(289) “When Our Love for God Ebbs, Revival Ebbs”

0:00 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. On these two commandments hang all the gifts. Oh, that too. Yeah. That's well put. So we hang everything. on love. God promises in Joel 2 .28 to pour out His Spirit on all humanity. Welcome to Global Outpouring, where we contend for that promise outpouring, we equip for that outpouring. so that we may engage in that very outpouring. I'm Philip Buss.

0:55 And I'm Sharon Buss. Welcome to the podcast today. We're so glad that you're with us. We're going to talk today about revival and outpouring and how important it is that we have to maintain the love of God in our lives, because when the love of God ebbs, revival ebbs. Thanks so much for joining us today. We're so delighted that we can do this thing together with you. And before we get started, let me just encourage you, if you haven't already done so, that you go to our website, globaloutpouring .net, and that you make sure that you are on our mailing list so that we can stay in touch with you. It's just really important to be able to stay connected.

1:40 And if you're enjoying this content, we would love to hear back from you. We are delighted when we receive some email or from the feedback form. It just really means a tremendous amount to us. like to read one of the emails that we got recently from someone who writes from time to time. And we're just delighted to hear from Cheryl. And she says, I'm still really enjoying your podcasts as well as Friday night live worship. Now, in case you're listening to our podcast, we never think to mention that we do on YouTube and Facebook on the Global Outpouring channel and Global Outpouring Facebook page, every Friday night at 7 p .m. Central Time, we do a... I hate to call it a program. We do a service. Let's call it a service. We do a service called Friday Night Live Worship. And most of the time it's live. Once in a great while, we have to pre -record it. But it's live and it's worship time and the word and testimonies and whatever. So she said, I'm still really enjoying your podcast as well as Friday Night Live. They are all so good. I especially like the Friday night live worship from October 3rd, 2025. The new song that you sang was over the top. I like to start my day by praying in the spirit about 30 minutes before I do anything else. Since that night, I've listened to your worship almost every morning just to keep my mind on track while I pray in tongues.

3:10 It has helped me so much. There was one part where Sharon said, I totally blew that. Let's start over. Then she responded to Philip, you can't, because you said, right? I said, we'll take it out of the mix. Yeah, or we'll edit that out. Live recording. Yeah. I said, you can't edit this. We're live. Let's try again. One morning, now this is her going on. One morning, the Lord responded, life is live and you can't edit, but you can repent and start again and get it right. Repenting is like editing. Your sins are made white as snow by the blood of Jesus, giving us a chance to get it right. And then she says, you always ask for suggestions for podcasts.

3:50 For a long time, I've been thinking about how much I enjoy when you share tidbits of what the Lord has brought you through. I would enjoy a podcast of y 'all telling more about yourselves and your experiences in the Lord. Testimonies are always good. Love and appreciate you so much. Thanks for all the spiritual food that you freely give. Blessings to you both. After that, I was thinking about something that Philip actually brought last week on our Friday Night Live worship. It would have been, I guess it might be two weeks from the time that you hear this. He shared an experience that I want him to share again. And I think that it will be like a foundation for a springboard, shall we say, for this podcast, for this episode. We'll tell the background to it. Yes, go ahead. We talk about Sukkot. Well, now, just to retrace our steps, we did an episode about how to celebrate Sukkot. Yeah. And I think we told the story about how we got to start celebrating Sukkot. Yeah. God gave you this love to go camping.

4:57 Yes, exactly. Wow. And if you didn't hear that, you can go back to episode, I think it was 285, where we talked about that. Go ahead. Yeah, I got it. Actually, here's the notes right here. Yes. So anyway. So we are going to celebrate Sukkot in a couple of days. And we have a favorite spot we go to. We book it six months out. And you have to book it, you know, because other people do the same thing. And we have a spot that we like. And it's right next to a wonderful fishing river. We catch trout and freeze them, bring them home. And so anyway, I'm looking at our spot. And we're like a month out. And I realized that they're letting water out of the dam for over like a month. They're draining the lake down because there's too much water, getting ready for the fall season. And so that makes fishing not very good if you're on the shore, which is how we fish. But if you have a boat, you know, you can go with the current and fish that way. So anyway, I'm watching that. I thought, oh, well, there's other stuff I'm geared up to fish for, you know, in the rapids. And we get this. Think from the Army Corps of Engineers campground we're going. Two more days, you know, just two more days. Hey, we were excited. Yeah, and so that night at about 8 o 'clock at night, we get another email from them saying that our reservation, the second day of our reservation on, they're closing the campground so they can

