divine charity was. It was a gift from God in which we shared His gift. But I never thought of praying for it.

And the way it used to be, it was like, well, God loves this person and I seem to be having a hard time but I’ve got to do it because God loves them. So I’m supposed to be looking for something in the person, you know, that’s really good and I’m having an awful hard time finding it. But as someone said, if you have to look for that in you, you feel insulted if you find somebody trying to find something good about you or offering you up.

You know, in our tradition, this was actually held up as a wonderful thing to do. St. Teresa of Lisieux lived in a convent and there was one sister in her convent she didn’t like, she couldn’t stand her guts, and she decided the thing to do, and in a way this is a good thing, you know, I mean she was trying to like her, so she determined that at a time of recreation she would make a special effort to go and sit next to this sister and talk to her. And everyone began to see her picking out this sister and seeming to enjoy it, and she had a couple of blood sisters in the convent and they were horrified and they got together and said, “What’s wrong with Teresa, you know, we’ve got this goofball here in the convent and she seems to enjoy her, what’s come over her, what’s wrong?” And Teresa was really happy because she had done such a good job of dissembling her real feelings that even her sisters couldn’t see beneath it. But that’s still a kind of dissembling, isn’t it? And it’s like really trying, and there’s something good about that, she was really trying to see good in this person that other people had a hard time with.

But as I see divine charity, it’s not God loves you and so I’ve got to try. But it’s rather coming out of a very different direction. It’s saying, “God, I’m having an awful hard time with this person. But I’m sure You see a lot in them. So, Lord, come into me and let me see this person as You see them. And let me forgive as You forgive. Let me understand as You understand. And let me love this person as You love them.”

And I think we all know that as we grow in love of God, and that’s not just love for God, but God’s love in us for other people, as we begin to grow in that, then we begin to like more and more people. I’m beginning to find I like more people than I used to.

Now, that’s a really good thing, because there was a time in my life when I really didn’t like very many people. And it was like when I became a Christian, or became a deeper Christian than I’d been, that was the worst period in my life for liking people. I don’t know how it was with you. But when I really started getting serious about my Christianity, then I began to look at myself, and I saw all these faults. And I began to try to weed them out, you know. Keep lists and get rid of all these faults. And as I became more critical of myself, and saw all these faults, I began to look around, and I saw all these faults and all these other people. Because I was so intent about weeding them out of myself.

And I noticed, I just throw this out and see if it tallies with your experience, because there’s no way of checking this out. But those groups of Christians that emphasize just a salvation experience, “Are you saved?” Tend to be very judgmental.

I don’t know why that is. But if they stress that, and like don’t move forward from that. That’s really important to stress. That people come to Jesus. That’s number one. But it’s like if they stress that, and don’t seem to move forward, it’s like they’re really harsh.

And one of the beautiful things about CFO camps that I’ve discovered is, at least all the camps I’ve been to, that people seem to be so loving, and kind of like non-judgmental. Now, they’re not looking for your particular weaknesses or whatever. And I remember Tommy Tyson, shortly after my own prayer for the baptism of the Spirit, he wrote me a letter, way back, ’67. And he said, “I’d just like to share with you two things that I see as dangers in these prayer groups springing up. And do everything you possibly can to avoid them. And one is a judgmental spirit.” As you begin… People come into the Spirit, they begin to judge.

And you know this. If a person hasn’t prayed in tongues, you know, clunk, you know, pretty soon they’re second-class citizens. And his second point was very much like the first, and that was, the people seem to consider that they are an elite. That they are very special, and other people are like second-class citizens.

And in May, this was really kind of a revelation to me. I knew it was so, but I’d never seen it so clearly. In May, we had a meeting of so-called national charismatic leaders. It was chosen… There were only 40 invited, and that doesn’t mean that the 40 were invited were any better than the 150 who weren’t. But they had to keep it down. Jerry Durstein was one. It was a tremendous meeting. And at the end of it, we decided, this had been going on for five years, four years, that what we really needed to do was to have a kind of a foot washing.

And it was beautiful. And the way we did it, it was to be not just for individuals, but because of the traditions that we represented, which had hurt other people, see, because we thought we were better, or we were prejudiced in one way or another. Now, that doesn’t mean saying that all denominations are equal, or that they’re not important. That doesn’t say that at all. But it is saying that we’ve been judgmental and harsh and not understanding of people in other groups. So we divided it into eight different groups.

And each person could get up and say, and each person did. And it lasted four, five hours. Wasn’t that right, Jerry? Five hours. It was tremendous. And I started it off. I thought the Lord was calling us to do this, so I mentioned it, and they said, “That’s a good idea.” So I started it off.

