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Living In the Fullness of Love
by Kenneth Copeland
What is the Spirit of God saying to you today? What is He telling you about your spiritual development…your family…and your finances? If you're facing trouble, what word of victory has He spoken to you?
As a born-again child of the living God, you ought to know the answers to those questions.
Consider for a moment what your life would be like if you were filled with the love of God. What would it be like to be overflowing with the presence of Jesus Christ Himself every day when you stepped out your front door? What would it be like to live in the fullness of His power, His wisdom and His strength?
If that's your situation, I'm going to be straight with you. You'd better go to God and find out what to do. You'd better be quiet long enough to hear what He has to say and pay attention to it. You'd better get rid of that fear and start believing God. Otherwise, the devil is going to end up getting the best of you.
No doubt, your life would be awesome!
That kind of life, however, exceeds anything most Christians could ever ask or think. In fact many would argue that living such a life is not possible. They wouldn’t think anyone this side of heaven could ever reach such spiritual heights.
But according to the New Testament—they would be mistaken. Written there, we find that’s exactly the kind of life believers are called to live. It’s the kind of life the Apostle Paul had in mind when, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he penned the prayer recorded in Ephesians 3:14-21:
For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen (New King James Version).
Clearly Paul believed it was possible for born-again children of God to be filled with His fullness. He had confidence in God’s ability to do (by the mighty power of the Holy Spirit who works within us) more than our little, peanut brains could even imagine.
Paul knew by divine revelation that God is truly able to glorify Himself through us!
It Starts With a Seed
“Well I just don’t see how that could ever happen,” you might say. “I don’t see how God’s fullness could ever be revealed through me.”
Then look again at that passage in Ephesians. It tells us exactly how to get filled with the fullness of God. We do it by becoming rooted and grounded in His love. We do it by developing such an intimate knowledge and experience of God’s love that we begin to comprehend the full extent of it.
Since He is love, when we comprehend and live completely in love we actually reveal God in His fullness.
The full comprehension of God’s love doesn’t just fall on us, however, like an apple falling out of a tree. It must grow up within us. And like anything that grows, it must start with a seed. That seed is the simple New Testament command of love found in Matthew 22, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. And thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (verses 37, 39).
When we first read that commandment of love as new believers, we know very little about it. But as we begin to meditate on it, confess it and align our lives with it, that command begins to root itself in our minds and hearts. If we stick with it, eventually we will become so grounded in the commandment of love that we’ll judge our whole lives by it.
When that happens, if somebody says something ugly to us, for example, instead of lashing out at them, we start searching for a way to keep the commandment and respond to them in love.
The more we practice yielding to love, the stronger our revelation of God’s love grows. Our comprehension of it increases and as a result, our lives are increasingly filled with the fullness of God.
Enter: the Devil
It’s actually a very simple process. So simple in fact, that you might wonder why we seem to have such a difficult time with it. Why, you might think, do we so quickly and so often lose sight of this all-important commandment of love?
The devil gets involved, that’s why. He is always working to sabotage our love walk.
If you want to know how he does it, read the parable of the sower recorded in Mark 4. There, Jesus says:
The sower soweth the word. And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts. And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness; and have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word's sake, immediately they are offended (verses 14-17).
Those verses reveal the devil’s method of operation. They show us that as soon as the seed of God’s Word is planted in our hearts, he starts working to get rid of it. He starts trying to dig it up before it has a chance to take root.
What tool does he use to achieve this?
The tool of offense.
He sends a person along to say something mean to us that will hurt our feelings. He gets someone to irritate and provoke us until we step over into strife.
The very word translated devil in the Greek carries the idea of a constant irritating, poking, pressing or pecking away at something in order to penetrate and get entrance into it.
That’s the way Satan functions. He cannot change his pattern. He goes after the seed of the Word in your heart by poking at you through someone’s unkind words or actions. He harasses you with the thoughtless or irritating behavior of others. He pecks at you any way he can. He tries to provoke you into reacting so you’ll violate the commandment of love because when you do that, he gains entrance into your life. It enables him to pierce your soul like a thorn would pierce your finger. Then he keeps on working from that place to infect you more and more with his poison.
Avoid Strife Like You Would a Rattlesnake
No wonder Ephesians 4:26-27 says, “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Neither give place to the devil.”
Giving the devil a place in our lives through offense and strife opens the door for him to steal the Word from us—and it’s the Word that heals us. It’s the Word that prospers us. It’s the Word that delivers us from the curse and transfers us into a life of blessing.
And most importantly, it’s the Word that roots us and grounds us in God’s love.
If we truly understood what an evil thing strife is, most of us would avoid it like a rattlesnake. We’d refuse to have anything to do with it. But most believers have never taken a serious look at what the Bible says about strife. They haven’t given much thought to verses like:
Proverbs 10:12, “Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins.”
Proverbs 15:18, “A wrathful man stirreth up strife: but he that is slow to anger appeaseth strife.”
Proverbs 16:27-28, “An ungodly man diggeth up evil: and in his lips there is as a burning fire. A froward man soweth strife: and a whisperer separateth chief friends.”