6:30 repave it. And they're stating it's not anything to do with the government shutdown. And our experience from a year or so before, we set up our tent in faith, you know, and we had one day till the shutdown and the campground is empty. And then all of a sudden, two hours before the shutdown. They got it resolved. Yeah, that was the previous time. And we had a nice, quiet campground. I had the river to myself. It was great. And we just enjoyed that. I think we caught a lot of fish that time, too. We did. It was a great time. So that's how the mindset has kind of been along that way. It's all about fishing. Yeah, catching fish and trout. And so now we find out we have to go somewhere else. I thought, where can we go? For eight days straight, there's a lot of spots available in different campgrounds, but not for that long of a stretch. And then we find one all the way down south of us by Hot Springs on a lake called Lake Ouachita. And it's like, okay, it seems to be our only choice. So we book our reservation there, and we get to this campground, and we come to the little thing you enter in, you know, where you sign in. There's nobody in it. Just take this tag and put it on a little post by your campsite. And we have a reservation and we get to it. And we are in the woods. It's a national forest, actually. And there's a lot of... Woods, it's all woods behind us and next

8:01 to us to the next camp spot. And just before we left, we had bear attacked by our place. Yeah, I mean, it was within our county. Within our county, someone got killed by a bear attack. And 30 days before that, there'd been another bear attack in Arkansas. Yeah. And so one of our friends texted me and said, you don't want to go camping because of the bears, you know. And, you know, that's pretty discouraging to hear that because we're in a tent. We're not in a camper. I'm not concerned about a bear if you're in a camper, you know. But a tent's another story. Right. So anyway, we get to this spot and I'm looking, you know, and the only signs of life is across from us. trailer there. It's the camp host and he's a volunteer. He just got there and, and I thought, well, and I'm kind of, I'm not happy. Yeah. You know, because I was geared on catching fish, different, different kinds of fish, walleye, striped bass, hybrid bass, hopefully. And all of a sudden here we are at this campground and a few spots down and away, there's the shower and all that. And it's closed because Because of the shutdown, there's not enough government people. You know, the contracts are not there for those that come in and take care of it. So the park rangers have to, so they closed that one. And we had to have to go with this for another one. So everything is not looking good in my eyes. It was kind of falling apart.

9:31 Yeah. And so a few days later, you know, we thought, okay, let's go fishing at the lake here. It's dusk. That's when the fish come to shore. I use every strategy that I can think of for bait, for walleye, for anything that would come to the shore at night. I got one bluegill about the size of my hand, you know, and, you know, it's just really. And so we're walking back, and the next day we're going by, and there's a guy that caught some catfish on a trout line that he put out there. And we look up and here's the sign up there saying warning. And it has a fish with a line through it, you know, the warning signs thing with a slash. The fish in this lake have higher contents of mercury because of mining and other natural stuff in the lake.

10:20 Yeah, it's just natural. It's natural. So, you know, we don't want to, you know, keep any fish. And it's just like it took the wind out of my sail to even try to catch anything to turn it loose. And so every morning and every night we had a campfire. And normally my normal routine in the morning on the other river, I'd get up about 6 .30, 7 o 'clock, and you hear a lot of ruckus out there because guys are getting in their boats or whatever. Everybody's going fishing. Everybody's going fishing. And I'd just cross the road in front of us, go about 70 feet, and walk down the bank to the river and just fish from the shore and do very well. You know, probably as good as the guys in the boats, you know. And so we can't do any of this. And so I'm just kind of a little bit of a pity party, you know, and all that. So I'm reading the Bible, and I got a book, and I was reading this book called There Shall Be No M. That was by Arthur Burt, who has, you know, he's over 100 years old, and he has lived through revivals, and he's from Wales.

11:25 You know, so he knows all about the Welsh revival. All the marvelous moves of God they've had. So I'm reading that and what it takes and how the downfall of revival is pride. Pride gets in the way. And when man thinks, I can do this myself. I've got this now, God. I see how you're doing it. I'll do it that way. And we've read all kinds of books on the Welsh revival. And other revivals. And other revivals. And I never understood what happened in the Welsh revival. And I read there was Evan Roberts. He made this statement that God is never going to move at all in this particular denomination. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He said God's not going to move. Some of the church people were, because he's saying this publicly, and said, can you please change your mindset on that? You know, the way you're saying this. He said, no, God's not going to use this organization for revival at all. And what Arthur Burt says after he said that, the Welsh revival started to ebb.

