• Be expectant. Expectation is a powerful spiritual dynamic. God loves to answer expectant prayers!
11
Above All
In the preceding chapter, we looked at several keys to effective prayer and in this chapter, I want to address one specific key that I believe both includes and supercedes all others. We can apply every prayer principle imaginable and meet every possible condition, but if we do not meet this one, our prayers will be like a noisy gong, clanging against the ceiling of heaven. What is this all-important key to answered prayer? Walking in love.
Jesus made it clear that love is His number one priority when He said, “I give you a new commandment: that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you too should love one another” (John 13:34). The Apostle Peter writes: “And above all things have fervent love for one another, for ‘love will cover a multitude of sins’” (1 Peter 4:8, NKJV, emphasis mine). In other words, we are to have genuine, pure, fervent love for others above everything else we do. If we can only manage to do one thing in our lives, it should be to love other people. Of course, it is impossible to truly love others without knowing God, loving Him, and knowing that He loves us. In the context of loving Him, receiving His love and extending His love to other people, we will find that our prayers are rich, vibrant, effective, and rewarding.
FAITH WORKS THROUGH LOVE
Many people think great faith is the number one sign of spiritual maturity. But I believe that walking in love is the true test of spiritual maturity and I know that it is essential to an effective prayer life. Our love walk energizes our faith walk, and when these two spiritual dynamics of faith and love work together, our prayers will have tremendous results. We cannot pray effective prayers without having faith in God, but love demonstrates and expresses our faith. If we love God, we have faith in Him.
The Bible teaches that faith works through love. Galatians 5:6 says that what really counts is “faith activated and energized and expressed and working through love.” Love is not talk or theory; it’s action. In fact, the Bible says that we cannot be walking in love if we see a brother in need, have what it takes to meet his need, and will not do anything to help him (see 1 John 3:17).
Jesus also said all the law and all the prophets are summed up in love when He declared: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all of your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37–40, NKJV). Jesus gave these words to people asking which commandment was the most important. They were basically saying to Him: “Just give us the bottom line, Jesus.” In response, He said: “Okay. You want the bottom line? You want to fully obey all the law and all the prophets? Then love Me and love people.” End of story. It’s that simple. Jesus let people know that walking in love is at the heart of living a life of faith. Trying to walk in faith without love is like having a flashlight with no battery. We must be sure that we keep our love battery charged at all times. Otherwise our faith will not work!
Trying to walk in faith without love is like having a fl ashlight with no battery.
I believe Christians can run into problems when we do not diligently pursue walking in love as a vital part of our faith and relationship with God. We want to be blessed; we want to be healed; we want successful ministries, but we do not seem to desperately want to seek and pursue walking in love and the fruit of the Spirit. I believe Satan is seeking to build a stronghold of cold love in the hearts of believers. He wants us to have hard stony hearts that do not sense, feel, or care about the needs of other people. He wants us to be selfish and self-centered, thinking, Somebody do something for me, without ever reaching out to do anything for anybody else. He knows that faith works through love and that without love, our faith amounts to nothing. We need to know that too and be careful to develop a strong love walk as we seek to grow in faith and in other areas of our spiritual lives.
WHAT LOVE IS
What does it mean to have the kind of faith that works through love? It means that we love people who do not seem to deserve to be loved. It means that when someone deserves for us to stay angry with them, we forgive—even if we believe our anger is justified. It means there are going to be times when we would love to talk about what someone did to us, but we choose to cover their offense instead because the Bible teaches us that “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).
Love also means we give to people unconditionally, with no strings attached. We don’t think they owe us anything when we give to them; we simply give because we walk in love—and that’s what people do when they really love someone. Walking in love means we begin to have a heart like God—generous, kind, merciful, forgiving, compassionate, always believing the best, always encouraging, always helping, never giving up.
First Corinthians 13 is often read at weddings because it so beautifully describes real love. It does apply to husbands and wives, but it also applies to everyone who seeks to walk in love in any kind of relationship—with siblings or extended family, with people at church, with friends and acquaintances, with coworkers and people we may not know, but encounter as we go about our daily activities. We are to love people wherever we go and whatever we do—from running errands to checking out at a grocery store to working to banking to attending sports events to putting children to bed at night or waking them up in the morning.
