Upgrade in Love: Developing a Lifestyle of Receiving, Becoming & Releasing God's Love 9781735551500, 9780578735856

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Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NIV are from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked TPT are from The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017, 2018 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ThePassionTranslation.com. Print ISBN 978-1-7355515-0-0 eISBN 978-0-578-73585-6

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION WELCOME HOME ENCOUNTERING LOVE THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE A BAPTISM OF LOVE LOVING YOURSELF SEE, THINK, FEEL, SAY COMPELLED BY LOVE WHOLEHEARTED LIVING AMBASSADORS OF LOVE

INTRODUCTION

I remember the first time I stood before government leaders and was addressed as “the ambassador of love.” I was in a Muslim country among some of its top Imams, and it did not feel like a very warm environment. But one of them with a long beard walked up to me, stared at me, and said, “You are the ambassador of love.” This was not a normal expression in their culture, but as surprising as it was to me, it stuck. It started to spread, and today I am known in many countries as an ambassador of love. But I immediately realized that this title of an ambassador of love to the nations was not just for me. It is really a description of every believer. I made a commitment to help other people step into this calling to re-present the love of the Father to the world. As a Norwegian, I have traveled many times to the Norwegian Embassy in Washington, D.C. When I go into the building, I am actually in Norwegian territory; the embassy belongs to Norway. It is a little piece of my home country on American soil. I can speak Norwegian there, perhaps even enjoy some Norwegian chocolate, and see a lot of things that remind me of home. The ambassador has a special role. He is a citizen of Norway living in a host country. He represents the king and the government of Norway to the United States. He is there on behalf of Norway, even as he lives and travels throughout America. He is an embodiment of his own country’s interests. That is a picture of every believer’s assignment. We represent Papa God and the environment of heaven—actually re-presenting them, as in

presenting them again and again—while we live and travel on earth. Just as God sent Jesus into the world to manifest His nature, we have been sent into the world to embody Jesus’ nature. We are sons and daughters of the King who have become ambassadors of His kingdom. We are an embodiment of the Father’s interests, character, and love. This is a book about receiving an upgrade in love and becoming an ambassador of love. Many believers know about the Father’s love without knowing His love for themselves. They still have not experienced it fully, really seeing it as it is. Though you are already thoroughly, completely loved by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we will talk about ways to receive that love, then to become that love, and then to release that love to those around us. The world is waiting for a revelation of the sons and daughters of God who know His love. They need ambassadors of His kingdom to present His nature to them. They need someone to manifest His love as it really is. I hope you will be encouraged by the journey we take together in this book. By the time we are through, I trust that you will experience an upgrade beyond your dreams. I believe you will experience the love of your Father in new ways and know some practical ways to transform the world around you. And I am convinced that others will begin to see you as an ambassador of love who looks very much like Jesus.

CHAPTER 1

WELCOME HOME

I still remember the day I gave my life to Jesus. A Swedish couple sang a song that introduced me to Him, and even though my feet felt like lead, this 13-year-old Norwegian boy managed to get to the altar. It was a beautiful time; I was just overwhelmed with Jesus. For a moment, everything felt right. I didn’t realize at the time that there was still something missing in my life. I was still carrying a lot of pain, and pain always seeks pleasure. It very often leads us to look for love in the wrong places. I did not yet know my identity in Christ or the authority that God gives us, and I didn’t know how to have friendship with Him, so I sought friendship with some peers who were not very good for me to be around. They introduced me to some unhealthy habits, and my search for love actually took me further away from it. The further I moved away from real love, the further I moved away from God. I didn’t even realize what was happening. After five years into this journey, I was very messed up. I was kicked out of school for drug abuse and ended up in a park in Oslo. So I knew at 18 that I was very broken. I was filled with guilt and shame. I felt bad not only for what I had done to God but also for what I had done to my family. I knew my parents were very worried about me. I knew I didn’t deserve anything from them. But my level of pain at that moment was so high that I had to do something. I didn’t want to live in that park, and as embarrassing as it might be to go home, that would be better than what I was experiencing. So I called my family—not necessarily out of repentance (that would come later) but for some relief.