12:32 Wow. I thought, wow. And I never knew why. Yeah. You know, we've heard all the different moves like Pensacola. The elders, church people got together. We want our church back. And they didn't want to have the schedule of revival. I think similar things may have happened in Toronto, and that move went on a long time. It was powerful. But every revival that we have seen. Move of God has ebbed, you know. So, you know, I'm reading this book, reading what it takes to be an instrument for revival. You know, how you've got to get rid of pride, and he dealt with his own circumstances. And he talked about his own downfalls when he would get proud. Yeah, he mentioned things, and I thought... He humbled himself. And I remember our founder, Sister Gwen, said, don't ever put me on a pedestal because I'll have to get knocked off. And we understand that very, very much.

13:29 So anyway, I'm reading one morning and I just hear this thing, glowworm. I thought, are you a glowworm? A glow worm, you know, okay. So what's a glow worm? So it's a worm that glows. So anyway, my first thought that comes to my head is Isaiah chapter 41. And, you know, Israel has had its wars. It has its good kings, has its bad kings. And when they have a good king, everything prospers. And when they have a bad king and he lets in idolatry or doesn't do anything about it, you know, things start going downhill. And it might take 30 years or so. And then things get just really bad. And all of a sudden, nations are coming in. They're robbing the harvest. And all kinds of things are going into captivity. And that happened after four bad kings in a row.

14:22 I think Zedekiah was the last bad king. And I think they put his eyes out and then marched him to Babylon. It's sad endings when you read that. It's about what happens. But Israel is God's chosen people. Right. From way back when, thou art mine, I've called you by my name, you are mine. That's out of Isaiah also. So God, even talking judgments, has great mercy. Absolutely. Long suffering. I mean, he lets stuff go a long time. I've been looking at that. There seems to be something like a 400 -year cycle where God makes promises, and he tells the people to obey him, and there'll be a generation or two that'll obey, and then they go into idolatry and the sins that bring the curse on the land.

15:16 God is very patient. I mean, I think 400 years is very patient. That's very, that's very, very patient. So it's, you know, it's 430, 400 this, 400 that, you know, almost 400. But there's this kind of cycle that, you know, people that read the Old Testament and think that God is just mean and just judgmental, they don't realize the amount of time that goes by in between these things before God actually brings the hammer down. Yeah. So I went to the book of Isaiah. I just love the book of Isaiah. Oh, yes. How many people have, you know, kings and government officials, you know, they quote from this a lot of times not even knowing, you know, where Scripture comes from. So anyway, Isaiah 41, and in verse 10, so this is the Lord speaking through Isaiah, Fear thou not. This is King James. Fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness. You know, because God is all about righteousness. Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded. They shall be as nothing, and they that strive with thee shall perish. Sounds like what's happening in... Gaza. Yeah. Thou shalt seek them and shall not find them. Even then that content with thee, they that war against

16:47 thee shall be as nothing and as a thing of naught. We have seen that through Israel. Yeah. Modern day. For I, the Lord thy God, will hold thy right hand. Hallelujah. Saying unto thee, Fear not, I will help thee. Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel. I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument, having teeth. Thou shalt thresh the mountains and beat them small, and thou shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them, and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel. And so you have the Jewish nation, which has survived over 3 ,000 years. No other people grew past. This is just God's Word. He's fulfilling His Word. So you go back to verse 13. Fear not, thou worm, Jacob. Now, when you think of a worm, I think of worm fishing. Oh, sure. You know, let's put this worm on a hook, you know, we're gonna... It's going to get something, you know.

17:57 And so what are worms? What are they? They crawl under the ground and they eat dirt, you know. And it's good. They fertilize the soil, you know. So God is calling Jacob a worm. But he's taking this worm and he's thrashing a mountain. Right. And that's what we have seen Israel do. You know, though all the nations are warring against it politically. And militarily, I mean, you got arms from Russia, arms from Iran, you know, and all that. They're fighting against Israel. And usually the fights between Israel and their neighbors are testing grounds for manufacturers of new weapons, like from the U .S. and from Russia and China. Very interesting. But we're seeing many of these nations get thrashed by Israel.

18:49 You know, it's very powerful. But so he's taken this worm and thrashing a mountain. So I go back to my glow worm. Yeah. So I just, you know, looked at Wikipedia, you know, and what it says, it's any member of various groups of insect larva that glow through the chemical thing while it's a larva. You know, that's the crawly stage. Yeah, it's the next stage after the egg. Yeah. The egg hatches into a larva, and the larva eats and eats, and then it becomes an adult. Yeah, and, you know, a caterpillar wraps himself in a cocoon of green goo and turns out this magnificent butterfly, you know. So anyway, so you have the glow worm. But this worm is not an adult stage.

19:34 Right. It's in its infancy. Or maybe teenage years. Or maybe teenage years, but, you know. But it glows, you know. Wow. You know, so if you actually go to Isaiah chapter 60. Yeah. And it's, Arise, shine, for the light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. Behold, the darkness shall cover the earth and gross darkness the people, which we are seeing on all fronts. But the Lord shall rise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. So arise, shine. Yeah, be a glow worm. Let your light shine.

