When I was a teenager, in my early teens, I often stayed in the home of a couple. This couple had no children of their own, and so they treated me as their own child whenever I stayed with them. They were very kind, very loving to me, and I often stayed with them, especially during school holidays, because my school was very near their home, whereas my own home was quite far away at the time.
Now this couple were extremely wealthy. They had a beautiful house. They had a very successful business. And they had really everything that the world was able to offer. But I noticed that though they had everything, in fact they had nothing. Now what do I mean by that? What I mean is that they had all the material possessions you could offer. They had far too much. You know, they had so much money that often they didn't know what to do with this money. So they would buy lots of things that were no use to them and no use to anyone.
For example, they would buy a lot of very expensive Persian carpets or Chinese carpets. Now you know that one carpet of high quality could cost thousands of dollars, and it was very beautiful. The problem is that when you buy that many carpets, there's nowhere to put these carpets. So the result is that there in one room was a stack of carpets from the ground up. Now what's the use of buying a whole pile of carpets? You put it all in a great pile, which in fact takes up all the space in the room, and you can't even see the other carpets except the one on top. So what was the point of buying thousands and thousands of dollars worth of carpets just to stack them up there? And year after year, the pile was there and getting bigger, because they didn't seem to know what else to buy and to use their money for.
They were not Christians. They had no real aim in life. And so what are you going to do with your money? They didn't care much for traveling. What was there to do? I mean, apart from going out and having a big meal, which was very bad for their health, because they were already a bit oversized. Another big meal was not going to do their health any good. It would only serve to shorten their life, because that was the only other enjoyment they knew, was to eat, rather like Hong Kong people understand very well. They eat. And then the size gets bigger, the heart condition gets worse. Eventually the wife developed heart trouble, diabetes, and all the list goes on and on. And the husband had all kinds of physical problems as well. So they had everything and really nothing.
And I observed this and thought -- and I was of course not a Christian myself, I was in my early teens then -- I thought to myself, how meaningless, how very meaningless is this life? What is the point of having this enormous wealth and not having the faintest clue what to do? I mean, there wasn't any point buying another house and another house. There was no point buying many cars. I mean, how many cars can you drive? You can only drive one car at a time anyway. And they were not interested in cars. Neither of them even knew how to drive. And since they lived in the city, where they could walk to anywhere they wanted to go, everything is very convenient there, no use for a car at all. I looked at the situation, I thought to myself, what is the meaning of life anyway for them, and for anyone floating around in this wealth?
And so, when I came to the Lord, I read there in 1 Corinthians 13, a passage that I'm sure you are very familiar with. That is the chapter about love. And a passage that it is very important for us to think deeply on, to meditate on. And perhaps we can read a few verses from this important chapter, even if we think we are quite familiar with it. Because it is precisely the familiar passages that we often understand the least.
I hope you will excuse me for speaking relatively slowly, because I know that the translators have a very hard time. And I have the tendency to speak very fast when I preach, so I have to deliberately slow myself down. I used to have a translator in England that when I preached, my translator translated for me every Sunday. He is often out of breath, just trying to keep up with me. Since then, I tried to learn to slow down.
1 Corinthians 13: "If I speak in the tongue of men and of angels" -- can you speak in the tongue of angels? I think not. But it says, "but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and knowledge" -- you may be a scholar. You have a lot of knowledge. You understand a lot of mysteries. If you are in physics, you might understand a lot of mysteries of this universe. They really are mind-boggling. I often read books on physics out of pure interest in creation. And the ideas are often mind-boggling. Amazing. Things like quantum physics and so on. It has astonishing ideas. But if you have all this knowledge, and if I have even faith -- you may be a wonderful Christian. You have enormous faith. Faith that is far above the ordinary Christian. You have faith so as to be able to remove mountains. Oh, that is something. Who has got this kind of faith here? Which one here has faith that can remove mountains? Not to say great Himalaya mountains. Let's talk about little mountains like Mount Royal. Can you move mountains? "But if I have this kind of faith, but have not love, I am nothing."