A lot of thoughts went through my mind as I sat on a train winding through southern Norway. I didn’t know what to expect. But when I saw my father at the train station, he ran toward me and embraced me. We started a long ride, took a ferry across a fjord, and then arrived home. My 15-yearold brother was an apprentice caterer and was just learning to bake cakes. He had made a beautiful cake that said, “Welcome home, Leif.” I will never forget that scene. I did not deserve such a welcome, but it was a glorious homecoming. I was received with open arms. Something inside me was transformed. It changed my life. But there was still something missing. I was excited about Jesus, and I wanted to serve. I turned my life around and made a commitment to Him. I determined to be a faithful servant, so I worked hard to do all the right things for God, to work for Him diligently so I could become that faithful servant I wanted to be. What I didn’t realize is that I was still looking for love. I was following a very common pattern that most human beings follow: We do something in order to get something, and we want to get something in order to be someone. I was trying to find my identity as a faithful servant in the things I did. I even traveled all over the world to serve God so I would know I was one of His beloved sons. I didn’t understand that I was already one of His beloved sons. When I discovered that—that He was already pleased with me not for what I was doing but for who I was in Jesus—it changed me. I had been striving for affirmation and approval without realizing that He had already affirmed me and approved of me in Jesus because of His love. I didn’t have to get His attention. I didn’t have to strive for His love. I could just receive it. I began to see in new ways and live a new life. If you are familiar with the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, you may have noticed some similarities in my story. It’s a story of a son who rebelled against his father and a son who faithfully and religiously served his father. I have been both the son who was lost and the son who was working in the fields. But when I came home to my Father, He did not rebuke me for all the things I had done wrong. He ran to me and embraced me, just as my earthly father did, and He told me I was His beloved son in

whom He was well pleased. I received both His robe and His ring—the family identity and the family authority, which we will soon explore in more depth—and this glorious homecoming has given me new life. God has a glorious homecoming prepared for every single person. He wants us to live like we have a home—not straying far from home, and not even just working in the fields near home. He doesn’t want us to live for Him nearly as much as He wants us to live from Him. That is the journey that He is taking us on, and it all begins with love.

THE SONS’ JOURNEY How do you think your life would change if you were able to see the same face of the Father that Jesus saw and heard the same voice that He did? For those who have come home to the Father and received their robe and ring, this is possible. Jesus gives us a wonderful picture of what the Father is like. (If you are not familiar with the story, I would encourage you to read it in Luke 15:11-32.) He tells this story so we can experience the Father in the same way too. A father had two sons, and the younger son demanded his inheritance from the father. He didn’t want to wait. He wanted everything life had to offer. I believe he was so impatient because he was not comfortable with love and did not know how to relate to his father. He was looking for love in the wrong places. Jesus always demonstrated that God is love, and if you are uncomfortable with love, you will be uncomfortable with God. You will also be uncomfortable with yourself, and the pain in your life will take you away from the Father and His love. This younger son is a picture of being uncomfortable with the father, and the further he went from the father, the closer he got to the pigpen. He squandered his share of the family inheritance in immoral living. He wasted it all. This son’s identity was not in question. Nowhere in the story is he said to be outside the family. He was a son, not a sinner. It is clear that he had sinned because he had not yet received his robe—his family identity. So he began a journey that led far from the father and ended up having to tend

pigs, because that’s what sin does in our lives. When we do not wear the family robe, we start to look for love in the wrong places. Sin takes us away from the very thing that will fulfill our deepest longing, the love of a good Father. This son was going in the opposite direction of his true longings. Eventually, the son came to his senses. He realized that being a servant in his father’s house would be better than feeding pigs in the pigpen. So he decided to go home and negotiate with the father. He was not going home to repent of his sins—not yet, anyway. He started his journey by rehearsing his speech so he could work out a better deal for himself, just as I was rehearsing my speech for my parents on the way home and trying to come up with some excuses. The son was looking for just enough grace to get him back on the property. Jesus tells us that as the boy was far off, the father was looking. He had been waiting and watching. In a Middle Eastern culture, this is not what you would expect a father to do when a son had shamed the family and dishonored the entire community. Sometimes the result of that kind of behavior is an honor killing. At the very least, the community would shame him into repentance. But Jesus describes a father who was watching for his son. As soon as he saw him on the horizon, the father ran out to embrace him, called for the best robe, a nice ring, and some shoes, and he immediately began planning a party. The older son heard all the noise from all the rejoicing, and when he discovered what had happened, he became angry. He had been working hard to be a good son, yet the father was celebrating the son who had dishonored him. The father answered by explaining that the younger son had been lost and was now found. That was worthy of a huge celebration. The older son, who had been there all along, could have experienced the same joy and abundance of the family at any time. Jesus says that’s what God is like. Whether we have issues of being rebellious or religious, of going after sin or working hard as a servant, His robe and His ring are available. He is ready to celebrate. The warmth and peace and joy of the family are ours to delight in, and the inheritance is always ours to receive. His living room is open, full of love and laughter,