20:14 Be a glow worm for Jesus. When our light touches God's light, there's an explosion. Yeah, that's true. You know, kind of like when conception takes place. They've seen under a microscope when the egg and the sperm connect, there's an explosion of light, just a flash of light. Yes. And boom, life has started. Yes. You know, so even though sometimes we might feel like we're worms, you know, we felt, man, I just really blew that. Real good. I remember one of the first times I ever preached, we were in Taiwan, and I'd been saved. you know, like four or five years, four years, maybe, you know, and so all of a sudden I'm preaching in this church in Taiwan and I'm kind of struggling through it. And I see Sister Gwen kind of got her head down and thought maybe repenting for having me, you know, I felt like a worm trying to glow. I'm really trying to glow, you know, you know, but I'd been a backslider for years. I knew the lot of things in the Bible, but I didn't know a lot of scriptures.

21:21 But you have to start somewhere. Exactly. I mean, we all start like a glowworm. Right. You know, no matter where you come from, how high your education, you can have all these degrees and all that, but all of a sudden you're put in front of a bunch of people and your notes just get blurry and you get stage fright, you know, or maybe something along those lines. But, you know, as we grow in the Lord. That's how we get our wings. Amen. You know, sometimes you have to go through a cocoon different times, you know, in order to get... Can I add something about the worm? Yeah, go ahead. So I looked up the word from Isaiah 41 and verse 14, where it's talking about the word worm, and it's the Hebrew word tola, and it is referring to a certain worm, a certain... one in particular. It can also mean maggots and things like that. But it is referring to this certain female, and I'm going to try to say the Latin name of it, Coccus illicis.

22:23 And it is a worm that, it's called the scarlet worm. And when she's ready to give birth, you know, to lay her eggs, she attaches herself to the trunk of a tree. And it's a permanent detachment, like, this is it. I'm going to die here. And she lays her eggs and covers them with her body, and then she dies. And as she dies, this crimson fluid comes out of her, and it stains the tree. And that was what the ancient people would use in antiquity for a scarlet dye. They would collect these little bodies of these female worms. And that was the crimson stain. So any place where you see in the scripture where it's talking about scarlet and making the tent of meeting the tabernacle in the wilderness, they're looking for scarlet thread. It comes from this worm. So there's something about the idea that she lays down her life and it's like she's covering with the blood. So it's kind of a picture of Jesus that came to give us life. And gave his life for us and the power of his blood covering us. I just think that's such a beautiful picture. So that's one way that the Lord can use this worm to thresh a mountain by the blood of Jesus. Yes, amen. So back to where you were going. I'm sorry for the bunny trail, but I thought you'd enjoyed that little piece. So that's kind of a nice thing. You're

23:54 sitting by this nice campfire, you know. I feel like a glowworm, you know. And what I realized through this, you know, it's like it's a time of celebration, Sukkot, you know. And actually when they put the tent up or they put their sukkah up and they always have a spare place sitting there. Yeah. And that's for Elijah. Right. And I remember when earlier years on a Friday night. at our devotions around the table at Ingletal here. You know, we would have dinner and Sister Gwen would have her basket of letters. And we would have this book, Tales of Elijah. You know, this is from Jewish folklore. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And some very, very interesting things. That is just... Really major thing. So they would always have a place for Elijah to sit if he just happened to show up. Because everyone's expecting that in the last days, Elijah's going to show up and lead the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers. Some of the last scriptures in the Tanakh, it's Malachi. So I had to kind of get my perspective right. When you start thinking of fishing, more than I do than getting away with God, something has to change to kind of get you on course. So this was kind of God's way of doing it. Close the campground, water levels are high, no fish, and then to put the icing on the cake. After we get back, I thought,

25:26 well, we'll get up there soon, maybe again, or maybe for a day. I get this notice sent from my nephew. that two of the hatcheries that we have that provide all the trout for the rivers here, one got flooded bad and another had real bad water in it. And all fishing, all the way from the last dam down the river to where we go, you cannot keep any trout. You have to turn them all loose. That hatchery, all the fish were poisoned and they died. Yeah, that's the one right where we camp. It's just magnificent. hatchery, and they got some nice -sized trout in there. Oh, it's beautiful. And the river they release them in, it's not very wide, and they'll let people like under 16 or handicapped with a barbless hook catch and release these magnificent trout.