"And if I give all I have away, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing." I am nothing. But I don't have love. And you say, wait a minute, wait a minute. Now, President Bush, George Bush is President of the United States, right? Of course he is. And he has overwhelming love, right? Who said? Nobody said he is love. He probably doesn't have any more love than any of us here. And then how can we say if he doesn't have love, he is nothing. He is President of the United States, and that's really something. Or if you were a scholar or professor, and you have some position in the world, and you don't have love -- does your professor have love? No, he has no love. He gives you a hard time. He grinds your nose in the dust. He makes you work overtime. Your eyes are blinking all red with tiredness. And he says, "This project needs to be done by tomorrow." This fellow is not human. I mean, he doesn't remember his time as a student. Or maybe he does remember. That's because his professor was grinding his face in the papers. So now he is going to take it out on me. Well, if you want to revenge, don't revenge on me. Revenge on your professor. But he can't reach his professor now. So you are the poor scapegoat. This guy is not human. But is he nothing? Of course he is something. He is your boss. What do you mean, I am nothing? He is nothing? Of course he is something. Maybe I am nothing, but he is something. And he has no love? No, no.
What we've got to understand here, brothers and sisters, is this: that without love, no one, including George Bush, is anything in God's sight. This is the point. It is looking from God's point of view. Of course in the eyes of the world, the president is still the president. The professor is still the professor. He still has his position, his honor. He is really something in the world. But in God's sight, without love, they are nothing. And we are nothing.
Now this point is very important to understand. Because it means that God's way of evaluation is entirely different from man's way. Try to grasp this point very clearly. If you are something, even in the church, you have faith, you have prophetic powers, you are something. Because if you have prophetic powers, if you can speak with a tongue of angels, if you have knowledge to understand spiritual mysteries, let me tell you, you are really something in the church. Are you not? You are. Of course you are. You can open the Bible and expound it and people's mouth drop open. This man is amazing. He's incredible. He opens the Bible and he can just show you the meanings. "I never saw this in my life." He has the understanding of mysteries, just as Paul himself had. Paul had the knowledge of mysteries. He had the faith that could move mountains. And it is he who tells us that in God's sight all this is nothing. Without love. Nothing.
In God's sight, you may be a Christian worker or pastor or something. I tell you, in God's sight, you are nothing. Unless you have love. Unless you have His love. Now that is something amazing. This changes our whole concept. In other words, when I look at you or I look at a Christian worker, I listen to somebody's preaching, I'm not going to say, "Oh, this is a wonderful man of God because his preaching is so eloquent." If you think like this, you are thinking with human wisdom. "He's so eloquent. He's a great man of God. He can perform miracles. He has insight into the mystery of things." The Lord gives me insight too. I don't think it's because I'm that good. It's because He has mercy upon others.
Not so long ago, there was someone who applied for the six-team training. Someone I didn't even really know because this time there are quite a number of people applying for training that I don't really know. In fact, some of them I've never even talked to because the churches are so many these days and the numbers of people are so large. Since our churches now, many of them have hundreds or more people in Hong Kong or elsewhere, we are now speaking of hundreds of people, and among them there are many people I don't really know. And this person was one of them. I didn't really know. And applied for the full time. What can I do? In the past, I used to interview candidates. Now to interview them, I have to travel on three continents. I could travel around the world to interview them. So I leave the co-workers to do the assessment and then I will study the assessment, put it before the Lord and if I have questions I will ask the co-workers to clarify.
And as I prayed and looked to the Lord for instruction about this person that I didn't know who had applied for full time, the word of the Lord came to me and said, "There is something in that person's life that needs to be put right, and until that is put right, that person cannot be accepted."
