Lesson 10: "The Fruit of the Spirit is Love," part 4

A great many of us try hard at times to love. We try to force ourselves to love, and I do not say that is wrong; it is better than nothing. But the end of it is always very sad. "I fail continually," each one must confess. And what is the reason? The reason is simply this: Because they have never learned to believe and accept the truth that the Holy Spirit can pour God's love into their heart. That blessed text; often it has been limited! "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts." It has often been understood in this sense: It means the love of God to DO; what a limitation! That is only the beginning. The love of God is always the love of God in its entirety, in its fulness as an indwelling power, a love of God to me that leaps back to Him in love, and overflows to my fellow men in love—God's love to me, and my love to God, and my love to my fellow men. The three are one; you cannot separate them.

Do believe that the love of God can be shed abroad in your heart and mine so that we can love all day.
"Ah!" you say, "how little I have understood that!"

Why is a lamb always gentle? Because that is its nature. Does it cost the lamb any trouble to be gentle? No. Why not? It is so beautiful and gentle. Has a lamb to study to be gentle? No. Why does that come so easy? It is its nature. And a wolf—why does it cost a wolf no trouble to be cruel, and to put its fangs into the poor lamb or sheep? Because that is its nature. It does not summon up its courage; the wolf-nature is there.


And how can I learn to love? Never until the Spirit of God fills my heart with God's love, and I begin to long for God's love in a very different sense from which I have sought it so selfishly, as a comfort and a joy and a happiness and a pleasure to myself; never until I begin to learn that "God is love," and to claim it, and receive it as an indwelling power for self-sacrifice; never until I begin to see that my glory, my blessedness, is to be like God and like Christ, in giving up everything in myself for my fellowmen. May God teach us that! Oh, the divine blessedness of the love with which the Holy Spirit can fill our hearts! "The fruit of the Spirit is love."

Once again I ask, Why must this be so? And my answer is: Without this we cannot live the daily life of love.
 
How often, when we speak about the consecrated life, we have to speak about temper, and some people have sometimes said: "You make too much of temper."

I do not think we can make too much of it. Do you see yonder clock? You know what those hands mean. The hands tell me what is within the clock, and if I see that the hands stand still, and that the hands point wrong, and that the clock is slow or fast, I say that there is something inside the clock that is wrong. And temper is just like the revelation that the clock gives of what is within. Temper is a proof whether the love of Christ is filling the heart, or not. How many there are who find it easier in church, or in the prayer-meeting, or in work for the Lord, diligent, earnest work, to be holy and happy than in the daily life with wife and children and servant; easier to be holy and happy outside the home than in it. Where is the love of God? In Christ. God has prepared for us a wonderful redemption in Christ, and He longs to make something supernatural of us. Have we learned to long for it, and ask for it, and expect it in its fulness?