And I thought I did a long one so that they got the idea. Well, it turned out mine was the shortest. But each group got up and basically said, “We thought we were the only ones who God had blessed and who had the truth. And we thought all the others were going to hell.”

Now, that varied in intensity. Roman Catholics, we didn’t feel that the other people were all going to hell. You may have thought that, but that was not. But we felt that we would be, these were 20, 30 years ago. We felt it would be in spite of the fact that you were Protestants. It would be because you love God and in spite of that, you see. But then we heard that the… That was kind of shameful to say that and to admit that, see. Then we heard what the other groups were saying, too. The Baptists, you know. They felt that we were the whore of Babylon and that we were. We were going… No, Roman Catholics were going to hell. None of us would be saved. Not even in spite of, you know. And we found that the classical Pentecostals felt that the mainline Protestant churches were doomed. And it was like each group got up and said, “We felt we have the whole thing and that all the other people were really lost.” And it was incredible to hear each group, not everybody, but almost like everyone, get up to say that.

And it was like the spirit of judgment had just torn us all apart as Christians. Now, how in the world did that ever get in there? Here are all of us calling each other Christians and really condemning the other groups. And that’s not to say that they’re not errors and problems and that each one of us in our own group has to sort those things out and see that our church is reformed. But how was it that even knowing those things that we thought the others were lost? And the spirit of judgment that fell upon Christians because of that was just tremendous.

And I know for myself when I began to be serious about being a Christian I became very harsh and judgmental about other people. And I entered a monastery to really do this thing right and become a saint. And it was like the higher that I tried the more I looked around and even monks, you know, people really trying. You see some small fault. And you were really harsh. Like we weren’t supposed to smoke. And there were a couple of guys who sneaked some cigarettes in there. Well to me it was like I felt that they had no business there, that they ought to leave, and if they were caught they ought to be kicked out. That was my general impression.

Really harsh. On something which before I’d enter the monastery, you know, you take it and leave it. You know, I don’t smoke and I don’t think it’s a good idea myself. But you know I’m not going to consign somebody to or say this is a terrible thing.

But it’s like as soon as I got in there and really tried my attitude changed. And the circle of my friends narrowed down. I just had a few friends. And I was really harsh on people who couldn’t talk about religion, including my own parents. You know.

And I narrowed down into my own little world. And it’s like the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Spirit, and Abba David Geraets calls it a baptism of love. And I think we’ve all experienced that. That when people are baptized in the Holy Spirit, the Spirit being the person of the Trinity who is God’s love in a very special way, represents His love, pours into us and we take on the attributes of the Holy Spirit, who warms our hearts and melts those things in us that are frigid and cold. And the first effect of the baptism of the Spirit is really to release us so we find we love all kinds of people we never loved before. But that has to keep going. And it usually is partial. It isn’t complete or full unless we pray that that continue on. And I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but in the history of the Pentecostal movement, and there’s a wonderful book on this by Vinson Synan, who is, I think, Assemblies of God, it’s called the Pentecostal Holiness Movement in the United States. But when that movement began in the early 1900s in the South, in North Carolina, in Los Angeles, the barriers between races just broke down. And in these groups where they did not worship together before, when the Holy Spirit came they all worshipped together.

And they had black ministers in white churches and white ministers in black churches and those people were freed of these barriers which were present in the culture. And about 20-30 years later when the intensity of that experience of the Spirit wore down, then they began to become like other churches. As they became institutionalized, then those barriers came up again, not because they wanted them but for kind of tactical reasons. So the effect of the Holy Spirit is to fill us with His love for all people.

And I remember these are a couple of other things that really obstruct me. One of the reasons we don’t pray for love is it’s not very spectacular. I find that what we want to pray for really are things that will make us stand out or make us feel useful. A lot of people come up to me and ask that I would pray for them for the gift of healing, which is fine, you know. But often I think we want something we can really give to other people so they will be needed in the community. And other people come and ask for the gift of tongues because that’s something you can check out. And if you got the gift of tongues maybe it makes you feel I can say I’ve got the Spirit, or I want the gift of prophecy or all these other things.

But the gift of love is quite different. You can’t put yourself on a ladder and compare yourself with other people and say I’ve got the gift of love and you don’t. As soon as you do that you don’t have the gift of love anymore. See?

And the very nature of the gift of love is that you prefer others to yourself. Isn’t that right? And I remember, I’ll just share this with you too. I asked somebody who had a real gift of discernment to tell me what they thought my great gift was.

And the person thought for a while and he said, “Love.” And you know my first reaction was disappointment. Now that’s awful, isn’t it? And immediately, you know, I suppose it wasn’t even a second before I realized that was wrong. You know, you’re not supposed to be disappointed, this is the greatest of all.