# Love (Part 2)
The co-workers overseas and said the Lord has given me the word that this person has something to put right, and until that is done the person cannot be accepted. So the co-workers passed the message on to this person and a few days later I received a phone call from the other side of the world from this person, and the first thing that was said to me on the phone was, "I am shocked." What the word means, I am shocked, because nobody, absolutely nobody knows the fact that I do indeed have something to put right. Nobody knows. Nobody in the church, nobody knows about it. He said, "I am shocked at this." And I said, "Well, have you put the matter right?" And the person said, "Yes, after I received that word from the Lord through you, I have speedily put the matter right." I didn't want to know what the matter was. I am not curious to know people's personal matters. Sometimes the Lord reveals to me what the matter is when someone hides a sin and it is revealed to me in order to save that person. In this case I didn't want to know. But the person still wanted to tell me. "It's all right, it's up to you if you want to tell me." But the main thing is put it right. And it having been put right, then I said to that person, "Since you have now put the matter right, you can be accepted into the training."
Though I have knowledge, it says here, of all mysteries. Because how do you know a mystery? The only way you can know a mystery is for God to reveal it to you. A mystery by definition is something you know only by revelation. There is no human way to know this. There is no way I knew what that person's problem was by human means. But God reveals these things to us. Does that mean I am a great servant of God? No. Believe me, it does not mean anything of the kind. It doesn't.
Because here I must impress on you, beloved brothers, that the only thing that means anything in the sight of God is whether there is love in us. It doesn't matter whether you have these amazing gifts from God. It doesn't matter. On that day, whether you are anything or not depends only on this: that God's love controls your being. And though you may not be able to speak with the tongues of men and of angels, though you may not know any mysteries, though you don't have faith that can move mountains, your faith is only a grain of mustard seed, even less than that. Because the Lord said if you had that much faith, you could do amazing things. Though your faith is very small, but your heart is open to His love. Then and only then you are something. You are something.
In other words, God evaluates man by this one standard alone. When you read this passage, you must understand this. We are something or we are nothing. Depending on whether God's love has control of our life. You think that's easy? No one who has seriously -- I mean seriously, not in some superficial or shallow sense -- really tried to let God's love control his heart or her heart, no one who has seriously tried that will know, will say or think that love is easy. It is in fact not only not easy, it is impossible, as we shall see in a moment. It's not possible. In other words, the only way that you can have this kind of love, as distinct from human love, is for God to pour that love into your heart. In other words, it has to be a miracle of transformation. There is no way we can produce this love ourselves. To be anything in God's sight, it has to start with God's transforming work, to change you around from a person who is self-centered, selfish, and therefore hating and being hated, to somebody who is able to love in a genuine way. That is exceedingly difficult.
Now, very quickly, I want to take you to the realization that there are two kinds of love. And we are always in danger of confusing these two. There is human love, and there is God's love. And these two are entirely different. They are radically and fundamentally different. And yet, often, in outward appearance, they look alike. They look alike outwardly. And they can fool other people. But they cannot fool God. And that is why even if you outwardly appear to be very loving, very kind, very considerate, look at what it says here: "If I give away all that I have," it says in verse 3, "I even give my body to be burned, but have not love." Not God's love. I am motivated by some other kind of love, namely a human love. In God's sight, I still have nothing. I have nothing. I gain nothing. And therefore, I am nothing.
How many people, out of devotion to a national cause, have given their body to be burned? Indeed they have. Quite literally. I am sure you still remember the things that happened in Vietnam, when certain monks poured gasoline all over themselves and literally gave their body to be burnt, to make some political protest. In that way also they become martyrs in the history of their country. They get actually a little paragraph or even one line in the history books. Because it's so unusual for somebody to set themselves alight. They literally give their body to be burnt. And of course if you give your body to be burnt, you also have given away everything you have. You've got nothing left once your body is gone. But is that love for God? Is that God's love? No. That is not necessarily God's love. It may be, it may not be. We are not in a position to judge. All I am saying is that it may not be. It is only God who looks on the heart.
We can do very radical things out of sheer anger or frustration or hatred. Quite amazing. Anyone who goes out to kill somebody knows that if they are caught they will die too. They will also be destroyed. But they will still do it. Literally they give their own life in order to take revenge. Giving oneself may not be out of love at all. If you get caught and put away in jail all your possessions don't do you any good. You have given away everything but just in order to gain revenge.