First Corinthians 13 teaches us that love is patient. A person who walks in love is not quick-tempered or easily angered. Love is kind, which means that a person who walks in love is good to people; that person is considerate, gentle, and giving. Love is long--suffering. In other words, it can put up with something and put up with it and put up with it and put up with it—it’s impossible to wear out real love! Love is not easily offended, which means that a person who walks in love is not touchy and gets over things quickly. That person does not hold grudges or seek revenge; love forgives and forgets. Love always believes the best about people; it does not default to the negative or think, You’re out to get me! You must not like me because you did not speak to me when I came in. I knew you didn’t really like me! Love is not rude. A person who loves does not push other people out of the way while trying to buy a book on love! No, love prefers other people. If someone is in a grocery store line with two full carts, and someone else is standing behind with two items, love backs off and lets the other person go first. If somebody has been waiting for a parking space for five minutes, and just about the time it’s empty, a little old man who can barely see above the steering wheel pulls up, love lets him have the parking spot.
Love sacrifices; love meets needs; love gives and gives and gives and gives and gives. Real love does not have to be talked into giving; it is always looking for opportunities to express itself. Love edifies. It does not tear down; it lifts up. Love encourages. Love listens. Love is seen or not seen in how we treat people. Love is the law of the kingdom and the nature of God. It is the demonstration of our faith in God and the secret to effective prayer.
What Love Is Not
Now that you are beginning to see what real love is, let me also describe what love is not. Walking in love does not mean you have to become a doormat for everybody and allow people to abuse you and use you. That is not good for anyone. Love sometimes has to be tough enough to break off a relationship if you know that a person’s mistreatment of you is hurting them even more than it is hurting you. Loving someone does not mean that you have to be walked on all your life, but it does mean that there are going to be times when you will stick with somebody you would rather get away from. It means seeking and incorporating the heart of God for other people as you relate to them and applying His wisdom in your relationships.
Sometimes love has to be tough in order to be real and we need balance in this matter of giving to others in love. We should not keep giving to somebody who never does his part. We
are not wise to keep giving to people who will not work when they are able, or to people who do not try to take responsibility for their lives. For example, if a person had a grown child still living at home and that person refused to work and simply took advantage of the rest of the family, true love from the parents would not allow them to continue living that way. The most loving thing the family could do would be to put the grown child into a position where he or she had to work and be responsible.
Walking in love does not mean you have to become a doormat for everybody and allow people to abuse you and use you.
I have decided that if I have tried to help someone for years and they are still not helped, then they really do not intend to change and they are just using me and my resources. Everyone deserves a chance and we can be used by God to give them one, but they still have to make a choice. If they are offered a way out and still choose to stay in their messes, we might as well go help someone who will truly benefit.
Allowing people to use us does not help them, but helping them be responsible does. The Bible teaches us in Proverbs 1:3 to “receive instruction in wise dealing and the discipline of wise thoughtfulness. . .#8221; (emphasis mine). There comes a time when giving to someone is not the best thing for them, when it is not wise. Sometimes it is a sacrifice for me not to meet the need of a person I love and care for. It would be easier for me to give them what they want rather than let them do without. But the God kind of love is not moved emotionally; it follows wisdom.
WE’RE USELESS WITHOUT IT
We need to pray about our love walk, asking God to help us grow and mature in love and to enable us to love people the way He wants us to. I have been studying the love walk for years because I finally got it through my head that my life and ministry would have no power at all if I did not walk in love. I spend a lot of time on platforms with microphones and cameras rolling, but the most important thing is how I live my life off the platform with no microphones and no cameras. That determines what happens when I am in those visible, public settings. When I speak before people, I do not put on a show; I simply want to help them get their lives straightened out if they are in a mess and to encourage people to develop a more mature relationship with God. If we pretend to love people when we are in public, but mistreat them behind closed doors, then according to Scripture, we are nothing more than a big noise, a useless nobody, a whitewashed tomb full of dead men’s bones (see 1 Corinthians 13:1, 2; Matthew 23:27).
I don’t have anything to offer people except the anointing of God on my life. I am not fancy. I don’t sing or do other things that might thrill people. I simply tell people like it is—the truth of God’s Word—when it comes to living in victory and obeying God in practical ways. I tell people how to change so they can enjoy their lives more and I tell them how to grow spiritually. I teach God’s Word in a practical way that helps them in their everyday lives. By God’s grace, this ministry reaches millions of people around the world, but I have to have God’s anointing in order to do what He has called me to do—or I am finished. I have learned that I will not carry God’s anointing if I do not walk in love, because God does not anoint the flesh (our own desires and selfish attitudes or behaviors).
You see, when the anointing oil was poured on the priests in the Old Testament, none of it could be put on their bodies—only their heads. God does not anoint carnal behavior. We really must walk in love because that aids and increases the anointing on our lives, and the anointing is what enables us to do what God has called us to do. Again, God’s anointing is His presence and power and that enables us to do with ease what we could never accomplish with any amount of struggle on our own. We all need God’s anointing. A person does not have to work at a so-called “spiritual” job to need God’s anointing. We need it to parent, to survive in the world, to be good friends, on the job, and literally in everything we do.