26:14 I mean big trout. I wonder if those were killed too. Possibly, unless they're all just in the river. They might just stay in the river, but they tend to go up in there. And it's just like there's no new trout, and they provide trout for the lakes all and the rivers nearby. Could be years before there's good fishing again. So we may end up going back to that same campsite. Who knows? Because even this campsite where we always go, it's noisy. And people are right here next to each other, and it's a noisy campground. So I kind of enjoyed where we were. The quiet. And I thought, well, maybe if fishing's lousy, maybe we'll just go back there again. But God had to change my whole perspective on that. Yeah.

26:59 But one thing I was really studying in this book about revival, too, is God gives us gifts, all the gifts of the Spirit and that. And there's an emphasis on the gifts. You're very strong. Yeah. Many churches, a lot of them, they're in the prophetic, and you have the word church, and you have the apostolic church, you have the bishops, you have all these titles and all these things. And many of them, they strive in that stream. But there is one thing that has to happen to make those actually flow to what they're designed for, and that's to have the love of God. Very true. And the Lord quickened me to 1 Corinthians 12. And I'm going to start in verse 6 here. This is in the Passion Translation. Oh, okay. Yeah.

27:54 The same God distributes different kinds of miracles that accomplish different results through each believer's gift and ministry as he energizes and activates them. Make a note of that as he energizes and activates them. With a capital H. Yeah. They don't have a capital H here. It should be, though. Yeah. In our opinion. In our opinion. We're backseat translators. So every believer is given continuous revelation by the Holy Spirit to benefit not just himself, but all. And verse 8, for example, the Spirit gives to one the gift of the word of wisdom, and to another the Spirit gives the gift of the word of revelation knowledge. And to another, the same Spirit gives the gift of faith. And to another, the same Spirit gives gifts of healing. And to another, the power to work miracles. And to another, the gift of prophecy. And to another, the gift to discern what the Spirit is speaking. And to another, the gift of speaking different kinds of tongues. And to another, the gift of interpretation of tongues. And we see these being activated and used today. Remember, this is verse 11, it is the same Holy Spirit who distributes, activates, and operates these different gifts as he chooses for each believer. You know, and then it goes on, just as the human body is one, though it has many parts that together form one body, so

29:25 too is Christ. For by one Spirit we all were immersed and mingled into one single body. And no matter our status, whether we are Jews or non -Jews, oppressed or free, we are all privileged to drink deeply of the same Holy Spirit. Amen. All the different denominations. It's one Holy Spirit. There's only one. And it goes on saying, if I'm not a hand, I'm not part of the body. Or if I'm an ear to say, since I'm not an eye, I'm not really part of the body. You know, that goes on all the, you know, speaking in different ways. But we need the whole body. Your whole body has to function to function perfect. You know, what it's designed for. Exactly. You know, like you better have two eyeballs than one. You know, because you get focus. Right. Depth perception with two eyeballs where you don't get with one.

30:16 And every part of our body, you know, is designed to do something. And the same it is in the body of Christ with all the gifts, you know, and when they all flow together, you're going somewhere. Right. But too many times, just like we read in the moves of God, flesh gets in the way. Pride gets in the way. Yeah. So things are not going to really work as well as they could. So let's go down to verse 27. and the title here is One Body with Different Gifts. You are the body of the anointed one, and each of you is a unique and vital part of it. God has placed in the church the following, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then those with gifts of miracles, gifts of divine healing, gifts of revelation knowledge, gifts of leadership, and gifts of different kind of tongues. Now, we know people that operate in all of these. To a certain extent, you know. For others, it's just their focus.

31:17 Verse 29, not everyone is an apostle or a prophet or a teacher. Not everyone performs miracles or has gifts of healing or speaks in tongues or interprets tongues. But you should all consistently boil over with passion in seeking the higher gifts. And these are good. You know, this describes all this in this whole chapter. It talks about the gifts. But really what caught my eye was this last verse. And now I will show you a superior way to live that is beyond comparison. And that goes immediately into chapter 13. And many times when we're reading the Bible, we'll read a chapter a day or two chapters, and they'll get to that point and they will stop. And they'll start a next chapter the next day not realizing this is a continuous letter. Right. I just want to point out that when I was young and, you know, I was raised in the church. When I was a child and thought as a child. Yeah, that's part of that chapter. But I learned chapter 12. I learned about the gifts. And I think probably even before I heard about the gifts, maybe back in my Baptist days. I learned about the love chapter. It's the love chapter. Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians, it's the love chapter. And you just talk about love, and it's about love, and it's about love, and love, and love. I mean, if you do this, but