So we can go on with examples of this. It can also, and we must bear this in mind, that somebody goes into full-time service, gives away everything they have. But believe me, it is not always motivated by the right reason. It may be that one feels that one has really no meaning in life, and one wants to gain some sort of meaning. And serving in the church is very meaningful. Being a church leader does bring a lot of meaning and to some extent satisfaction, although also precious. So one can give up, so to say, one's profession and therefore with it one's possessions. But might it sometimes be motivated by a certain kind of ambition that is not necessarily spiritual? The answer is sometimes yes, in my experience, yes, unfortunately. It is not always motivated by love. And those of you who go into full-time service, I ask you to think carefully on this message today. Without love, in God's sight you are nothing. You may have the best training in the world. And that can bring you pride. Because you are so skilled in the word of God. You are indeed a workman, skilled to the extent you don't need to be ashamed. You can be proud of the excellence of your work. You can exegete a scripture and people look at it and admire the marvel of it, the insight, the depth. But again, I beg of you to remember that in God's sight that makes you nothing. He looks for only one thing and one thing alone: whether His love is in your heart.
Human love is self-centered. And therefore you can test yourself. If the reason for doing what you do is basically selfish, or to some extent selfish -- because sometimes our motives are very mixed, so that we have difficulty even discerning our own motives -- but if it is to any degree selfish, then it is not of God. Because human love is selfish. That's why I said there are two distinct kinds of love. And they often look alike but they are not the same. Outwardly they appear alike. A person can be very helpful, very kind. And there are non-Christians who are very kind and very helpful. And I dare not judge what motivates their love. Giving can give a lot of satisfaction. It is psychologically very good to do that. In psychotherapy, one of the things you ask people to do is go out and help others. It does wonders for your health, both your mental health and your physical health. And therefore there are those who do these things, helping other people, doing social work, mainly for their own sake. It gives them tremendous satisfaction.
I once talked to a doctor who was a psychiatrist. As you know, a psychiatrist is a qualified doctor who specializes in medicine relating to the mind, to the brain. In fact, he later became the chief of all psychiatric hospitals in Hong Kong. And we became very good friends because in London we shared the same room for quite a while. And I asked him frankly, "Are you studying psychiatry because you really want to help people with their problems, their mental difficulties and so on?" He said, "I tell you frankly, I studied psychiatry for my own sake." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Because I wanted to sort out my own problems, my own psychological difficulties. And if I have anything left after that, maybe I can help others." But of course, his profession brought him a great deal of money as well as satisfaction. And in the process, he was a very clever man. He could solve, or try to solve, his own psychological problems by studying psychiatry. So you see, people do not necessarily study even medicine, or psychiatric medicine, because they love people or care for people so much. Because it's out of self-concern, first and foremost. Of course, because we are close friends, he would tell me that. I don't think he would tell his patients anything like this.
Love, helping others, showing concern, spending time with them, is not necessarily motivated by God's love. It may be, it may not be. Or there may be mixed motives in there. The other thing about human love is that it is short-lived. It is self-centered, and it is short-lived. It doesn't last for long. That is the tendency for it to die very quickly.
Now here, as you go on to read this list, you will see that it says something, and I don't have time to go into a detailed exposition of this. But it goes on to say in verse 7: "Love bears all things, endures all things." And then it goes on also to say that love never fails. Now, clearly this cannot be human love. Human love does not bear all things. Not for very long anyway. It certainly does not endure all things, that anyone who is married will know. There are a lot of things, as the time goes on, that you cannot stand about your husband or your wife. You can't bear anything, never mind all things. And then to go on to say that love never fails is absolutely untrue if we are talking about human love. It is failing all the time. And that is why, if you are a marriage counselor, or if you are a pastor, you are going to spend a lot of time trying to save people's marriages, precisely because love does fail.