For years, I was an obnoxious, smart-aleck preacher who would mouth off to my husband at home and then walk up to the pulpit thinking I was a great woman of God. I did not know how to treat people well. I was impatient; everybody had to do things my way or I was going to get upset. Nobody could correct me; nobody could tell me anything; nobody could have any input into my life because I was “the woman of God”—the president of what we then called “Life in the Word.”
During that time, things were not happening in my life and ministry the way that I felt they should. I was not seeing the growth I desired for the ministry, and I was not seeing the power of God that I really knew was available. Our meetings were satisfactory because the Lord had graced me with a gift of teaching, but we did not experience the presence of God and the ministry of the Holy Spirit as we do now. I was frustrated and felt unfulfilled. I knew something was missing and finally realized that it was God’s presence. Through a long series of God’s dealings with me, I finally understood that I had to develop a strong love walk. I realized that God is very concerned about the way we relate to other people because He wants us to love them. The love walk is foundational to everything else we do.
First Corinthians 13:2 says, “And if I have prophetic powers (the gift of interpreting the divine will and purpose), and understand all the secret truths and mysteries and possess all knowledge, and if I have [sufficient] faith so that I can remove mountains, but have not love (God’s love in me), I am nothing (a useless nobody).” That’s a pretty strong statement: “If I don’t walk in love, I am a useless nobody.”
The love walk is foundational to everything else we do.
If we want to be useful, we need to really think about this truth and start walking in love as the Bible encourages us:
• “Walk worthy of the calling. . .bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:1–2, NKJV).
• “Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 1:13, NKJV).
• “And above all things have fervent love for one another, for ‘love will cover a multitude of sins’” (1 Peter 4:8, NKJV).
• “And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us” (Ephesians 5:2, NKJV).
BE A BLESSING
One of the best ways to walk in love is to be a blessing to other people or simply to help them. There are so many different ways to bless and help people, and many times we can start by just being nice. For example, when we hear that someone has a problem, we need to go beyond saying, “Oh, what a shame!” without taking action. Instead, we need to pray and say: “God, if there is something I can do to help, would You show me what it is?” When we learn that a friend is ill, God might lead us to help by offering to drive that person to a doctor’s appointment. When we hear about a family who has lost their home and all of their belongings in a fire or a weather-related disaster, the least we can do is to look around our own homes and go through our closets to see what we can give them. Obviously, no one person can address every single problem on earth, but we can pray and ask God what He would have us do in order to express His love by being a blessing to the people around us.
One of our managers sold his house before the house he was moving into was ready. When I heard he was going to stay in a hotel for a week or two, I started looking for a place for him to live. My son-in-law got involved and started helping me. We found a couple who were moving out of their apartment. They had a week left on their lease and offered to let our manager and his family stay there for that week. Well, at the end of the week, their house still was not complete enough for them to move into. They still needed a little more time. Then my daughter came to me and said: “Would you like us to let them stay with us until their house is finished? Would that be okay?” Now, my daughter and her husband already had four children—and they did not need five more people in their house. But my daughter knows how to be a blessing and she knows that sometimes we have to make ourselves uncomfortable in order to bless somebody else. She was willing to sacrifice some personal comfort in order to walk in love
.
If we will concentrate on being a blessing to others, then God will see to it that we are also blessed. We do not need a special word from God before we do something for someone! We can learn what people want and need simply by listening to them or observing them. Look for people in your church who seem to be a little lonely. Look for the person who always comes to the services alone and think about how you would feel in that situation and invite that person to sit with you. Watch for a single mother who has four children hanging on her and looks like she’s barely going to make it through the day. Give her $50 and tell her to take her family out to lunch—or offer to babysit her children so she can have a quiet lunch. If you overhear someone saying, “My hair is so stringy and awful; I need a perm, but I just don’t have the money,” hand her $100 and tell her she now has the money to get that perm. Be creative in your thinking as you seek to bless others.
You might say, “Joyce, I don’t have $100.” My answer to you is to start giving what you do have and you will get to the point of having $100 to give anytime you need it. We often give up when we hear of a need because we do not have what it takes to meet the entire need. Don’t let what you don’t have stop you from giving what you do have. Don’t let what you cannot do stop you from doing what you can do! Stay active, be a blessing, and do something. Otherwise, you will end up doing nothing and that is a total waste of God’s ability in your life.
I know you may be thinking, What about me? I’ve got needs myself and nobody is doing anything for me. As long as you keep that attitude, nobody is going to do anything for you. You may have to start by giving sacrificially, but you will get to the point where you can give out of your abundance. But unless you start where you are, you will never get to where you need to be.