HUMAN VS. DIVINE LOVE.
The pianist for one of my meetings was a young woman who played beautifully. I learned from the pastor that she had graduated with a degree in music from a university in that city.
But when you'd look at her, she'd duck her head. She acted strangely.
I asked the pastor, "Is she completely normal?"
"Oh, it's a sad situation, Brother Hagin," he said. "She was graduated from the university here and she could teach music, but she doesn't do anything. Her mother has held her right to her coattails.
She's never had a girlfriend or boyfriend in her life."
This girl was about 27 years old. She had never spent one night away from home.
The pastor also told me that the girl had three brothers. Their mother, a widow, never let any of them visit a friend's house overnight or have a friend spend the night with them. They had no friends.
A person's personality becomes twisted in such cases. That's not love, friends.
That's natural human love, and it's selfish.
It's what I want, not what you need or want.
The boys respected their mother, but as soon as they finished high school, they left home. During the time I was there in the meeting, the last boy, who had just graduated at 17, left home. He didn't say anything to his mother; he just left.
She came to me bawling. "Brother Hagin, I want you to pray. So-and-so's gone.
Now, he's a good boy—saved and filled with the Holy Ghost—but he's not honoring his mother. I want you to pray about it."
I said, "What for?"
"Well, he's left."
I said, "Thank God!"
She looked at me like I'd slapped her with a wet dish rag.
I said, "I'm so glad he had enough sense to get out of that mess."
She began to cry. She said, "I love my children."
I said, "No, you don't. Look at that poor girl on the piano. Dear Lord, she can play all right—she has musical ability—but when you look at her she'll look down as if something's wrong with her. You kept her close to you all of her life. She never had a friend. She never spent one night away from home. You never let her out of your sight. She ought to be out on her own."
I added, "Instead of praying he'll come back, I'm going to pray that she'll leave."
"Oh, I love my children," the woman said.
"I know it," I said. "You love them with natural love. You're saved. Why don't you start loving them with the love of God? If you'd love them with the love of God, you'd be glad for them to leave home. They're old enough to go."
Natural love is selfish, but divine love is unselfish. A human being exercising natural human love is concerned about himself or herself, thinking, What's in it for me? We see this even in the Christian realm. Saved
people—even ministers of the Gospel—may get in the natural and think this way.
Brother, we ought to be glad for the kingdom of God. The family of God is one.
We ought to let the unselfish love of God dominate us.
Much of the time we don't walk in divine love, but we should. The love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts, and the first fruit of the spirit is love. We should be responding to that indwelling Spirit, shouldn't we?
Many churches have been torn up by people arguing, "Well, I've got my say—and I'm going to have it, too!" If they were to act in love, they just might keep their mouths shut.
The fruit of the spirit is love. That's what God wants to reproduce in our recreated, born-again spirits because of the life of Christ and the Holy Spirit within.
- Kenneth E Hagin (LOVE NEVER FAILS)
- JESUS SAVES TV