Only the other day they were walking down the aisle, smiling, with the flowers in the hand, and the music was going on, and all was happy. And I tell you the amazing thing is sometimes within one month, the fight is on. And sometimes less than one month. "Love never fails." You must be joking. The Bible is not true. Love is failing all the time. And soon after the marriage, the wife broke a plate which was a wedding present from your mom, your grandmom. "Love bears all things." Wow, there is a row. Earthquake. Seven on the Richter scale, maybe eight. "Bears all things?" Not true. Of course you know it's not true. It is only God's love that doesn't fail. It is only God's love that can bear all things. It is only God's love that can say, "Forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven." I say, I have trouble seven times. No, I have trouble with one time, never mind seven times. To talk about seventy times seven -- let's be realistic, men. I am only human, of course, you see. We know that human love can't endure this kind of thing. No way. God never fails. His love never fails. But man's love can never endure this kind of thing.
In fact, in Matthew 24, verse 12, what it says there: "The love of many, the love for God of many, will grow cold." Brothers and sisters, here's where the danger is. Human love will grow cold very quickly. If you made your commitment in baptism, you came to the Lord -- was it last year? Was it the year before last? Was it a few years ago? Maybe by now, in this short time, your love has gone cold already, because you made a commitment in human love. And I'm saying to those who are going to be baptized in the camp, please think carefully on what I'm saying to you. If you are going to make a commitment to God in human love, your love may go cold very shortly, very soon. Just as we read in Revelation chapter 2 verse 4, where the Lord says to the church, "You have already lost your first love."
Human love is like that. We cannot remain faithful to the Lord for very long. We cling on to Him sometimes because, like Peter says, "To whom shall we turn? We don't have an alternative. You are the one who has eternal life." Well, that sounds like a very poor reason for staying. If simply there's nowhere else to go. "I'm staying, Lord, because I don't know where else to go." And many times we remain Christians, frankly, because we don't know where else to go. The love that we first loved the Lord with was partly God's love, partly human love. And that's why the human part has gone. And the little bit that was really from God is now all we've got. And it's so little that we are just hanging on. Is that your case? Do you feel it in your heart? Do you feel that your love to God is beginning to be rather tasteless? It is the reality that most Christians experience.
There is only one way when we can let human love be replaced by God's love. That's what we read in Romans chapter 5 verse 5: that God through His Holy Spirit pours His love into our hearts. This love is not of man. This is not human love. That is why we cannot be saved by our own efforts. Because the only thing we can produce is human love. We can't love in any other way, can we? I'm sure you've already tried and you know it doesn't work. We can't love in any other way. We really tried to love God with our human love. We tried to think about how much He loved us, His wounds, His sufferings. We tried. But it was human love. That's why with our own efforts we cannot save ourselves. We have to open our hearts and let the gift of His love flow into us. A love that is not sentimental. A love that we don't even know how to understand. That is our difficulty.
You see, the Christian faith as it is revealed in Scripture is not something human. We can't even invent it because we can't even understand it. God's love is simply beyond our understanding. That's why the whole New Testament, the whole Bible, is said to be the revelation of God. Because nobody can even understand this love unless He reveals its meaning to us. We can't understand God's love often only with the help of human love, because that's the only kind of love we know. We need the human love as a model by which we can understand God's love. Without it we can't. We speak of a father's love, a mother's love. We try to understand father's love, and with that we try to understand some sort of unselfish love. Even that is very difficult to expound because some people don't have fathers who are very loving. Their fathers may have been drunkards, gamblers, whatever they were. Selfish people. And to try to think of God's love as a father's love not only doesn't help, but it's off-putting. And some people try to think of a mother's love. Unfortunately a mother's love can also be selfish. I've known of young people who have been neglected by their mothers because their mothers were career women, more interested in their profession, more interested in getting a position for themselves, more interested in earning money, doing their own thing. But they're not interested in their children. And so you talk to them that God's love is like the unselfish love of a mother. Whose mother? Not mine. Not his. You must be talking about some mother that I don't know about. There are mothers who love unselfishly, at least so we think. But that's hard to find. Hard to find. So we must eventually try to understand God's love as something different, although in some ways we still need human love to help us to understand it.
