by Joyce Meyer
Walk free of condemnation and believe that when God said His grace was sufficient to cover even your sin, He meant it. He loves you, and His grace and forgiveness are free gifts. Receive them today!
God loves you!
3
Love Is Relationship
“And we know (understand, recognize, are conscious of, by observation and by experience) and believe (adhere to and put faith in and rely on) the love God cherishes for us. God is love, and he who dwells and continues in love dwells and continues in God, and God dwells and continues in him.”
1 John 4:16 AMP
How can you be more conscious and aware of God’s love? No matter how much He loves you, if you are not conscious and aware of it, it is not going to do you any good. You know how good it makes you feel if somebody really shows you a lot of love? You feel so warm and wonderful that you could just take the world by the tail because you know somebody loves you. God loves you, and He wants to show you that love. He wants you to spend time with Him on a daily basis.
Do you have a real personal relationship with God? Just because you got saved a long time ago does not mean you are enjoying a rich fellowship with God. When I open my eyes in the morning, the first thing I think about is God, and He is the last thing I think about before I go to bed at night. And I think about God all day in between. There is nothing that I want any more in this whole, wide world than to serve my God and to please Him. And that’s worth anything that you have to lay down to get it.
There is a God-shaped hole inside of us that only God can fill. Nothing else you can run after or desire can fill that place. You may say to yourself, “I know that already, I received Jesus.” But are you receiving Him every minute, every day, in every situation? Are you receiving the love of God?
God loves you, and you are special to Him. He created us to fellowship with Him. This is His greatest desire and His perfect will for your life. He leans over the throne every morning and says, “Good morning, I love you.”
A friend of mine had a vision once while she was praying. She saw the Father go into the homes of the people of America when they got up in the morning. He went in all ready to fellowship and talk to them. He got Himself a chair at the table and sat down. The people got up, and they came, and they went; they came, and they went. They kept telling God, “Later. Stay right there for just a little while, God. As soon as I get this done, I’m going to talk to You. I’m going to fellowship with You later, God. Later, God. Later, God.”
The end of the day came, and the girl who saw this said it broke her heart because she saw God, with slumped over shoulders, leave the home. And nobody had ever come to talk to Him that day.
Don’t get too busy. If you don’t have time to pray and spend time with God, then you are too busy. Take the time to tell God how much you love Him. When everything else passes away and it is all over but the shouting, there is nothing but God. That’s it. And if you don’t have a relationship with Him then, it is going to be a little late to start getting to that point. That doesn’t mean you will not go to heaven, but you have missed the joy of living a victorious life.
I suggest you set aside a year, and just let God love you. Stop trying in your own power to operate in faith and be God’s man or woman of faith and power. Just back off and act like a little child. You just crawl up in your Father’s lap, and let God love you. You can’t love Him back until you let Him love you.
First John 4:16 AMP says,
“And we know (understand, recognize, are conscious of, by observation and by experience) and believe (adhere to and put faith in and rely on) the love God cherishes for us….”
Did you get up this morning and spend some time thinking about how much God loves you? When you first get up in the morning, you don’t usually feel like doing anything. But you need to use your mouth to activate your flesh and allow your spirit man to rise up and do all kinds of wonderful things.
So when you get up in the morning, you need to begin to say, “Oh, Father, I thank You that You love me so much. I thank You that You sent Jesus to die for me. Oh, Father, I thank You that I’m with the Holy Ghost. I thank You that the resurrection power abides on the inside of me. Oh, Lord, I thank You that every where I go today I’m a blessing. God, You love me. You love me, right here in my little house. You love me! I’m Your special child. I’m the apple of Your eye. You love me!”
You have to talk to yourself and get yourself aware and conscious that you are surrounded and drowned in the love of God. The Bible says that God has a picture of you tattooed on the palms of His hands. (Isa. 49:16 AMP.) I can just see Him up there saying, “Look, see that? Oh, isn’t she beautiful? I just love her so much. Just look at My kids, right there in the palms of My hands.” He has you there as a constant reminder that He loves you and longs to fellowship with you.
Remember to be thankful before God and develop a relationship of fellowship. Sometimes you need to fall down on your face in prayer and just thank God that you are saved. Back off and love God. Read on in 1 John 4:16,17 AMP where He says,
“…God is love, and he who dwells and continues in love dwells and continues in God, and God dwells and continues in him.
“In this [union and communion with Him] love is brought to completion and attains perfection with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment.”
Knowing that God loves you gives you confidence in Him and trust in His faithfulness.
All blessings will come through letting God love you: greater faith, victory over sin, healing, prosperity and joy. It has to come by allowing God to love you. A lot of times we turn that around and think, “Well, I’ve got to love God.” I believe first you have to let God love you. I don’t believe you can express your love to God until you let God love you.
