CHAPTER 7
Love Is Something You Do

What began to happen in Western Canada in the fall of 1971 was not an emotional orgy. Certainly there were emotions. And tearful, red eyes were right in style, but so were smiling, glowing faces.

As is always the case when God does something deep and genuine, what was happening was based firmly and squarely upon the Word of God.

There is one text that particularly focuses revival truth in a very few words: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment" (Mark 12:30).

First of all, there is no escaping the obvious. It is a commandment, admittedly from the Old Testament, but reemphasized and reinforced, even amplified as we shall see, by Jesus. Moreover, the Saviour makes it clear once again that this commandment is the first one. If the Master put it first there can be no doubt about its importance. It obviously deserves the most attention from us and we are likely to find that its truth is foundational.

Also, commandments are to be obeyed. Not just read or discussed. The command is to love God. There are other commands which evangelicals regularly obey such as the ones ordering all believers to be baptized and to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Why is it that the very first commandment is largely ignored?

Without answering that question we would like to emphatically declare: Revival comes when God's children obey the first commandment. It is that basic, and we have missed it for so long! Moreover, loving God is something that is to be done. You do it. Jesus denounced the Pharisees for their meticulous tithing while they "passed over judgment and the love of God." Then he added concerning the tithing, "These ought ye to have done." But He did not stop there. He concluded," And not leave the other undone."

What were they leaving undone? They were leaving the love of God undone. Probably 95 percent of the evangelicals today do not genuinely worship and adore God. They do not love Him. Mind you, they would say they do love God. But only superficially. Yet Jesus clearly implied that loving God is something one does. Do you do it?

The Rev. Charles G. Finney, beyond doubt the greatest revivalist in church history, was a Presbyterian minister whose powerful logic and fiery preaching brought hundreds of thousands to faith in Christ. We should not be surprised that he taught very strongly that love is something one does.

The command also begins very directly with the personal pronoun you. The Holy Spirit, I find, is that way. Direct and personal. This matter of loving God is for you, not someone else.

I will always recall a very important lesson the Lord taught me about personal pronouns. Just a year or so prior to graduation from Bible College one of our teachers assigned a written speech. After much polishing, it was finally to be memorized and then delivered as part of a program in the churches in the main cities of Western Canada. The first drafts came back to me liberally splashed with red pencil. In one of the final drafts, my teacher asked for many corrections, and said very specifically, "You use the personal pronoun too much. Please eliminate the personal pronouns." Somewhat mischievously, I made all the corrections except the ones relating to the personal pronouns. I loved messages then with a forceful "you" in them - and still do.

My teacher, God bless her, forgot. I was allowed to memorize the message with all the personal pronouns intact. Then the message was delivered, along with the messages of other young people. God's presence and power was sensed everywhere. One service was especially memorable, and afterward my pastor, who had driven four hundred miles to attend, came up to me. "Neill," he said, with deep feeling, "always keep the 'you' in your preaching." I have never forgotten.

And like diamonds set on black velvet this text is studded with the personal pronoun "you." God expects you to love Him. It is something to be done and you do it.

And there is the word "all" repeated four times. All your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. Such inclusiveness God requires. There is no room here for a 99 percent Christian commitment. And when we love God with all, that is revival!

Now let's talk about this matter of the heart. There are two Greek words in the Scriptures which are commonly used for love. Agapao love refers to the kind of love that springs from the will, a deep love that is selfless and sacrificial. Phileo love is a more reserved, friendly kind of love. In fact, when Jesus was questioning Peter, He asked, "Do you love (agapao) me, Peter?" All Peter could summon from his heart so soon after his denial was, "Lord, thou knowest that I love (phileo) thee." Finally, the Saviour reduced the level of love. He asked Peter the third time if he loved him with phileo love. And Peter responded in kind.

Now what the Lord wants is the agapao love that springs from the will. When you love God with all your heart, it is not something that is necessarily emotional. The heart is the center of the will. You must decide to love God whether you feel like it or not. And then do it.

Dr. Mark Lee, a personal friend and a guest on two occasions at the Nakamun conferences, writes of an experience he and his wife shared.

"For a decade or so my wife and I lived, as we suppose other married couples do, thinking that we loved one another in appropriate marital fashion. It was the kind of affection that says, 'If you love me you will do this or that for me.' I now call this level of affection 'High School Love' because I had the experience several times in high school and observed my friends in a similar state. This is a selfish love which says, 'If you love me you will permit me to touch you, to do as I please with you.' It is something that does not really concern itself with the benefit of the object. Such a love uses rather than permits itself to be used. And that selfish spirit carried into our marriage."

Dr. Lee continues, "Our lives retained the usual adjustments and pressures found in marriage, and we felt that there was something lacking. Was married life, like all life's anticipations, reduced in the experience? No fulfillment is quite what we thought it would be. At length we struck upon the issue in our chats, spats, and devotional reading. Several persons were useful in illuminating the matter."

"Then we saw it. One day it rose like a shore on the horizon. It was like an island upon a vast sea on which we had been drifting. The love of no motive became clear and we beached our craft upon it. We will never leave that holy place, for it is the place of idyllic love. For us it is no longer, 'If you love me you will do this for me,' but 'I love you hence, what may I do for you?' 1

I believe loving God is like that. You must love Him with all your heart. You must decide to do it and you must do it.

The text also says "with all your soul." Now we are all tripartite beings - body. soul and spirit. The body is world-conscious. The spirit is God-conscious. The soul is self-conscious.