with the fellowship of plenty of brothers and sisters to enjoy. He wants us to experience a glorious homecoming.

YOUR ROBE AND RING This was a big shift in my life because for many years I believed that when I had done very well, the Father would look at me and say, “That’s good, son. You got an A-plus.” Of course, when I didn’t live up to the standard, I would get perhaps a B-minus, and the Father would tell me to do better next time. I noticed that every time I felt that I had done something wrong, I turned away from love instead of turning toward it. I was running toward the Father when I did well but away from Him when I did not do well. The messes and dirt in my life turned me in the opposite direction from the safest place, the only place where I could receive love, forgiveness, and healing. I understand this as a natural father. When my children are fallen and broken, I am standing there waiting to embrace them. I only see them through eyes of love. The heavenly Father loves us even more than that. When we have done something wrong, He is not looking away from sin but toward His child. The father of the Prodigal Son had not disowned his son. He still considered him a son. The boy was not a rejected sinner, just a son who sinned. As soon as the father saw him, he ran to embrace him. He was looking with eyes of love, full of compassion. We expect God to be full of anger or perhaps disappointment when we sin. But the Bible says He is full of compassion, looking at us constantly with eyes of love. When the father runs to the son, we get a picture of what love looks like. A Jewish father in a Middle Eastern culture would hardly do such a thing. He had to lift up his cloak to run, and his feet got muddy. A mature father does not show his legs, especially when they are dirty like a servant’s. What is actually happening in this story is that the father was willing to be dishonored in order to honor his son. He defied all social expectations in order to welcome he beloved child. He didn’t care about his

dignity nearly as much as he cared about the heart of his rebellious son. That’s what love looks like. Now we get to the crucial scene, the moment of reconciliation and restoration. When the father finally gets to his son, he embraces him and kisses him. The Greek wording implies that he kisses his son over and over again. When the son begins his speech, the father stops him and immediately calls for the robe, the ring, and the sandals. At that moment, something begins to change. We are told in Romans 2:4 that it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance. That is what we see happening here. This son does not get very far into his speech before he is told that he doesn’t have to deal with all those old issues again. He may have received the father’s riches when he asked for his inheritance at the beginning of the story, but now he is receiving the father’s actual wealth. This is the real family inheritance. He begins to see himself the way the father sees him. Many of us have received the Father’s riches—the blessing of his salvation, answers to our prayers, the gifts of His Spirit, provision for our needs—but we don’t really receive His wealth until we begin to see ourselves the way our Papa sees us. When we perceive His gaze of love and receive His compassion, we find that we start turning toward Him whenever we find ourselves in a mess rather than turning away from Him. We expect Him to run toward us and embrace us with kisses of intimacy. From that place of relationship, we receive the robe of His righteousness and then the ring of His authority. And then we can put on the shoes of peace (Ephesians 6:15), because when we know who we are and see ourselves with the love the Father has for us, we can be at peace. We stop striving. We rest in His love. We are ready to have a party. We were lost but now are found. That’s worth a lifelong celebration. That’s the picture we see of the Father in this story, and it was the picture of my life. This vision changed my theology—the way I was seeing God, and therefore the way I was seeing myself. Instead of turning away whenever there was an issue in my life, I began to turn toward Him because I realized there is nothing that can separate me from His love. I remember that I have the family’s best robe and the ring—the identity and the