I can tell you to fellowship with God and that you really need to fellowship with God, but how do you do that? When God told me to fellowship with Him, I just got on my couch and sat down and said, “Now what, God?” That’s right! I didn’t know how to fellowship with God because, still at that point, I really didn’t know how much God loved me.
How can you express your feelings to people, really just love them and adore them, if you are not sure they love you? You would be afraid of making a fool out of yourself. You are comfortable with those you know will love and receive you. I can say things and do things with my husband that I couldn’t do with anybody else because I know that he loves me. It is the same way with God.
So step out and make a start. Give God an opportunity, and He will teach you how to fellowship with Him. Ask yourself this question right now: Am I comfortable with God?
God loves you!
4
Love, Trust and Faith
“For [if we are] in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith activated and energized and expressed and working through love.”
Galatians 5:6 AMP
Most of us spend a lot of time trying to have faith. We know that without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6), so we work and strive at having more faith. But faith is of the heart, and you get it only through a relationship of loving fellowship with God. I can’t really teach you faith, but I can teach you the principles of faith and make you so hungry for it you will do anything to get it. It only comes by revelation from God.
Stop trying so hard to get faith and please God, and start spending all that time and effort with God, loving Him. Just go around all day loving Him and letting Him love you.
“For we walk by faith [we regulate our lives and conduct ourselves by our conviction or belief respecting man’s relationship to God and divine things, with trust and holy fervor; thus we walk] not by sight or appearance.”
2 Corinthians 5:7 AMP
Once when I was reading that Scripture, God started speaking some dynamic things to my heart. I am trying to walk by faith. In every single thing in my life, I want to walk by faith. And the Amplified Bible says in 2 Corinthia
ns 5:7 that “…we regulate our lives and conduct ourselves by our conviction or belief respecting man’s relationship to God.”
In other words, I am only going to be able to walk in faith based on what I believe about my relationship with God. Do you understand that? A person who believes he is unrighteous might as well forget walking in faith. A person who believes he is an old worm in the dust and God does not love Him might as well forget the faith walk, too. A lot of people are trying to walk in faith, but they don’t have these other things in their hearts.
Galatians 5:6 says, faith works by love. God put this in my heart: “Everybody thinks that this Scripture means that if they don’t love other people, their faith won’t work. That isn’t what it means at all. What it really means is if they don’t know how much I love them, their faith won’t work.” Faith will not work without love. But it isn’t your ability to love other people. It is your letting God Almighty love you.
There is a big difference in that. Trusting God and walking in faith is leaning on Him and trusting Him for everything. You can’t do that with someone if you don’t know he loves you. You might as well forget it. You are never going to be able to trust God if you don’t know He loves you.
If you really knew how much God loves you, you would have less trouble receiving a healing. You would have less trouble receiving your financial needs met.
The reason you can’t receive is that you don’t really believe, totally, that God is giving it to you. You might say, “I want to believe that, but how do I believe that?”
You have the love of God inside you, and all you need is to begin to recognize it when He shows you. The Bible says, “We love Him, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). It would be impossible for you to love God if you weren’t assured of the fact that He loved you first.
It is all down inside you, in your heart. It is in there! God loves you! You are wonderful! You are beautiful! You are precious! You are tremendous! God loves you! Nobody in all the world will ever love you like God loves you.
You don’t need anybody but God, but He will give you other people in your life. The truth is that if there were nobody but you and God, you would get by fine. God will be your best friend. He will be your mate if you don’t have one. He will be your mother or father if you don’t have one.
God loves you that much. That’s how you can believe Him for anything. He loves you so much that you know He wants you to have it. And until you know that God wants you to have it, you are never going to be operating in enough faith to receive anything.
Faith works by letting God love you. It doesn’t work by your ability to go out and love somebody else. Let God love you and go around all day just telling God, “Oh, God, I know You love me. Hallelujah! Father, I praise You. I magnify Your name.”
Smith Wigglesworth was a great apostle of God. Someone asked him if he had long seasons in prayer, and he said, “I rarely ever pray more than 30 minutes, but I rarely ever go 30 minutes without praying.” He said once that if he went more than fifteen minutes at one time without having some communication with God, he had to repent.
We are trying to get things from the wrong end. You can’t make it happen by your works. God will bless you because He loves you. He will give to you the same way He gave you your salvation.
You are not going to get a family member, or anyone else, saved by working at it. Let God love you. Then, by the time you see the family member, you will be ready to love him. The Bible tells you that if you will love them and stop trying to win them with your words and all your fancy ways, you will draw them to Jesus. The Spirit of God will draw your family through His love. But you can’t love others if you don’t let God love you first.