I must close with one story that I used before, many, many years ago. I have never used it since. But if anyone of you have listened to the tapes that I preached years ago, you might have heard me use this illustration, in which case I ask your forbearance. Because this illustration of a real life situation is the only example that has ever touched my heart as a model of what God's love is like. I have sought for other examples of human love that could reveal a bit more of God's love to me and I have not been able to succeed, at least very seldom. We sometimes go out to rescue somebody, jump into a freezing river, do something. We do this almost because we are doing this out of a sense of duty, of obligation. In the Western world often the Christian ethics is still there, even if the Christian life power is not there anymore. We still stop to help people, not because we really love them, but because our conscience bothers us and makes us feel uncomfortable if we didn't stop to help. So in order that we don't feel bothered all night, I stop to help this guy. But this one example, I think, gives us a little clearer insight.
There is in Isaiah chapter 53, a passage which reads like this. This is the well-known chapter on love, and I will just read the chapter about the love of the servant of God. In this case, about the Messiah, about Christ. Isaiah 53: "Who has believed what we have heard?" Now you see, God's love is hard to believe because it is so hard to understand. We often like to believe what we can understand. This is what happens to intellectuals. We have got this problem. We don't want to believe anything blindly, so we think. Therefore we have got to try to understand it. But when it comes to the love of God, it is impossible to understand. Why does God love you and me? Why does He die on a cross for the likes of us? People don't do things like this. Human love doesn't do things like that. They might do it for a son or a daughter. But it will not do that for a stranger. That is why Paul says in Romans, "For a righteous man one might even dare to die." We might die for our son or a daughter. Maybe even for a righteous man. But for a sinner? No way. Why would God want to love you and me? It doesn't make sense. Therefore it says, "Who has believed our report?" Who's going to believe this? "To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?"
And then it goes on to speak about God's love being revealed in one particular person, called "He." "For He grew up before God like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or comeliness, no beauty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him." And it goes on to say, "His appearance was marred." No beauty. Because His whole face was marred. "A man of sorrows," it goes on to say, "acquainted with grief." And yet this sorrow, this grief, this suffering was not for Himself. As you read on, it says, verse 4: "Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." And verse 5: "He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities." Why would anybody want to bother with my transgressions? Why would He take my punishment? I don't understand this. Doesn't make sense. "Who has believed our report?"
Do you still believe it? Did you become a Christian because you really believed in God's love? Or did you become a Christian for other reasons? Because there were such nice people in church. They were so helpful and so kind. It has nothing to do with God's love. It's really because you liked all these nice people in church. You became a Christian probably without even understanding God's love, but you understood the kindness of other people. And so you became a Christian. That is the reason why there is often so much problem in the church. Because you never in the first place understood God's love.
And so I recall this story which touched my heart as I said. There was a mother with a little baby. And one day the house caught fire, which is not unusual. The mother was out doing some shopping. And when she came home with her shopping, she saw the house on fire. Was it because she forgot to turn out something on the stove? The gas fire? Was there an electrical fault? Nobody knows. But houses do catch fire unfortunately. And when she came back there was the house on fire. It was already at quite an advanced stage. The neighbors had called the fire brigade. The firemen rushing there, trying to set up their equipment to put out the fire. And the mother said, "My baby is in there." The firemen said, "You can't go in. The fire is simply too dangerous now." She said, "I have to go in. My baby is in there. I am not going to stand here and wait for my baby to die." They said, "If you go in you will die with your baby." She said, "So let me die."
And so she burst through the lines and she rushed into the blazing house, trying to cover her face with whatever her jacket could do. She rushed in to look for her baby. Through the flames, through the smoke, through the suffocating smoke she rushed there. The flames were everywhere. Of course the baby was crying. She grabbed the baby. She wrapped the baby up in whatever she could protect the baby with. Put the baby under her own jacket. And she rushed out through the flames. But too late. You know what happened. Flames catch very fast. Her own clothing was on fire. The jacket was on fire. And when she came out, she was badly burnt. But the baby was still safe. It was all carefully wrapped up inside.