authority that He has freely given me. The robe covers every stain I could possibly have, so the Father sees me as though I have never sinned, and the ring allows me to bear the family name. I never want to leave home without my robe and my ring. Many people have stopped their journey at that place, but there is much more to discover. The robe will get us into heaven, but many Christians do not know how to bring heaven to earth. This is what I lacked for all of those years when I was working for God rather than working from Him. I had visitation but not habitation—experiences with God but not being at home in Him. I was out in the fields serving God, an achiever rather than a receiver. I was living as though I was still trying to get to His home rather than realizing I was already welcome in the living room. The younger son did not achieve his robe; he received it. The older son was still trying to achieve his robe and perhaps even earn a celebration with the father. He wanted access to the family’s blessings too. But he already had access and could have had a party at any time. The father’s words to him tell us a lot about our relationship with God. Our Father gives gifts, not paychecks, because He’s a Giver, not an Employer. It’s His nature to give freely. The family inheritance is already ours to enjoy. Knowing that, we can wear the shoes the Father gives us. They represent peace, so we can walk in peace and live as peacemakers. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9). They change the environment. They turn the hard labor of the world into a joyful party because they share the nature of the robe and the ring with others. They carry the Father’s love.

A CONVERGENCE LIFESTYLE We enjoy many benefits when we remember to wear our robe and our ring, but there is a larger purpose: “The entire universe is standing on tiptoe, yearning to see the unveiling of God’s glorious sons and daughters!” (Romans 8:19 tpt). People want to know the love of their Father, and they cannot see it unless it appears in the lives of His children. The New King

James version of that passage (verses 19-22) says that all of creation is actually moaning and groaning for the manifestation of sons and daughters of God. Beyond all the talk and theological arguments about whose beliefs are true, what people really long for is a picture, a revelation, a demonstration of who you are. They are looking for a manifestation of God in His people. This is what I call a convergence lifestyle, where our beliefs align with our true identity and the Father’s love He has revealed to us and we are able to live out this manifestation of His nature. If you think about it, this is actually one of the greatest compliments anyone could give us—that we look like our Father. We want people to recognize who our Papa is because we reflect His nature so well. If we have seen His face—if we have looked into His eyes and seen the way He is looking it us—everything changes. And the way we see others begins to change. This is why I do not ever want to leave home without mentally and emotionally wearing my robe and my ring. As you can see from my background, this is what helps me live out a convergence lifestyle. I do not want to fall back into trying to work for God—to try to achieve what He has already given or become what He has already told me I am. I want to work from a place of rest in Him, to see me the way He sees me, and to be a revelation of His love. The story of the Prodigal Son is not only my story. It’s your story too. Maybe you have your robe but not your ring—you have experienced your birthright but do not yet have the blessing. Or maybe you are forgetting to put your robe on even though it has already been given to you. Perhaps you have a ring but cannot really operate with it because you are not wearing your robe—you are living from the wrong identity. Your authority only operates when you know who you are. The robe and the ring go together. In the pages that follow, we will learn how to put on our robe and our ring and live a convergence lifestyle that reflects our Papa’s nature. And in order to do that, we need to be thoroughly grounded in His love and activate it in our lives.

LOOK IN THE MIRROR To live a convergence lifestyle, this story needs to become yours just as it became mine. I don’t mean that you need to run away from the Father and then return to Him, or that you need to go through hard years of working for Him before you realize that you already have the family wealth. I mean that the truths you have already accepted need to sink into your heart—that it is not enough to hear about the Father’s love. You must also experience it. So we will look at some practical, tangible ways to receive an upgrade in experiencing the Father’s love. Spend some time this week looking in the mirror and declaring the following truths about yourself. Don’t just see them and say them. Actually receive them. Seize them. Grab hold of them and let them sink in. 1. I am forgiven. That is what the robe means. Envision a white robe that covers all your stains. With that robe on, you are pure and innocent. That’s how God sees you. 2. I am righteous. You are the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21). God sees you as though you had never sinned. 3. I am now alive in Christ. In Him, you live and move and have your being (Acts 17:28). You have been raised up with Him (Romans 6:1-11). It is no longer you who live but Christ who lives in you (Galatians 2:20). 4. I am accepted by my Father. You are in the family, and nothing can separate you from His love. You wear the robe and ring that represent your identity in Him. 5. I am blessed with all of heaven’s blessings. The robe is a starting point to the convergent lifestyle, but it is only the beginning. You receive a ring, shoes, and much more. You have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1:3). 6. I have been adopted as a beloved son or daughter. Not only are you accepted; you have been adopted as a son or daughter. You are now in the home of the Father. Your big brother is Jesus, and now you are like Him. 7. I have access to all the family resources. You have been given the authority to represent your Father. The ring of authority is like a signed