32:48 you don't have love, da -da -da -da -da. All you need is love. Well, that was another story. Anyway, I never saw until, and please excuse me, maybe you always saw it. Maybe, listener, you always saw it, but I was absolutely dumb about this, that I didn't really see it until Philip brought it out. I understood that last verse, yet I show you a more excellent way, and you just move into love. And love is the more excellent way, but I never saw it before that it's referring to those gifts of the previous chapter. I hadn't seen it, and it just became profound to me. that you can go on with where you're going, but it was profound to me to realize that it's talking specifically about those gifts and operating them without love. Yeah. So when we continue with the chapter 13, so it goes right from what we were reading in chapter 12 on to 13, and it says, I show you a more excellent way. And so then it goes, if I were to speak with eloquence in earth's many languages and in the heavenly tongues of angels, yet I didn't express myself with love, my words would be reduced to the hollow sound of nothing more than a clanging cymbal. And if I were to have the gift of prophecy with a profound understanding of God's hidden secrets, if I possessed unending supernatural

34:19 knowledge, if I had the greatest gift of faith that could move mountains but have never learned to love, I am nothing. If I were to be so generous to give away everything I own to feed the poor and to offer my body to be burned as a martyr, without the pure motive of love, I would gain nothing in value. It goes on speaking, you know, all these marvelous things of love. And in verse 8, love never stops loving. That's good. We'll pause right here a minute. In the Greek, there's three words for love. And the love, this is agape. You know, it's more like the God love. Would you want to, you have it right there. Yeah, I have it right here. The word agape. What's nice about the Hebrew Greek key study Bible. Yes.

35:07 So the word agape, agapau is to love. That's the verb. So this is the, this is the noun. It is translated charity, meaning benevolent love. It's benevolence, however, is not shown by doing what the person love desires. but what the one who loves deems as needed by the one loved. For instance, God so loved the world that he gave. He gave not what man wanted, but what man needed as God perceived his need, namely his Son, who brought forgiveness to man. God's love for man is doing what he thinks best for man and not what man desires. It is God's willful direction toward man. But for man to show love to God, he must first appropriate God's agape, for only God has such an unselfish love. Isn't that beautiful?

36:02 Beautiful. So that's agape love, which is what we press into. But it comes from him. You have to get it from him. And then there's the filial love, and that's the love like you have to each other. That's a brotherly love. It's where the Church of Philadelphia, that's where that comes from, Filio, the Church of Brotherly Love. Yes. One of the seven churches of Revelation. Right. And even Philip is a lover of horses. Yeah. I love the white horse that Jesus is coming on. There you go. That's the one I love. And I remember there was even a church in Chicago that was part of our chain, if you want to call it. That was the Philadelphia Church. And then there's another word, eros, which is the love like a husband to a wife. But in our English word, all that is combined in one. And what are, and we don't listen to it, but what are 90 % of all the songs you hear on country and western stations? Love or lack of it or lost it. A lot of stations.

37:08 A lot of the music is all about love because it's really important to people. It's important. And it strikes people when they're going through something because music is emotionally very strong. It works on your emotions. And especially when you use the title love. And there's so much music is based about it or what happened when I had it and lost it and said goodbye to it and getting it back again. You know, play your LP record backwards. You know, in country western, you get your car back, your dog back, you get your house back. Get your wife back. Get your wife back. Yeah. That's a joke. That's a joke. So moving right along, we're back in verse 8 here.

37:51 So love never stops loving. It extends beyond the gift of prophecy, which eventually fades away. You know, I have a thought about that. It eventually fades away because eventually all prophecy will be fulfilled. Fulfilled, uh -huh. And then there's no more need for prophecy. And if it's of God, it will be fulfilled. Exactly. And if the vision will tarry, wait for it. Exactly. Some visions take a long time. Okay. So it is more enduring than tongues, which will one day fall silent. Yeah. You know why? Because when we get to heaven, we'll speak thought to thought. Yeah. Yeah. So love remains long after words of knowledge are forgotten. And, you know, it's kind of like that theme song that came out of the Titanic, My Heart Will Go On. You know, and when a loved one dies, sometimes, you know, people have been married for a long time. Oh, yeah.

38:48 The spouse will not survive. That's true. And they die very quickly because, you know, even an animal sometime, if the dog's master passes away, the dog a lot of times just goes in the morning. Sometimes they die of a broken heart. And some people will never recover it all their life from the loss of love of a loved one. So love is powerful. Can I stick something in here? Yes. Well, I think it's important to share this little testimony that Pastor Tony Kemp shared of a couple that he knew, and the husband passed away, and the wife was mourning, and then she had a dream. And in her dream, she saw her husband.