You know, you have prophecy and knowledge, says to move mountains, faith says to move mountains, and tongues of men and angels, all that, and you don’t have love, you’ve got nothing. But there’s something so commonplace about love. It’s like nobody might notice it. You know? And I caught myself, my instinctive reaction was, oh, you know, I hope they’d say prophecy or something like that, you know, that make you stand out.

Love. But the gift of love is a service gift. And it’s a foot washing gift. And if you have it, you can’t compare yourself to somebody else. And it’s like everybody’s got love in some degree or they wouldn’t be Christian. So you can’t say you’ve got it and somebody else doesn’t have it. Right? And you can’t measure it. It’s not like you could say, “Oh, I’ve got this much and they have that much.”

And so I was disappointed. And maybe that’s again the reason why we don’t pray for the things that are the most important of all. Next to knowing Jesus, knowing the Father, and being filled with His life, that’s the most important of all.

Now, that’s good teaching. And we know it. And I would like you to now do something. This is really good. We’ve done this a couple of times this year, and it’s just tremendous what happens. First, I’m going to take 1 Corinthians 13, just verses 4 through 7.

1 Corinthians, and it’s a description of love. It’s Paul’s description of love, which is the way which is beyond all the gifts. And because God is love, this is a really good description of the way Jesus is. Right? If you’re describing love, you’re also describing Jesus. So I’m just going to do one thing. I’m going to substitute Jesus for every time you see love. Now the version I’m using is the Jerusalem Bible, and you can either listen or follow, whichever you want to do. You might just close your eyes and listen if you want. You don’t have to follow it on the page. And just listen to this as a description of the personality of Jesus. Because if we get close to Jesus and are filled with His life, this is the way we should be. So, this is Jesus. Jesus is always patient and kind.

Jesus is never jealous. He’s never boastful or conceited. He’s never rude or selfish. He does not take offense. He is not resentful. Jesus takes no pleasure in other people’s sins, but He delights in the truth. Jesus is always ready to excuse, to trust in you, hope in you, to hope in you, and to endure whatever comes.

Now, I think when it says love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins, the delights in the truth, what He’s getting at there is that when we feel that other people are other and we don’t really love them, and something bad happens to that other person, we kind of rejoice in it because they’re put down. And in our minds, if we see them as other, that makes us feel that we’re superior if they’re put down.

I think that’s what he’s talking about. And delights in the truth, I think, what he’s saying there is when something really good happens to somebody else. If we feel sad, it’s a sign that there’s something missing in us. But if we rejoice when something good happens, as though it had happened to us, it’s a sign that we really love that other person. Now, I’m going to ask you to do something.

We’re going to make this into an examination of how far we’ve advanced in putting on the love that’s in Jesus Christ. The love which enables us to love our enemies and which enables us to love is Jesus loves. So I’m going to say I now instead of Jesus and instead of love.

And I’m going to ask you to repeat after me. Now, whenever you can repeat after me and feel that you really mean it and rejoice. If you find it a little hard to say it, no, like you’re not altogether honest, that’s an area where the Lord really has something to say to us and to do in us until we achieve this love which Paul is talking about. Now, this is really wonderful and we’re going to do this slowly and give you time to think about it. But just repeat after me and see if you’re able to do it in all honesty.

One group where we did this, the whole group laughed after the first one that couldn’t do it. Okay. So repeat after me. I am always patient and kind. I am never jealous. I am never boastful or conceited. I am never rude or selfish.

I do not take offense. I am not resentful. I take no pleasure in other people’s sins. But I delight in the truth. I am always ready to excuse people. To trust in them. To hope in them. And to endure whatever comes.

Now, suppose we just wait for a moment in silence. No, for us to really come up to that, we would have to be Jesus. And so we’re bound to be missing, you know, in some areas here. So suppose we just wait for a moment in silence, not in condemnation, but ask the Lord to speak to you if there’s any area there where He wants, you know, to fill you with His love and to change whatever is weak in you and transform it into His glorious life.

And now, within yourself, could you say a prayer to the Lord to ask Him to share His own life and love with you in that particular area and to transform whatever needs to be transformed. Either just say it in silence or maybe whisper the prayer to the Lord.

And now I’m going to say a prayer building on that from Ephesians. It will be Paul’s own prayer from the third chapter of Ephesians, the end of that chapter. And after that, I’d ask Willie if you could just lead us in a song, an appropriate song.

This, then, is what I pray kneeling before the Father from whom every family, whether spiritual or natural, takes its name. Out of His infinite glory may He give you the power through His Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith and then planted in love and built on love. You will with all the saints have the strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth, until knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God.

Glory be to Him whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory be to Him from generation to generation in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen. I’m sorry.