check from your Father’s checking account. He has given you His name. 8. I have all the privileges and rights of my Father. Because you have the ring of authority ad access to the Father’s account, you have no lack. 9. I have an assignment to establish heaven on earth. As you receive the Father’s love, you will become the Father’s love. And then as you become His love, you begin to release His love to the people around you. This is the journey of convergence and the beginning of your upgrade in love. If you will declare these things often—again and again, several times a day—really believing that this is part of your inheritance as a member of the family, they will begin to sink into your heart and shape your identity. You are already wearing the robe and the ring, and you will begin to experience their power. The way you feel about yourself will change. When you look in the mirror, you should be able to see the beautiful robe that the Father has put on you, and your words should begin to reflect the way Papa God speaks to you. The more you are able to see yourself the way He sees you and step into the identity He has given you, the more you will discover that other people are affected. When they “touch your robe,” they will sense something. They will begin to recognize who your Father is. You can wake up every single morning and face the world with hope and love if you do not forget that you are wearing your robe and your ring. And your world will see the revelation it is looking for.

FOCAL POINTS Central truth: You have the Father’s robe and His ring—His identity and authority. You belong in the family of God, and the family inheritance is yours to enjoy. Key verse: “Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours.” (Luke 15:31). Big question: What is the difference between living for God and living from Him?

REFLECTION QUESTIONS 1. In what ways have you looked for love in wrong places? 2. In what ways have the pains you have experienced sought pleasure? Describe this journey. 3. How do you think your life would change if you were able to see the same face of the Father that Jesus saw and heard the same voice that He did? 4. How would you live differently if you knew you already had an “Aplus” in life? In what ways does that knowledge free you to love?

GROUP EXERCISE Everyone’s journey is unique, but most of us have had similar feelings and asked similar questions as we have looked for love and significance. If you are going through this book in a group, spend some time sharing your story with other group members and hearing theirs—especially where those stories connect with my journey in this chapter or the two sons in Luke 15. Also share with each other what you hope to experience with an “upgrade in love.”

PREPARING FOR MORE Spend some time identifying your deepest longings for love and significance. If you were to imagine a perfect relationship with your Papa God, what would it look like? How would you describe it?

CHAPTER 2

ENCOUNTERING LOVE

Imagine yourself in an amazingly beautiful park. It’s a gorgeous day; the temperature is perfect. You see a pleasant path ahead of you, and you begin walking on it. As it curves around, you follow it until you come into an opening and see a waterfall coming out of a mountainside. It’s a lush scene, with greenery and flowers and the sound of birds in the background. You see a park bench that looks very inviting, so you stroll over and sit on it. You breathe in, breathe out, again and again, just taking in the fresh air and enjoying the scenery. You feel as relaxed as you have ever felt. Then your Papa God comes to sit down next to you. He just looks at you, and you turn toward Him and look into His eyes. He is so pleased with you, and He tells you so. There is nothing but joy in His face. He puts His arm around you and pulls you closer. You feel complete safety, perfect peace, and overwhelming joy. This is your resting place. And in that place, you hear Him whisper to you: “I love you. You are beautiful. I’m so proud.” Just reading that may have given you a sense of peace and fullness, but it can be much more powerful to take some time to close your eyes and envision this scene. You may even want to have someone read it to you while your eyes are closed to walk you through the details. You will probably find that immersing yourself in this picture brings up some new feelings. At first, these feelings may be a little uncomfortable, but in time, you will get used to them. Eventually, this will be what first comes to mind when you think of the Father. You will instinctively sense His pleasure. That is one of several exercises I use to experience the Father face to face—to know that I am home now, where I am completely accepted and loved. We need to be able to experience the atmosphere of our family home

— to have a place in the Spirit where we can be at rest. We need to know what it feels like to climb up onto His lap and let Him love us, to look into His face without turning away in shame or fear, to know what it’s like for Him to whisper His affection into our ear. This intimacy belongs to every believer but is hard to experience for many. In this chapter, we will learn how to restore it again and live in intimacy with our amazing family in the Father’s living room.