39:32 Might have been a vision. But she saw her husband in heaven worshiping the Lord. And she walked up behind him. He became aware that she was there. He turned around and hugged her. But it was a hug more like a brother -sister hug. It wasn't a husband -wife. It was a filial hug. Yeah, it was a filial hug. And then he turned back around and he went back to worshiping again. And the Lord spoke to her and said, whatever his name is, let's call him Charlie. Charlie has... a new life. You need to get one too. And she came back and she woke up from that dream or the vision or whatever it was. And her heart was really healed from the loss of her husband because she realized that God had given her something that she could work with. You need to get one too.

40:20 So in this little moment when we're talking about lost love, if you have had that experience where you're mourning the loss of someone, that person has a new life, and you need to get one too. That's very good. Wow. So I'll go on in verse 9 here. Our present knowledge and our prophecies are but partial, but when love's perfection arrives, the partial will fade away. When I was a child, I spoke about childless things, for I saw things like a child and reasoned like a child. But the day came when I matured, and I set aside my childish ways. For now we see but a faint reflection of riddles and mysteries as though reflected in a mirror, but one day we will see face to face.

41:08 My understanding is incomplete now, but one day I will understand everything, just as everything about me has been fully understood. Until then, there are three things that remain, faith, hope, and love. yet love surpasses them all. So above all else, you know, and this is above all the other gifts. Yes. Let love be the beautiful price for which you run. And when we get the love of God, the love of Jesus in your heart, it will help to perfect the gift that you are walking in. It says like, be ye perfect as I am perfect.

41:49 You know, Jesus spoke those words and it really is be complete. Like I am complete because we are complete in him. Exactly. Paul says that. So every gift we have must come through complete in Jesus for it to be accurate because you don't want to give a prophecy to something that's tainted. Right. And if you're not walking right. and you're prophesying, you know, you could be given tainted prophecies because if there's other voices speaking to you, that can go into your prophetic word. It's true. You know, so the greatest of these is love. And if we go over to Matthew chapter 22 real quick, you know, so, you know, Jesus has the last word. Yes. That's what I would say.

42:35 And in Matthew chapter 22 and verses 36 to 40. Of course, you know, Jesus always gets confronted by the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and they're always trying to catch him to say something that they can take back to put fuel in the fire of the chief priests and all that. So one of them, a lawyer, asks a question, tempting him, saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? And of course, they know what the great commandment is, but they want to hear his interpretation. Jesus said unto them, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.

43:20 And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. On these two commandments hang all the gifts. Oh, that too. Yeah. That's well put. So we hang everything. Amen. Amen. And if you don't have the love of God and you're operating in the gift without the love of God, you're going to hurt people, you know, and you're going to do things and say things that you shouldn't say. You know, there's this thing about some people that have a gift of prophecy that have used it unlawfully, I would say. by saying, okay, if you'll give such and such an offering, I'll give you a prophecy. I mean, that's just totally wrong motives. That's not how you do it. But if you have a gift, you can operate in the gift, but don't operate in the gift without the love of the giver who gave you the gift. You have to operate in that love of God because that is his nature. I mean, the book of 1 John says that, verse John 4, 7 and 8 says that God is love. In verse 8, I think it is. And so it's his nature. If you look at the fruit of the Spirit at the same time that you're looking at the gifts of the Spirit, the very first one from Galatians chapter 5, the

44:53 very first one is love. So it's the first, most important thing. And if you go all the way back to Sinai, where Moses is up on the mountain with God. And, you know, he said, show me your glory. And the Lord comes to him and covers him in the cleft of the rock. And he roars his name. And his name means the one who was and who is and who is to come. Yehovah! And so he roars it twice. And when you have something twice in Scripture, in the Hebrew, it's like multiplied. Like, for instance, when you say perfect peace in English, it's really shalom, shalom in Hebrew. So when he roars his name, he's saying, I was, I am, I always will be what I am. I was, I am, I always will be what I am. It's like more than doubling.

45:47 It's like multiplication, exponential multiplication. And so he roars his name and then he says. The first thing he says about him is from the word racham or rachum, and that comes from the same root word as the word womb, a woman's womb. So God's womb, it's like womb love. It's like the love that a mother has for her baby. You know, I've only had one pregnancy. We just have one child. But there's something that goes on in a mother. During this pregnancy where you're just being knit to that baby. And in reality, they have found that the mother's DNA remains in the child and not just the DNA that makes them. But the mother's actual DNA is still floating around in the child and the child's DNA is in the mother. So there's a connection there that is so strong. A mother's love for her child, no matter what the child does wrong, mom can see the good. Like the mother saying to the judge, oh, no, no, he didn't mean to hurt that guy.

47:04 Grant that my two sons will sit with you on your throne, one on the left, one on the right. So the first thing that God says about himself on Mount Sinai is that he loves, that he loves like a mother. You know, we think of him as father, but first thing he says about himself, more so than a father love. Father love is wonderful, and father love is powerful and important, but there's something about mother love that, you know, you hear these stories about men, soldiers dying on the field, and they're crying out for mom. Crying out for mom, yeah. Yeah. Mommy! You know, there's something about that. connection.

