Join Cherri Campbell on a profound journey exploring the true essence of love, as depicted in the scriptures. Listen as she delves into the profound contrast between human love, which is fleeting and often based on feelings, and God’s eternal, unselfish love, known as agape. This episode lays the groundwork for understanding how we, as believers, can manifest and walk in divine love towards others as our highest calling.
Good morning. Praise the Lord. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. 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 that is a sequel to the message that I’ve been sharing with you over the last couple of weeks. The last couple of weeks, I’ve talked to you about God loves us and his great unfathomable love for us. Today, I want to begin a lesson about what love does, and this is to understand more about what God’s love for us does, but especially how we are now to walk in Love is the great commandment and love is our highest calling. The Lord showed me that one time that love is the highest calling of every Christian. It is our highest goal. It is our highest aim. It is our highest call. It is walking in love. And so today we’re going to begin studying what love is. does so that we can put in practice this greatest commandment of all walking in love. So join me now in our live service for part one of what love does. Tonight, we’re going to talk about the greatest of these is love. The greatest of these is love. So what do you think we’re talking about tonight? Love. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I’ve given you all the notes, a copy of the notes because it’s a long lesson and I’m going to try to do it in an hour. And let’s start with two kinds of love. Of course, there’s the, we’ll start this as the foundation. God’s love in the Greek, we know it as agape, the love of God or the God kind of love. And that love is unselfish, sacrificial, unselfish. a choice that is not based on feelings and it is covenantal commitment. It’s a commitment to love. And so it’s a decision. It’s a commitment. And the human love, we often look at the Greek word phileo, although that’s actually brotherly love, but there’s lots of different words in Greek for love. But we’re going to look at the opposite of the God kind, would be the human kind of love. This one we’re looking at is selfish love based on feelings. So just as your feelings can change, this love changes. You know, that’s why people say they fall in love and then weeks, months or years later, they are out of love. They fell out of love. They just don’t love each other anymore. Well, it’s totally based on feeling. There’s not the commitment in that love. And so we don’t want to just walk in human love. That’s that is very temporary. It’s based on how you feel. We don’t want just that kind. We want to learn to walk in God’s love and we can, we can because God is in us and we’ll get to it. It says in the Bible that the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts and we are born of God and God is love. So we are born of love. You have to remember that we are born of God. God is love. So we are born of love. We are born of love. We are made in the image of God. So we are made in the image of love. We have God’s ability to love like he loves in us, but we have to learn to yield to it and crucify the flesh and choose. It’s a choice. not a feeling and choose to walk in it. And so we can grow in this, you know, in Galatians 5, 22, 23, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace. Well, guess what? Fruit grow. don’t they? Fruit grow. So love can grow. Joy can grow. Peace can grow. All the fruit of the spirit can grow. And they start out as a seed. People say, well, I just don’t have any patience. Don’t say that. Number one, you don’t want to decree a thing. It’ll be established, right? But you want to say it’s in me. But guess what? When you’re born again, You’re born of God. You’re born of the word of God. It says in first Peter, first Peter, we are born of the incorruptible seed, which is the word of God. So that seed of the word is in us. The spirit is in us. God is in us. So all of God is in us, but it’s in there in seed form. What do you do with the seed to make it grow? plant it and water it and feed it and cultivate it. So you’ve got love, the God kind of agape love in you in seed form. You’ve got to cultivate it, develop it, let it grow. You’ve got peace in you. You’ve got joy in you. You’ve got long suffering. You’ve got all the fruit of the spirit. Everything that God is, it’s in you in a seed form. And a baby Christian is one who never lets those fruit grow, right? They keep in seed form. And so they’re not manifesting love, peace, joy, long suffering. They’re not manifesting the fruit of the spirit. They got it in them just like you do. Because they’re born again, but it stays a seed and it never grows. So the spiritual growth in our lives comes from developing those seeds and helping them to grow into fruit and bear fruit. Hallelujah. Amen. Amen. So let’s start with the most known scripture about love. 1 Corinthians 13. verses four and five, and this is the amplified translation. Love endures long and is patient and kind. Love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily. It is not conceited, arrogant and inflated with pride. And we said that pride and selfishness go hand in hand. They’re twins and love and humility go hand in hand. So when you’re walking in love, you’re also walking in humility. It is not rude, unmannerly, and does not act unbecomingly. Love, God’s love in us, does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking. It is not touchy or fretful or resentful. It takes no account of the evil done to it, and it pays no attention to a suffered wrong. And then the living Bible verse five says, love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong. First Corinthians 13, we see here that without love, everything else has no value. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. So if you can speak in tongues, but don’t have love, you’re just a lot of noise. a gong or a symbol. If you have the gift of prophecy, you have revelation knowledge, word of knowledge, you can say, oh, but I have revelation knowledge. I have the word of knowledge. I have the word of prophecy. If you don’t have love, you’re nothing. If you have faith, my faith is so strong. I believe God for this. I believe God for that. But you don’t have love. You are nothing. And if you give everything away, I’m a giver, I’m a sower, sower, sower, sower, sower. But you have not love, you gain nothing. So notice everything else means nothing if you don’t have love. Love is what gives everything else value. Without love, everything else has no value. The Lord said this to me. I wrote it down. I’ve made it like a motto in my life. The most important thing in life and the only thing that counts is loving people. And that’s what you say. But I must obey God. Well, God will tell you to love. Everything we do is to love. Yes, we love God. But loving God says, how can you say you love God and hate your brother? Loving God is manifested in how you love people. And so the thing that counts, and I think when the Lord spoke that to me, it also had to do with, it doesn’t matter how much money you make. It doesn’t matter if you make $100,000 a year or a million a year. It doesn’t matter what success. It doesn’t matter what awards you get. It doesn’t matter what titles, you know, CEO, president of corporation you attain to. And the world says that you have reached a great level of success. When you get to heaven, all of that will mean nothing. There is no value for being a CEO or president. There is no value for having success. $300,000 in the bank or being a millionaire. The only thing in God’s books that will be seen in heaven will be, how did you love people? How did you love people? That’s what the books of heaven are going to show. So it’s important. Amen. So we’re going to look at characteristics of love. Number one, love is kind and gentle, not rude and unmannerly. Bottom line, how do you talk to people? at home, in the restaurant, in the gas station, in the grocery store. Some people get impatient and they start getting rude, start demanding, start saying, why don’t you do this and that? How do you talk to people? Love is kind and gentle, not rude and unmannerly. So your speech should always be full of love, tenderness, kindness, gentleness. Number two, love builds up. 1 Corinthians 8, 1 says, but love builds up. Ephesians 4, 29 and 30, do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Have you ever heard people talk about verse 30? Do not grieve the Holy Spirit. Have you heard that phrase? Most of the time when I’ve heard it, it’s been regarding in church and how you receive the Holy Spirit in the service and how you let the Holy Spirit flow. And we don’t want to do anything in this service today that will grieve the Holy Spirit. That’s usually the context that I hear that phrase. And did you know that’s not the context that it’s written in? The Holy Spirit is not so sensitive that if you do something wrong in church that the Holy Spirit will say, oh, I’m grieved. I’m not going to move. Yeah, we do have to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and we follow him and we learn to cultivate the flow of the Spirit in the service. Yes, but this context, the grieving of the Holy Spirit is when unwholesome talk comes out of your mouth. That’s what grieves the Holy Spirit. That’s the context. Not building others up, not benefiting those who listen. How many of you, after you said something that you knew you shouldn’t have said, your heart was grieved? You felt bad about it. You know what? That is the Holy Spirit in you grieving also. So the grieving of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit goes, ooh, because your own heart feels it. Ooh, I shouldn’t have said that. Lord, forgive me. I’m so sorry. Saying something and you know, you shouldn’t have said it. You feel bad about it. Afterward, your heart is grieving because the Holy Spirit in you is grieving. What you just heard was part one of a message that I preached in one of our victorious faith services called What Love Does. This is a sequel to the message that I’ve been sharing with you for the last couple of weeks called God Loves Me. We’ve been studying God’s great, enormous, unfathomable love for us. But now we need to learn how to walk in his love toward other people. So this study is a very insightful study about how to walk in love. I believe it is going to open your eyes, give you a lot of enlightenment, and help you to fulfill this greatest commandment of all and our highest calling, how to walk in love. We will continue this message tomorrow. So join me again tomorrow. And remember, God loves you. You’re blessed and highly favored by the Lord.