LOVE IN THE BEGINNING How comfortable are you with love? As we saw in the last chapter, if you are not comfortable with love, you cannot be comfortable with God, because God is love. And if you do not know how much you are loved by the Father, you will begin to look for love in other places. This is actually the story of every human being, and it goes all the way back to the beginning. The first verse of the Bible says, “In the beginning God . . .” Everything begins and ends with Him. Much later we are told that God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), so in the beginning there was love. Before creation, there was a divine family of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit living together in love. Even then, it was already in the mind of God for us to experience that fellowship. Ephesians 1:4 tells us that we were chosen before the foundation of the world to be absolutely blameless before Him in love. So you can know that you were already a member of the family of heaven from the beginning. The Father, Son, and Spirit had a brilliant idea to make human beings in their image. They wanted to create a place on earth that looks like heaven, where love and honor flourish in the same way it does in the family of heaven. So God created a garden named Eden. If you’ve ever wondered what God’s house might look like if it were in your neighborhood, this is it. The blueprint is a beautiful garden with an atmosphere of love. In this perfect atmosphere, God did something that would change the universe for all time. He picked up some dust and breathed on it. I believe He made an image of Himself, a form like the face of Jesus, and breathed

into its nostrils. The language of the original text gives us that picture, and when God breathed, Adam came to life. And I believe the first word that came out of Adam’s mouth was a gasp that sounded like the name of his Father. I have four children, and in my experience the first word out of a child’s mouth is Mama or Dada. They call out to their parents. I believe the first word Adam said was something like Ab—the Hebrew word for father—and then an exhale of ba. Ab-ba, sound of a child calling out his Father’s name when he saw His Father’s loving face—the first face a human being ever saw. So the very first experience Adam had was the beautiful, life-giving presence of the Father in a place called Eden, which means pleasure and delight. Adam was placed right in the middle of the pleasure and delight of His Father. Why is this important? Because it is the blueprint for the normal Christian life. This is the essential foundation for a convergence lifestyle. We are created to be centered in the pleasure and delight of our Father. When we go back to the beginning and see our original design, and when we realize that this is what Jesus purchased on the cross for us, it reorients our perspective from rebellion or religious service back to a family environment of love. That is what the robe and the ring do for us; they bring us back into that environment. As much as we try to create that environment on the outside of our lives, we have to experience it on the inside before it ever appears outwardly. It is what we were created for and the only way we can manifest the love of the Father. The genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3 goes all the way back to the beginning, and it says that Adam was the son of God—not just the first creature, but the first son. This is very important. It tells us that when Jesus came as the Son of God, He was coming to restore us back to that original image of being sons and daughters of our Papa God, our Abba. It points us back to the original vision of seeing His face and calling His name as a member of His family. Like an innocent child, wrapped in a robe of righteousness, we gaze into His face and receive the pure, transparent,

overwhelming love that He has for us. It’s a love that radically changes us and removes all our fears. The problem is that most people have insulated their hearts from that kind of experience. The first instinct of Adam and Eve after they had sinned was not to run into the arms of perfect love but to hide and cover themselves with fig leaves. For the very first time, they felt shame. Like I did for much of my life, they began looking for love in other places and insulating themselves from the Father’s love because their shame did not let them receive it. We build up layers and layers of insulation over our hearts, which prevents us from knowing the love of our Abba. Intimacy is very uncomfortable to those who feel shame. Even when we know Jesus came to take away our shame, it can linger with us if love does not transform our hearts. We still may not know how to relate to our Father. We have to melt the layers of insulation away to connect directly with Him. Jesus told His friends that He would not leave them as orphans— that He would come to them (John 14:18). Earlier He had said that He only did what He saw the Father do (John 5:19) and only spoke what the Father told Him to say (John 12:49). So these words about not leaving them as orphans, of bringing them back into the family forever, came straight from the Father. He was representing a heart of love. Jesus came to restore us back to a good, good Father, so we each could experience how good He is and how loved we are. So when the Bible says that perfect love takes away all fear (1 John 4:18), it is promising to melt away our layers of insulation and create an environment of love deep within us, where we can walk with Him and talk with Him face to face, breathing in His love and exhaling His name without shame. That is the kind of relationship God wants with us. He doesn’t want us to go out and try to perform in order to become a son or daughter of God. He wants us to live as sons and daughters because that’s who we already are. He wants us to come home, back into the garden, back into the fellowship of the Trinity, receiving the very things Adam received at the beginning— the face, the voice, the breath, the presence, and the love of

