Yes, your flesh will want to dominate you, but you don't have to let it. As you practice the God-kind of love, God's love will grow and develop, and you'll be a blessing to many.
But if you are going to harbor resentment and ill will toward other people in your soul and refuse to pray for people when they wrong you, it will affect you not only physically, but spiritually.
You can't afford to meditate on what people have said about you or what they've done to you or how they've persecuted or used you.
If you entertain those things in your thought life, those negative thoughts will just fester in your spirit and your soul and eventually begin to affect you in every area of life.
For example, have you ever heard people say, "So-and-so just doesn't like me."
You ask them, "Well, what are you doing about it?"
"I'm never going to speak to him again!"
Then people wonder why their prayers are hindered and their faith won't work!
"They're Talking About Me!"
When I pastored a particular church one time, one night after our Sunday night service, a woman came up to the front of the church to talk to me.
People were standing around visiting. We didn't have a foyer; it was just a one-room church that seated about three hundred people.
Anyway, this woman came to me just crying. She said, "I wish you'd pray for me."
"What for, Sister? What's wrong?"
"Well," she said, "Sister So-and-so and Sister So-and-so are standing in the back of the church talking about me."
"Sister," I said smiling, "I'm sure they've got a better subject than that to talk about! Besides, how do you know they're talking about you?"
"Well," she answered, "I just know it."
"Why," I said, "they're no more talking about you than anything in the world. There's no use praying about that. You just need to practice the Word. Besides that, even if they were talking about you, you're supposed to go ahead and love them anyway."
She insisted, "Well, I just know they're talking about me!"
"There's a good way to find out," I said. "Let's go back there and see what they're talking about." So we just walked back to where these ladies were talking inside the church.
I said to them, "What are you ladies talking about?"
Come to find out, they were talking about canning fruit and making preserves. They hadn't been talking about this woman!
Walk In The Light Of The Word
Do you see how people are hindered because God's Word isn't abiding in them. Then when they don't walk in the light of the Word, it hinders their prayer life.
You see, this woman just kept meditating on the thought that these other ladies were talking about her until it festered in her soul, and she got so worked up that she needed prayer. She missed a blessing by not practicing the God-kind of love.
Even if these ladies had been talking about this woman, what should she have done about it? She should have loved them anyway, forgiven them, and prayed for them.
Besides, when you are mature in the God-kind of love, you don't let things like that affect you. You just keep on loving people in spite of how they may treat you.
I've learned not to let people's criticism affect me the least bit in the world. I've told people for a good many years that I wouldn't even take time to deny it if someone accused me of killing my grandma.
I'd just keep shouting the victory and praising God.
Let people say what they want to about me! I'll pray for them, but I'm not going to let it affect me. As for me, I'm going to keep on worshipping God and staying healthy!
by Kenneth Hagin
Excerpt permission granted by Faith Library Publications