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There is a weapon available to us that is more powerful than any other. In fact, this fruit of the Spirit is the most powerful force the world has ever known. It's a weapon that the Bible says will never fail to conquer anything the world, the flesh or the devil can bring against us. This most powerful weapon is the force of love.

The Proper Order
In the list of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22 and 23, Paul puts love first. It is of great significance that love is listed first. Love is the motivating force behind all the other fruit of the Spirit. Love is the force that will keep you out of the works of the flesh enumerated in Galatians 5:19-21. Love will keep you out of such sins as envy, jealousy, strife, hatred, wrath and so forth. And when you stay out of all these manifestations of the flesh and the world system, you won't be troubled by anything the devil can throw at you.

However, love isn't just a force to keep you out of sin. It's a powerful force to enable you to operate in the other fruit of the Spirit. Without love, your joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance won't work. In fact, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 that without love, I am nothing (v. 2).

You see, if a believer doesn't understand the fruit of love and how to operate in it, he may try to have joy, but his joy won't work properly. He may search for peace, but what he finds won't be true peace. And he won't be able to use peace properly.

The same is true of the other fruit of the Spirit. That's why so few Christians are having the kind of success they should have in walking in the Spirit. They don't understand how to operate in the fruit of love. And the major reason they don't know how to operate in love is that they have a misconception about the order of priorities in the love walk. They have a misunderstanding of what the Bible says is the right order of our love relationships. They've mixed up the proper order of priorities in their love lives.

The Great Commandment
The trouble is that when most believers think of the fruit of love, they think of cultivating and developing love relationships towards their brothers and sisters in Christ. They think what Jesus called the "great commandment" is His command in John 15:17 that ye love one another. But, in fact, the great commandment is not love one another. The great commandment is not in John 15 but in the book of Matthew. When a lawyer asked Him which was the great commandment in the law, Jesus answered:

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Matt. 22:37-39).

So, according to Jesus, what is the great commandment? That you love the Lord your God with all your heart and your soul and your mind. The great commandment is about loving God, not about loving others. The great commandment is not to love one another - it's to love God. It's the second commandment that deals with loving others. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself (Matt. 22:39). Now, you may be surprised, but these two Scriptures put the love life in proper priority.

The Number-One Priority
First of all, I must learn to love God with everything that's in me. Secondly, I must learn how to love myself. If I don't know how to love God, I will never know how to love myself. And if I don't get to the point of loving myself, I'll never know how to love another. I cannot love my neighbor as myself until I learn how to love myself.

A lot of people are trying to find out what love is all about, but you'll never really find out what love is all about until you get your love life in the right order. And the right order, the right priority, for your love life - for any life of love - must begin with God.

So we're talking about loving the Lord being the number-one priority. We're talking about cultivating and developing an individual, personal love relationship with your heavenly Father. When you learn to love your heavenly Father, you can learn how to love yourself. And when you learn to love God and yourself, then you'll know how to develop love and proper loving relationships with one another.

For instance, what the man who's thinking of committing suicide because he does not love himself must do in order to straighten that situation out, is to develop and cultivate a love relationship with the Almighty God. When he does that, God, through that relationship, can teach him how to love himself. Do you see that?

No Love Life Without God
Therefore, if you put God out of your love life, you have none! You may think you have a love life, but in reality, you can't have a love life without God.

Unfortunately, many Christians love one another more than they love God. Some Christians love their husbands, wives, parents or other people more than they love God. But actually their love is defective because they're putting their love priorities in the wrong order. Their love is not working properly, because they don't know how to love God first.

To illustrate this principle, let's look again at the story of Martha and Mary in the tenth chapter of Luke.

Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. (Luke 10:38-42)

I can imagine that Martha was sincerely trying to use her work and service to demonstrate her love for the Lord. I can imagine she was attempting, as so many of us often do, to show Jesus how much she loved Him through her hard work. But Jesus told her the only thing He wanted was for her to sit at His feet and fellowship with Him, as Mary was doing.

Not by Works
Here we see one person loving the Lord by fellowshipping with the Father in His Word and the other attempting to love Him through work and service. But, child of God, it has never been by your works that God is glorified. God wants the glory for everything that you do anyway. He wants the glory for the fact that you were able to get up this morning. He wants the glory for whatever was wrong last week that's all right now. God wants the glory for your healed body. God wants the glory for your sound mind. God wants the glory for the finances that you do have. It may be little or much, but He still wants the glory for it. He wants the glory for your deliverance from whatever trouble might happen tomorrow.

The Bible says our relationship with God doesn't depend on our works, but on His grace (Eph. 2:8,9). God doesn't need our work. But He does want us to have a personal, intimate loving relationship with Him.