Abba Father. When you are able to receive this freely, something begins to take place in your life, and you will never be the same again. This has been my journey. When I captured this revelation and went back to the blueprint, I felt like a garden was growing inside me. I started to see and hear stories about how the garden inside of us affects the creation around us. I started to become what I had received and could see the fruit of it in the world around me. Every single person is looking for that garden. There is something in the DNA of every human being that is longing to come home. And since sin and shame came in and separated us from the garden, that longing has remained. That is the groaning of creation we read about in Romans 8:1923. We are the sons and daughters who can show others the way back to the garden and open up that environment again for others to experience. For a long time, I believed that I could only experience this when I died and went to heaven. But Jesus came to bring us back to the original blueprint now. He breathes on us and gives us the Spirit (John 20:22). He restored us to our original design so that we can now represent the Father and His love.

SEEING THROUGH THE RIGHT LENSES If you are looking at all the vines growing around you and realizing how different your life looks from the garden, you may be wondering how you can actually get back there. It’s one thing to put on your robe and your ring, but how do you actually receive this kind of environment on the inside of your life, feeling the love, joy, and peace of the garden? One of the ways is to use your imagination as we did at the beginning of this chapter. Don’t dismiss that as “just my imagination”—learning to envision the truth can actually lead to encounters with our loving Father. Something happens in those moments. They change the way we see. If I’m wearing sunglasses, I see everything a little darker than it actually is. If I put on Son-glasses, I can look in the face of my Papa, and I can see myself the way He sees me, with perfect love and delight. I can see others the way He sees them too. The glasses change everything.

So let’s do some envisioning. If I were to take you back to Eden in a time machine, and you had an opportunity to walk with God just as Adam and Eve did, what would that feel like? What emotions would that bring up in you? If you were in the presence of God having never sinned, never misunderstood His nature, never turned away from His loving gaze, what would that do inside of you? A lot of times, we get so caught up in our own thinking that we forget how to feel with our hearts. We try to understand God without experiencing His love. Let your vision take you back to those places of perfect love. They will transform the way you see in ways your mind will not be able to grasp. I have done this for years, and it has changed me. If it seems difficult for you, I would encourage you to take some time to practice it. Close your eyes. Find your resting place, whether that is in your bed under a warm blanket with a favorite pillow, or in a quiet spot in a garden, or wherever your heart feels no stress. Imagine the scene that began this chapter. Or picture a newborn infant gazing into her mother’s eyes and hearing her mother’s voice tell her how wonderful and beautiful she is. All she can do is look and listen— no words, no responsibilities, just soaking it in. Think of what it feels like to hear that kind of unconditional love and acceptance and to know you are part of the family no matter what. Capture the thoughts and feelings of overwhelming love so that they sink deep into your heart. For me, this has become an amazing experience, and it isn’t just my imagination. It leads me into an experience of truth that is very, very real. There have been times when I didn’t know the way back to the Father, but I could go into my resting place, grab Jesus’ hand, and let Him take me back. I close my eyes, and it’s just me and Jesus. He has brought me into a room full of partying, where people are dancing and celebrating, and I get to dance there together with Him and everyone else. Sometimes I go on different explorations with Him, where I can feel His creativity and sense of adventure. In these experiences as a friend, the environment starts to change. Instead of the stormy environment that was inside me, I receive the environment of Eden. Heaven comes to earth in me.

This has been an especially helpful exercise for me as I travel to some places where danger and unrest are common. Sometimes I have found myself in areas where suicide bombers and militants are creating chaos, and in the natural there is every reason to fear. But I have been able to remain in a garden of peace. I have found that this peace is very contagious because it is the environment where love grows. This is the kind of experience that the world is looking for in the sons and daughters of God. Jesus told His followers that He no longer called them servants but now called them friends (John 15:15). This is the invitation God gives us— learning to be friends with Him. We behold Him, then we become like Him, then we release Him. But it begins with being able to receive Him in those resting places of our vision. Learn to capture the garden moments of your life, just like a baby gazing into the eyes of his father. Let yourself be overwhelmed. Look into the face of your Papa; hear His voice singing over you; see His loving eyes; feel His embrace; take His hand and walk with Him; receive His love, which will enable you to receive His power and wisdom. Let the environment of His garden grow in you.