Proverbs 17:14, “The beginning of strife is like releasing water; therefore stop contention before a quarrel starts” (New King James Version).
The word translated strife in those verses denotes discord, lack of agreement or disharmony. It implies a struggling for superiority, pushing to get position. Strife arises from the fear that somebody is going to take advantage of you. Strife says, I have to fight to get what’s mine.
Most believers who have any spiritual maturity at all know better than to consciously engage in that kind of thinking. They know better than to jump into an open quarrel the first time somebody says something that irritates them. They’re too spiritually grown up to get into a fistfight with the pastor in the foyer of the church—no matter how much they might disagree with him.
So the devil sneaks up on them. He sends in some pious-looking deacon who will sidle up next to them and say, “What do think about that decision the pastor made about the small groups program? Do you really think he did the right thing?”
The truly wise believer cuts off that conversation right there. He refuses to start arguing (even in his own mind) about what the pastor decided. He recognizes the devil is trying to punch a hole in the harmony of the church so that strife can leak in. So he puts a stop to that contention right then and there.
He says, “Listen brother, I’m committed to my pastor, to this church and to the Lord Jesus Christ. I don’t know why pastor made the decision he did, but he’s made it so let’s just stick together and support him. In fact why don’t you and I just pray for him right now.”
That kind of response stops strife cold and sets the love of God into motion.
Can the Devil Take You Captive?
“Yeah, but Brother Copeland,” you might say, “I can’t help getting offended when somebody is mean to me. God understands that. And anyway, those warnings you cited about strife are in the Old Testament. As Christians we’re under the New Covenant. We’re under grace. Things are different now.”
Yes, thank God they are different. We have the blood of Jesus now to cleanse us from sin and unrighteousness. We’ve been born again and made partakers of God’s own nature. We’re no longer in bondage to the devil.
We’ve changed—but sin hasn’t.
Sin is just as sinful as it ever was. Strife is just as dangerous today as it was when the book of Proverbs was written. If you doubt it, take a look at Romans 13:13. It clearly instructs us to “walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy” (New King James Version).
Not only does that verse warn us as New Testament believers to steer clear of strife, it puts it in some very bad company. It ranks strife right alongside drunkenness and lust. First Corinthians 3:1-3 confirms that perspective. There the Apostle Paul tells the believers at Corinth that strife has kept them immature and carnal (or worldly). He writes: “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?”
Imagine that! The Apostle Paul could not teach the Corinthians the meat of the Word because of strife. It had reduced the whole congregation to such a low spiritual state that they were operating like unsaved men and women!
Strife will do the same thing to us today. It will deaden our spiritual senses. It will keep us from hearing from God. When we get into strife or we get offended with somebody, if we don’t repent and get our hearts right, we’ll find ourselves saying things like, “God doesn’t ever speak to me.”
Remember this: God never stops talking to us. He’s never an absentee Father. He is always speaking. He’s always counseling. He’s always encouraging us and building us up. But when we’re in strife we become too spiritually dense to know it.
That alone ought to be enough to convince us to avoid strife at any cost. But that’s not all the New Testament has to say about it. In 2 Timothy 2:24-26, Paul tells us, “The servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.”
Look again at the last part of that verse. It says that those who are in strife and opposition to others are in captivity to the devil. They become the devil’s puppet!
That’s a serious thing and we need to realize it can happen to any of us. If we get into strife, if we start jockeying for power and control or take offense because somebody doesn’t treat us the way we want them to, we’ll end up in bondage to the devil. He’ll be able to take us captive. He’ll be able to put us to work for him by pulling our quarreling string.
When he does that, we’ll fly off the handle about something and without even knowing it, we will end up serving the devil himself.
Love Never Fails
I’m sure you don’t desire to do that any more than I do. And we can keep that from happening. How? By putting the commandment of love first place in our lives. By thinking about how much God loves us and how much Jesus did for us on the cross instead of thinking about how somebody wronged us. We keep strife out of our hearts by acting on our love for the Lord.
If someone irritates you, say, “I can’t fuss with that person—no matter what they did. I’d be disobeying the Commander in Chief Himself. I’d be dishonoring the God I love.”
Once you’ve said that, if you’re still tempted to say something ugly, just shut your mouth! Don’t voice the words of strife and anger that rise up within you. James 3:6 says those words are like kindling wood that hell itself uses to set your whole nature on fire. So don’t say them. Don’t start the fire!
Instead step out by faith and begin to act in love. Do and say what love does and says: “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, New King James Version).
The more you practice obeying the commandment of love, the more rooted and grounded in love you’ll become. Before long, walking in love won’t even seem like a commandment anymore. It will become a privilege, an honor and a joy. You won’t desire to live any other way. The seed of love will be growing up within you. You’ll become rooted and grounded in it. You’ll begin to truly comprehend the love of God…and the God of love.
If you’ll keep on walking in love, every day as you step out your front door, you will be overflowing a little more with the presence of the Lord. Every day you’ll be living more of the life you are called and divinely designed to live—a life that is filled with all the fullness of God!
Courtesy of: KCM.org(Kenneth Copeland Australia)
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