And it is my conviction that there is a soulish area in our lives that must experience the cross and death to self before we may wholly love God with all our souls.

The saintly George M. Blackett, founder of the Canadian Bible College in Regina. said this, "There is an enemy within that is in league with the devil without." I could not agree more. The ego. The self. The big "I." The carnal nature. The old man is there. And it must die.

Strangely enough, the doctrine of death to self, which I had always considered at the least complicated and at the most very difficult to understand was the very doctrine that was running like a prairie fire across Western Canada. I had never realized that God's Word was so powerful nor that the Holy Spirit could illuminate thousands with new understanding in a matter of weeks. But it was happening.

An Evangelical Free Church pastor from central Alberta put it very clearly, "I do not believe we will ever understand the crucified life until the Holy Spirit gives us a revelation of the cross." God was giving the revelation. Revival is God's Holy Spirit probing the self life and enabling you to bring your selfish nature to the cross of Christ for a liberating death.

Dying to self can be very practical too. In the month of February I was invited by a number of churches to participate in the revival that was already underway in the Okanagan valley of British Columbia. It was while there that God gave me a wonderful experience in prayer. One day as I was praying, my wife and children came up before me. I felt that I had given them over to the Lord, but sensed that the Holy Spirit wanted more. So I determined to give these loved ones afresh to God. When I tried to do so the struggle I encountered was itself a lesson to me. I just could not give up my family completely into God's hands. But after perhaps ten minutes of agony in prayer, I said, "Lord, all the way, they are yours."

As the meetings in Penticton extended four weeks I began to notice a freedom from lonesomeness. "Being an evangelist," I had always confided to my friends, "is wonderful, but there is a cross leaving my family." I wondered if perhaps I was not lonesome because I was staying with my parents for that month in Penticton. Then on the phone my wife said, "Perhaps you are not lonesome because you have given us to God." That was it exactly.

And further experience confirmed it. My eight-week tour in the Philippines was practically without communication with home. The mail service to Mindanao is terribly slow. But there was no anguish. No loneliness.

The self-pity that for 10 years had made so many tours incredibly hard had been nailed to the cross. And I am convinced that death to self is a necessary antecedent to truly loving God with your soul. What about you?

The text goes on to say, "All thy mind." We are to love God with all our mind and all our strength. The mind. Here is the center of intelligence, of thought. The mind is the battleground for unseen forces. Satan's attack begins there. It is therefore important that our thoughts be centered on Christ, that we have a correct mental image of Him. Paul tells us that the carnal mind is enmity against God. We are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind; those who are spiritual are to have the mind of Christ. We are instructed to think about things that are honest, just, pure, lovely and of good report. Our thoughts are a good gauge of where our true affections really lie. Those who love Christ with all their mind will find that unconsciously their thoughts revert to Him when they are not occupied with the necessary things of life. If we truly love Him nothing will be more delightful than to think about Him.

I am reminded also of the scripture, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross" (Philippians 2:5-8).

If you would love the Lord with all your mind you must humble yourself. It is impossible to be humble before God and proud and stiff-necked before people. In fact, God resists the proud. The devil does not need to resist them, God does.

On one occasion I was conducting meetings at Fort Nelson, mile 300 on the Alaska Highway. Strangely, I was aware of resistance but also knew that it was not the enemy. Later the Holy Spirit unmistakably showed me the cause. God Almighty was Himself committed to oppose me because of the pride in my heart.

Revival in Western Canada has been a continuing series of believers humbling themselves before one another. "Confess your sins one to another," say the Scriptures.

Scores of husbands and wives have asked one another's forgiveness. For example, a man who had formerly been a Christian worker but who had left the ministry was hard and bitter, serving

God in a perfunctory kind of way. When revival came to Saskatoon, he began to be concerned. Then the revolution of love came to his heart about four o'clock in the morning in what became known as "afterglows." When his wife confessed, "Please forgive me, I have not loved you as I ought to have," he was broken. His reserve was shattered by the humility of his wife and the genuine concern of several laymen.

Our observation in the Philippines was the same. In every case the launching pad for revival was, surprisingly enough, not prayer but humility and transparent honesty among Christians.

The revolution of love begins with humility. "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin, and will heal their land" (II Chronicles 7:14).

And I do not hesitate to say it in print, Revival, the revolution of love, comes only to those who will love God enough to humble themselves before others.

One of my pastor friends put it this way, "Humbling is not something one does in private. Every time in the Scripture that a person humbles himself he does it publicly." It is impossible to be humble before God and stiff-necked before men and brethren.

Our text goes on to talk about loving God with "all your strength," The businessman goes early and late to be successful. The athlete trains vigorously and continuously. Should those who love God with all their strength have a lesser dedication? I think not.

A young pastor listening to these remarks was deeply impressed with this thought, "I do not love God with all my strength," and so, in a public way before his people, he said, "Lord, I take this. I do love thee with all my heart, and all my soul, and all my mind and I will love thee with all my strength. I give all my strength to you." Then he stood up and addressed his people, "After hearing a message like this there is only one thing we can do. God has told us to love one another. Let us all go from one to the other expressing our love in the name of Jesus Christ."

One thing more - commands in the Word of God carry with them implicitly the power to obey. The Lord does not mock us when He asks us to love Him with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength. Moreover, obedience, in the case of this commandment, is completely revolutionary. It brings revival!

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1 Mark W. Lee, Our Children Are Our Best Friends, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1970, pp. 65-66. Used with permission.

Chapter 8