In this powerful episode of Victorious Faith, international missionary and Bible teacher Cherri Campbell shares a foundational message on understanding the profound depth of God’s love for us. She elaborates on the difference between human love, or ‘phileo’, and God’s perfect love, ‘agape’, explaining how the latter is an unconditional and covenant love that does not rely on feelings. This revelation is crucial for every believer as it strengthens faith and impacts all areas of life.
Welcome to Victorious Faith. We believe you will be blessed, encouraged, and receive fresh faith to begin your day as you listen to today’s message with international missionary and Bible teacher, Cherri Campbell.
SPEAKER 01 :
Good morning. Welcome to Victorious Faith. I’m Cherri Campbell. This morning, I’m going to begin sharing with you another message that I preached in one of our Victorious Faith services called God Loves Me. This is a very important and foundational revelation for every Christian, even though you’ve heard the words before. You need to get a deeper revelation of this truth. It will affect your faith in every area of your life. So I encourage you to pay close attention and open your heart to receive more revelation of how much God loves you. So join me now in our live service for part one of God loves me. We are studying and focusing tonight on God’s love. I don’t know why but February because of Valentine’s Day and especially since almost the end of Christmas the stores are putting out Valentine’s cards and Valentine candy. As soon as Christmas is gone and New Year’s gone, Valentine’s comes out. And as soon as Valentine is passed, Easter comes out. So we’ve been seeing all these red and pink hearts everywhere for a month. And that just got in me to thinking about God’s love. And so the Lord put it in my heart. That’s the message for tonight. And first of all, understanding there are really many kinds of love. In the Greek, there are even many different words for love. I’m focusing here just to compare two of those words in the Greek for love. Phileo is the human love. It is a love of the senses and emotions. It’s a love that you feel for a friend, for others. Any person that is based on senses and emotions, it is also physical affection based on physical feelings. Then there is the agape, which is a Greek word meaning the God kind of love. And this is covenant love. And actually, I believe it really would relate to the Old Testament Hebrew word hesed. Or if hesed, they kind of make that throaty sound. C-H-E-S-E-D. But that word means faithful, loyal, covenant love. Faithful, loyal, covenant love. And that’s what agape is also in the Greek. It is covenant love. In other words, it’s not based on feelings. It’s an act of the will or here it says it is activated by choice or decision. It is a direction of the will. In other words, you choose I’m going to love. You decide there may not be any feelings. There may not be any goosebumps. There may not be any warm fuzzies. As a matter of fact, it’s a choice to love people that are hard to love. People that hurt you, anger you, or irritate you. There are no warm fuzzies. But that’s when it’s a decision decision. an act of the will that’s the true agape God kind of love and it’s a love that is covenant love because it won’t be broken it is not based on what somebody does or doesn’t do it is an unfailing love it is regardless of what they say and do you are determined to love them and And it is also demonstrated by action. Whereas phileo is often because of what other people do for us. They do nice things. They give us good feelings. They give us gifts. They say nice things. And because of what we received, we love them more. This has nothing to do with the other person doing anything good. We love them and we give to them. It is demonstrated by action. It is unselfish, sacrificial, even of yourself, self-sacrificing. And it is a choice not based on feelings and it is covenantal commitment. Committed to love no matter what, no matter what the other person says or does or does not say or does not do. Regardless of their actions, it’s a commitment to love them. And that is in the natural, very hard, at best, commitment. And for some people, they would say it’s impossible. But with God in us, his love is shed abroad in our hearts. That’s another lesson we won’t even get to tonight as we’re focusing on his love for us. But his love in us, he is in us. His love in us empowers us to love other people with his love. And like I said, that would be another lesson. Tonight we’re looking at his love for us because he is the one we’re focusing on doing all these things for us. He is covenanted to us. He has made a choice to love us. He has made the direction of his will to love us. He has demonstrated by action his love for us. He has sacrificed for us. He has made this choice to love us. He has made a covenantal commitment to love us. So God and his love for us is a covenantal commitment. You know, as soon as you become a Christian, as soon as you even start hearing people witness to you about God, usually they will say God loves you when they’re starting to tell you about God. They’re not going to tell you God’s going to judge you and beat you and whip you. No, they’re