BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

That means you’re free to let go of unforgiveness. You don’t have to let fear torment you into holding on to it because, as 1 John 4 says: "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love" (verses 15-18). Notice, perfect love (the living, growing, God kind of love) doesn’t just manage fear. It casts it out. It gets rid of fear completely so that you don’t have to harden your heart toward someone because you’re afraid of being vulnerable. You can just love them. “But, Brother Copeland, I don’t feel loving toward them.” So? The God kind of love (agape is the Greek word used in the New Testament) isn’t a feeling. It’s an act of the will. It’s making the quality decision: I will love you no matter what you do. That’s the decision God made about every one of us. He loved us before we were born. He loved us before we got saved—when we were mean and unlovely. I look back at myself in my “before Christ” days, and I’m amazed at what God did for me. He not only sent Jesus to redeem me, even while I was still a sinner, He put me with Gloria—a woman who loved me unconditionally. Between the two of them, they taught me what agape looks like. Gloria and I have been married going on 59 years, and she’s loved me at my worst just like she’s loved me at my best. More than once she’s shown me such kindness it absolutely shocked me. Like the time some years ago when I was grumbling about how I’d messed something up. “Kenneth,” she said sweetly as she reached over and put her hand on me, “Jesus finds no fault in you and neither do I.” Oh, my! I’ll never forget that. It changed the course of my life! Any born-again believer can walk in that kind of love, but not without a decision. You have to decide to do it. You have to respond to Jesus’ love command by saying, “I believe, I will. I take that kind of love. I have it. I’m so grateful for it, and I forgive if I have aught against any.” When you do that, things in your life will start straightening up. Clean Out the Pipe! I know you’ve heard this before. Most all of us have heard any number of sermons on love and forgiveness. But we need to keep on hearing them. We need to keep meditating on the command of love because so much depends on it. For as 1 Corinthians 13 says: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing" (verses 1-3, "New King James Version"). Talk about sobering! According to those verses, violating the law of love not only hinders our faith, but it also has a deadening effect on the supernatural operations of the Holy Spirit. It even robs us of the benefits of our giving. We don’t have to commit a major violation of love, or hold on to some great big unforgiveness, to experience those deadening effects either. They can be the result of our accumulating a lot of little unforgivenesses that don’t seem big enough to matter. I remember the first time The LORD really got this through to me. I was in Shawnee, Okla., preaching a series of meetings in Roy and Opal Sprague’s church, back in the early years of this ministry. Between services, I was praying in the spirit and suddenly I had a quick little vision of a pipe. It looked to be about 4 or 5 feet long and 4 or 5 inches in diameter, and on the upper end a stream of water was gushing down on it. BVOV : 29

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