Getting To Know Him
The importance God places on developing a loving relationship with Him instead of just doing good works in His name is graphically illustrated by something Jesus said in the seventh chapter of Matthew. Warning His disciples about false prophets, He said:

"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity" (Matt. 7:22-23).

I want you to note the word "knew" in this passage. Jesus here makes a very important statement, which, if we're not careful, we'll overlook. This word "knew" comes from a Greek word "ginosko," which means "to know by experience or effort." It means "the knowledge gained as a result of prolonged practice." What you know, you know through the results of prolonged practice. This word knew in the Greek means "knowledge grounded in personal experience," knowledge that has been grounded in or that has been gathered and obtained through personal experience. This knowledge did not come from what you read or from studied - this is the knowledge you obtained through your own individual personal experience.

As Jesus uses the word knew, it simply means "to get to know." So in this verse, when He says, "I never knew you," He means "I never had knowledge of you grounded in personal experience. I never had the time to have prolonged practice with you. Yes, I knew about you, but there were certain things that I couldn't gather knowledge about concerning you, because we didn't have practice together. There was no fellowship together. There was nothing I learned about you through the time we spent together."

The people He was talking about were shocked. "But wait a minute, Lord," they said, in effect. "I've prophesied in Your name! That's spiritual! Wait a minute, Lord, I've cast out devils! And Lord, I have done many wonderful works!"

Jesus said, "Yes, but the knowledge you obtained, you obtained from memorizing your notes. Or you obtained it from a book you bought just to increase your intellectual knowledge. You even prayed in the mornings just so you could say, 'I prayed in the morning,' but you never even got past the gate. You did many wonderful works, but the knowledge you obtained, you didn't obtain through personal experience with Me."

Wow! That's a pretty harsh statement. Particularly when He followed it up with depart from me, ye that work iniquity (v. 23).

Personal Experience With God
You see, child of God, there's something very important we must understand about the fruit of love. The fruit we want to cultivate is love developed in a relationship with our heavenly Father. And the way that love develops is through fellowship with Him in His Word and in prayer. I read the Word because I'm in love with Him. And the times that I spend with Him in prayer, study and meditation increase my personal knowledge of Him. As I spend time in the Word and in prayer, I get to know Him by personal experience. Then, when someone says something about God I know whether it's right or wrong because of my personal experience with my heavenly Father. I know His nature!

Because I have a personal, intimate, loving relationship with the Father, I know He wasn't responsible for a young child's death in an auto accident. No one can convince me God gave a woman cancer, because I know Him as Healer. I have personal experience with Him as Healer. I know God doesn't have any sickness or disease to give anyone. And I know He's a God of love and grace who wouldn't do anything to hurt His children.

Sometimes people say things like "Well, you know, maybe it's the will of God that we suffer from this cancer." No! You don't know my Father. You don't know Him; you have not yet known my Father! You have an intellectual assimilation of what He may be about, but you've never experienced Him.

You know how you can misjudge people by reading something about them or by hearing something about them that was taken out of context? Then when you finally got an opportunity to have a personal experience with them, it doesn't match what you read. It doesn't match what you saw on television. And all of a sudden, you had to repent because now the knowledge you have obtained has come through a personal experience with them.

That's what I mean about spending enough time with God to develop a close, loving relationship with Him as your heavenly Father. When you have a relationship with God grounded in personal experience, what you read in the Word about Him will just be a confirmation of the time that you spent with Him. You will understand what you read, because now you know God for yourself.

Therefore, when you hear or read something that is wrong doctrine, you will know it's wrong doctrine, because you will know what you know about God from your own experience. Even though you may not know all the Scriptures and may not be familiar with the theology behind it, you will know, because you know Him. It will be impossible to convince you to believe something wrong and unscriptural about God, because you will have gotten to know Him personally and intimately through time spent with Him and through prolonged practice.

Source: How To Trouble Your Trouble by Creflo A. Dollar, Jr.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers

Author Biography

Creflo A. Dollar
Web site: World Changers Church International
 
Creflo Dollar is a founder and senior pastor of World Changers Church International (WCCI). He's a world-renowned Bible teacher, sought-after conference speaker, and bestselling author with hundreds of books, CDs, and DVDs in distribution worldwide. Recognized for his cutting-edge revelation and humorous, pragmatic approach, he enables thousands to experience grace, restoration, healing, and financial breakthrough by applying simple, biblical principles to their lives. He is the author of such game-changing books as "The Radical Life of Grace" and "Why I Hate Religion", and his award-winning Changing Your World television broadcast reaches nearly 1 billion homes. His ministry includes an app available on mobile devices and smart TV's, a dedicated YouTube channel, and the Changing Your World Network, a 24-hour online channel. A thriving social media presence has allowed him to connect with World Changers worldwide.
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