going to tell you God loves you. He sent Jesus to die for you. And so we’re hearing about God’s love. But I know in my own life, I have preached this now for 20 plus years. I’m in the ministry this year, 23 years full time, full time ministry. And I preached it every year as far as I know. For all these years, I wrote a book and published a book on it. But I still go back and read those scriptures regularly. I still flip open the book… I have my own copy… And read some of these scriptures… And meditate on it… Especially… When my faith is being tested… When you’re in a faith test… Yeah, you go back to the scriptures… That promise you the thing you need… If it’s a healing… You go to healing scriptures… If it’s finances… You go to finances scriptures… Whatever… But be sure… Go back to the God loves you scriptures… Along with the other scriptures. Because they will ground your faith in his love for you. That shows you he’s willing to do for you. Whatever you ask. And so that’s why my comment here is most Christians superficially know God loves them. They’ve heard it. They’ve talked about it. They’ve sung about it. But many don’t have a true and deep sense and awareness of his love. It hasn’t soaked in to the deepest part of their heart and their understanding to really know God loves me so much that God’s going to do this for me. And so even I, like I said, preached it. I need to go back to the scriptures, meditate on them. God loves me scriptures. And so I know if I do, everybody else does. I mean, everybody needs to meditate on these. So we’re going to get a good dose of it tonight. But I encourage you, get the book. And in the future, maybe every few days, go back and read the scriptures that really speak to your heart. And reinforce, bring to home, concrete it, how else I can say this, into your heart a revelation that God loves you. So, we’re going to look at how do we know God loves us. But first of all, I want to say, why did God make man? If I ask the question, why did God make mankind? Why did God make people? I’ve had two answers being the primary answers people give. God made people to worship him. Have you ever heard that? We were made to worship him. And the other one, we were made to serve him. Those are the two common answers from people who haven’t heard this kind of a teaching. Whenever I go somewhere, why did God make us? Oh, God made us to worship him. God made us to serve him. Let’s stop a minute. Why did God make the angels? What do they do? They worship him and they serve him. Now, who was made first? The angels are people. Angels. So if God already had angels, and the Bible says in innumerable company, thousands, thousands, more than human beings, more angels than human beings, why would he need to make people? If he already had angels worshiping him and serving him, and they were innumerable, that wasn’t why he made us. We do worship him. Why did God make us then? Because God wanted a family. The angels were not his kids. The angels were not his kids. The angels were not family. They were servants. And of a different kind of creation. They were not made in his image. So God made mankind in his image. Do you know how much in his image we are? Jesus, it says in multiple scriptures, Colossians, Hebrews. Jesus is the exact image of the father. Jesus was a human being. That means God has two arms. He has two legs. He is not a four-legged creature. What you just heard was part one of a message that I preached in one of our Victorious Faith services called God Loves Me. I also have a book on this subject, so I encourage you to get the book. You can go to my website, victoriousfaith.co, victorious like a champion, V-I-C-T-O-R-I-O-U-S, faith, F-A-I-T-H dot C-O, C-O like Colorado, and go to the tab called Cherri’s Books. And there you will see this book listed among the others called God loves me. We go into a study of the scriptures of God’s love for us. This is so important as a foundational revelation in every Christian’s heart. And we need to get more and more understanding of this. As I said in the message earlier, I myself even have to go back to these scriptures and study them and meditate on them to build and strengthen my faith to receive other things. So before you even try to use your faith to receive healing or finances or a job, you need to solidify your faith that God loves you. And so I encourage you to meditate on the scriptures every single day. Now, join me again tomorrow as we will continue this message with part two. And remember, God loves you. You’re blessed and highly favored by the Lord.
SPEAKER 02 :
We’re glad you joined us today for Victorious Faith with Cherri Campbell. We invite you to visit our website at victoriousfaith.co where you can listen to the Victorious Faith radio broadcast, find biblical study helps, contact Cherri, and make donations. You can also write to us at P.O. Box 509 East Lake, Colorado 80614. Victorious Faith is a God and Partners supported ministry. As you sow seed and partner with this ministry, we believe God with you for the full harvest of victory you need in your life. Please join us again Monday through Friday at the same time to begin your day with fresh faith. And remember, faith is the victory that overcomes the world.