47:45 And that's why it's so important when we're learning about the gifts. And, you know, we came up into the charismatic mover. I did. And you kind of joined a little bit later. But you were there. You saw it happening. And your parents were full on in it. But there's something about the charismatic move that we were focusing on the gifts. Really focused. I can't tell you how many sermons I heard about the gifts from chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians. Over and over and over, we were focusing on the gifts. And in chapter 14, you read it. It says, you know, covets to my prophesy. Prophecy, just go for prophecy. Prophecy is so important. You need to learn how to prophesy. But this place of love that you read about in chapter 13, I was stunned to realize that as I kind of dug into this after you started bringing this message.

48:42 this idea of speaking with tongues. You know, speaking in tongues is the first thing that we focus on. You know, the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. I'm not against that. I'm for that. But you have to get it from the lover of your soul and connect with the lover of your soul as you speak in tongues. One of the things that I've been doing recently is really focusing, because it's easy to speak in tongues mindlessly without your mind being on it. And there's a time and place for that, to just be continuously praying in tongues. But when I really want to connect, I say, Holy Spirit, pray through me. Holy Spirit, pray through me.

49:30 That Romans 8 prayer, because we don't know how to pray as we ought to. And that love that comes with it, it's a different experience praying in tongues with the Holy Spirit. But if we just pray in tongues without the love of God, what are we accomplishing? It's just noise. And then having the gift of prophecy. But this little line here, it says, understand all mysteries. As I was looking up the gift of the word of wisdom. The word wisdom there is Sophia in the Greek, and it also indicates wisdom, and it's well translated as wisdom, but it also indicates understanding mysteries. So I didn't know that understanding mysteries actually goes with the word of wisdom.

50:20 Great. Okay. And having knowledge. Well, that's the word of knowledge. That's the gift of the word of knowledge. But if you don't have love and having faith, it's a gift of faith. so that you can move mountains. I mean, there's a real story about that. But if you don't have love, when it says, it profits me nothing, it means that there's no eternal value. And the eternal value comes from receiving the love of God so that you can operate in the love of God. And that's where maturity comes. You're going to step into that place of maturity where your gift is actually introducing the one who loves. That it's not about the pride, like that's what you were talking about at the very beginning. The pride that stops a move of God. It causes the move of God to ebb. It's the love of God that keeps it going. When you're filled with the love of God, you're not going to be standing up in pride because the love of God recognizes his greatness. And it causes us to humble ourselves in his sight and walk in that awe and reverence of him that will cause his name to be known.

51:39 When we don't take any of the credit ourselves, when we don't take any of the glory ourselves and we give him all the glory, that's what keeps revival going. That's what brings this revival where there will be no ebb. Let's just close with that prophecy that Arthur Burt wrote the whole book about. It was a prophecy that he heard given in Manchester, England in the 1930s. No one's exactly sure of whether it was 34 or 35 or 39 or whatever it was. But this is the quote from his book. It shall come as a breath. And the breath shall bring the wind. And the wind shall bring the rain. And there shall be floods and floods and floods and torrents. And torrents and torrents. Souls shall be saved like falling leaves from mighty oaks swept by a hurricane.

52:36 Arms and legs shall come down from heaven, and there shall be no ebb. And he remembered later that there was also a part about where the rich and the poor will embrace each other on the streets of New York City. Wow. Wow, wow. You know, that's love poured out. That is love poured out. You want to close with prayer? Yeah. Well, Father, we thank you for these words, Lord, and the words that you give. And, Lord, that the greatest of these is love. That, Father, that in our quest, O God, for more of you, that, Lord, you would be the focus of it all. You would be the center of it all. And that, Father, we can fulfill our plan that you have for us in earth, O God. Yes.

53:22 And, Lord, by loving you, because when we love you, Lord, with everything that we have, with all our heart, mind, and soul, we will be walking out our destiny. So we just pray, Lord, I pray for all our listeners that, Lord, they would find their destiny, Lord, that only comes from knowing you intimately, oh God. Lord, many things are handed down, but Lord, to truly know you will be the fulfillment of it all. So we thank you, Father, and we just bless each one listening and give you all the glory. In your name, Lord Jesus, amen. Amen. Check out our website at globaloutpouring .org to find out more information, read our blogs, connect with us, and donate. You can also browse our web store for life -changing anointed books.

54:30 Until next time, this is Sharon Buss. And I'm Philip Buss. God bless you with His overwhelming, loving presence.