Ephesians 2:8 AMP says, “For it is by free grace (God’s unmerited favor) that you are saved….” Do you realize that you did nothing to get saved? Most of us were just as rotten as the day is long when Jesus saved us, and it certainly was not based on our good works or our ability to do anything right. It was because of only one thing: God loved us so much that he gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believed in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16.)
Grace can also be defined as God’s willingness to use His ability in your life to meet all your needs. Just as God, by grace, gave you enough faith to get saved, He also, because of His love, gives you the faith to believe He is your healer. He gives you the faith to believe He is your provider.
If the faith He imparted to you for your salvation was enough to save you from all your sins, that same faith is on the inside of you to meet all the rest of your needs all your life. If you believe that God loves you, and really begin to know it, then you will begin to really trust Him. You will be convicted of the truthfulness of God’s Word. You will know that He would never lie to you because He loves you.
According to the Amplified Bible, “faith” is “the leaning of your entire human personality on Him” [God] “in absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness” (Col. 1:4). As you allow God to love you, you will learn to love Him and trust Him, and you will have faith.
God loves you!
5
Freedom From Fear
“There is no fear in love [dread does not exist], but full-grown (complete, perfect) love turns fear out of doors and expels every trace of terror! For fear brings with it the thought of punishment, and [so] he who is afraid has not reached the full maturity of love [is not yet grown into love’s complete perfection].”
1 John 4:18 AMP
We usually go along just fine in faith, confident that God loves us, trusting Him. Then all of a sudden, something attacks us.
The big stealer of faith is circumstances – those bad things that happen to us. You don’t have much trouble believing God loves you until the circumstances make it look like He doesn’t.
Then the devil comes in with fear and condemnation to separate you from the very thing that will set you free – God’s love. “Well, what about this?” he says. “I thought God loved you. So why are bad things happening to you? You must have done something awful. God is really mad at you.”
Then you lose your confidence before God, and He can’t help you if you are not confident. You can’t be confident, or full of faith, if you don’t know that God loves you. And if you receive the devil’s load of fear and condemnation, you don’t know how much God loves you.
First John 4:18 says a tremendously powerful thing “…perfect love casteth out fear.” I meditated and meditated on that Scripture, trying to figure it out, and one day God finally dropped it in my spirit. Perfect love casts out fear, and God is that perfect love. And when you know how perfect that love is toward you, there is nothing in all of creation that you can be afraid of. It is impossible to be afraid if you have a personal revelation that God loves you.
It is impossible to fear failure if you know that God loves you. You can’t fail if you are dependent on God. The only way you are going to fail is if you are dependent on yourself. If you know that God loves you, you will not fear failure. If you know that God loves you, you will not fear rejection.
God’s love is of such magnitude that it covers everything. Do you think that the same God that saved you and set you free is going to condemn you? Satan is the condemner. God will convict you of sin in your life, and He will show you the way out. The devil will condemn you and tell you there is no way out.
In the Amplified Bible this Scripture reads:
“There is no fear in love [dread does not exist], but full-grown (complete, perfect) love turns fear out of doors and expels every trace of terror! For fear brings with it the thought of punishment, and [so] he who is afraid has not reached the full maturity of love [is not yet grown into love’s complete perfection].”
1 John 4:18
A lot of people think that Scripture means that if you can love me enough, then you will not be afraid of me, or if you can love somebody enough, then fear will leave your life. But that isn’t what it mean
s.
It means if you let God love you, then you will not be afraid. You have to let God love you if you don’t want to have fear in your life. Receive God’s love for you right now by an act of faith. Go ahead. Reach out in faith and take all of God’s love for you.
Right after God gave me this revelation on His love casting out fear, I had to put it into practice. We had been having car trouble, and we thought the transmission was going out in our car, and we have a big transmission! It would probably have cost four or five hundred dollars to replace it if it was completely out, and we didn’t have the money. So we just kept driving it.
God ministered to me that morning and said, “Joyce, just go around all day loving Me, and let Me love you. You don’t have to do anything else. You don’t have to be a woman of great faith. All you have to do is go around loving Me and letting Me love you. Just all the time. Let Me love you.”
So, I was going around building myself up in my most holy faith and was singing, making up songs to God and having a wonderful time. Then all of a sudden, I heard my husband back in the garage. But he had gone to work about 45 minutes before! He opened the door and said, “I never could get the car out of first gear. We are going to have to take it in.”
I just shut the door and started laughing. It was not something I decided to do. It just came out. It just rose up out of my spirit, and God showed me that it was because I had been letting Him love me all morning that I was able to laugh. Letting God love you opens the door for faith to come out of you. I just began to laugh, and that was faith.