She was taken away to hospital with severe burns over her body, burns all over the face. Her hair had caught fire. Everything was badly burnt. She was in critical condition. But she finally managed to survive. And the scars on her face and everywhere were all scars. As the years went by, the child grew up. The daughter grew up. But every time she looked at her mother, she felt embarrassed. Because the mother had so many scars on her face. All over. The mother never told her where the scars came from, because she was afraid that the child would be grieved, the child would always feel, "It was all for me. I feel so guilty about this." And she felt the child could not grow up without a sense of "it was all because of me." So she didn't tell the child anything.
And the child grew up. And finally came to her high school graduation. But as she grew up, she always felt embarrassed about her mother. She never wanted to go out with her mother. She never wanted to bring her friends from school back home. Because the friends would say, "What's with your mother? She looks so strange." And so when it came to her graduation, the day came, and what did she do? She didn't want her mother to go to the graduation. So she wouldn't be embarrassed to say, "This is my mother." "Please, Mom, don't go, don't go out. Don't go to graduation. Just stay at home. Is that alright?"
And then one day, she found out. Somebody happened to know about why the mother was looking as she did and told her. "You know why your mother looks like this? I'll tell you the story. It goes years back, when you were a baby and the house was on fire, and your mother risked her life in an attempt to save you. She might never have been able to save you. She might have perished in the flames, died in the flames with you. She managed to get out of the house. That is the reason why she looks like she did. You were so badly burned." She never wanted to tell you so that you don't have to suffer over this.
You can understand the feeling of that daughter. When she thought all these years she despised her mother. She rejected her because of her appearance. She's a very good mother. And it says here in Isaiah 53, there is no beauty in Him to be seen. "Despised and rejected by men." That's why I say when I think about this passage in Isaiah 53, I always think again about this: "His appearance was marred beyond recognition." That is one model of God's love that I think is closest to telling us what God's love is like. In that case, in the Lord Jesus' case, He didn't just risk His life. He gave His life for our salvation.
Oh the deep, deep love of Jesus. Did you become a Christian for that reason? Because the cross of Jesus said something to you? Or did you become a Christian for some other reason? In which case your survival as a Christian may be in doubt. You will just become a nominal Christian. That will be tragic. You are only a genuine Christian to the extent that the love of Him who for all eternity will bear the scars in His body. The nail prints in His hands. The scars on His face from the thorns. The beatings that tore His back apart with all the stripes on His back. The wound in His side. The nails in His feet. The whole body.
We can let the warmth of that love fill our hearts. Because it says love grows cold in Matthew 24:12. That means love is warm. Love is warm. Indeed, it's hot. It's never lukewarm. It is hot. But when that love is gone, you feel there's a coldness in your heart. When you try to fill that coldness, try to warm it up with something else, it never works.
So with this, dear brothers and sisters, I close. Remember this: without love, we are nothing. In God's eyes, it is only when His love fills our being, we are transformed by Him. By the work of the Holy Spirit that pours His love into us. Only then we become true Christians. And as we continue to live in that love, not in intellectual knowledge, but in the power of that transforming love, we can experience Him in a way that we would not otherwise experience Him at all. That is experiencing God at the deepest level. Not that you can speak prophetic words. Many people say to me, "Oh, you have amazing experiences. God enables you to do things that few people can do in this generation. God enables you to know things that few people know." That's not important. That is not important, brothers and sisters. What is important is that God's love fills my heart with that fire of His love burning within me, keeping me warm, filling me with joy and peace. Because love, joy, and peace always go together. If you don't have the joy, if you don't have the peace, you can be almost certain that you don't have the love either. You can't have the one without the other. You can't have joy without His love.
So may His mercy, His love, and then with it His joy and peace, keep your heart. And then when you walk in His love, maybe you will find as an added bonus, you will understand mysteries. God will reveal things to you, not possible for human beings to know. He will do that too. But then you've got the order right. First, the love. That's all that matters with God.
Let us pray.