INNOCENCE RESTORED I recently saw a video of a mother singing to her baby, and as the baby gazes into her mother’s eyes and hears the sounds of love being sung over her, tears begin to flow down her cheeks. They aren’t tears of fear or discomfort but of being overwhelmed by love. I have found that this video brings up some feelings in me that reveal a lot about my intimacy with Papa God—how comfortable or uncomfortable I am in His presence, how sensitive I am to His voice, or how certain layers of insulation might need to come off. What do you think it would be like to experience that kind of innocence and receive love with no obstacles or filters around your heart? What would it be like to hear the voice of the Father singing over you? What emotions do you think you would feel? Does that thought stir up unfamiliar feelings in you? Does it make you uncomfortable? If you do experience discomfort,

that can actually be very helpful. It is important to know where you are not comfortable with love so you can ask God to restore your innocence in that area. Some of us have been on our journey for so long that we have forgotten what it’s like to be a child. That was my story, and I think it is very common. Just ask the Father to make you like a little child who can receive love without any shame or insulation getting in the way. Let Him restore your innocence. Envision yourself as that little boy or girl again who just accepts what the Father says without question, without filtering it through years of disappointments and regrets. Learn to feel again. And if you’re having any trouble with that, ask Papa to restore the sensitive heart you once had as a child. He wants to restore these things to you. He wants His garden to grow in you—for you to know that love is who He is, and that you are an accepted and treasured member of His family. Envision His delight over you and let Him bring peace in the midst of your storms. As you grow in these things, you will find yourself having more and more encounters with His perfect love.

FOCAL POINTS Central truth: Your Father delights in you and wants you to experience His extravagant, overwhelming, fearless love. Key verse: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:18) Big question: What would it be like for heaven to come to earth in your heart?

REFLECTION QUESTIONS 1. Does the level of intimacy with God discussed in this chapter feel natural or uncomfortable to you? In what ways does it satisfy the longings of your heart? In what ways does it stretch you?

2. For many people, it is much easier to tell others that God loves them than to feel that love for themselves. Why do you think this is so? How can we overcome those inner objections to God’s extravagant love for ourselves? 3. This chapter discusses some of the ways human beings have insulated their hearts from the kind of love that radically changes us and casts out fear. In what ways do you think you have insulated yourself from the Father’s love? What layers of insulation need to be melted away? 4. What steps can you take to cultivate a garden on the inside of your heart? What attitudes and emotions do you desire to grow there?

GROUP EXERCISE If you are reading this book as part of a group fellowship, have someone read the opening scene of this chapter while members of the group close their eyes and imagine Papa God coming into your place of rest. Then discuss how this exercise is encouraging, how it may have been challenging, and how it reorients your perceptions of and feelings about God.

PREPARING FOR MORE Spend some time thinking about the ways you express love, the ways you receive it, and what kind of touches or encounters with God communicate His love to you most effectively.

CHAPTER 3

THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE

“For så høyt har Gud elsket verden, at han ga sin Sønn, den enbårne, for at hver den som tror på ham, ikke skal gå fortapt, men ha evig liv.” This is such a familiar verse that I’m sure you recognized it right away, didn’t you? John 3:16 is one of the simplest expressions of the gospel in the Bible. Oh, you didn’t understand that verse? Of course not—unless you’re familiar with my home language, Norwegian. You have to learn a language before you understand what is spoken or written in it. English is a very difficult language for a Norwegian to learn, but I’ve enjoyed the journey, and I know a little bit of Spanish and some other languages too. But you really can’t understand another language until you’re immersed in it, can you? You have to saturate yourself in the culture to really grasp the sense of what is being said. That’s also how it is with the language of love. I believe the language of love is the language that blind eyes can see and deaf ears can hear. It opens hearts and changes lives. It penetrates many barriers. If we are going to experience an upgrade in love, we have to be able to understand this language.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF LOVE My wife, Jennifer, knows I have a weakness for cars. I notice cars when I’m driving down the highway, and I point them out to her. “Did you see that one? That was a Porsche 911 twin turbo. Wow, look over there—a Bugatti Veyron. You don’t see many of those around here.” One day I had spotted

about a dozen cars and told her what I loved about each of them. A little while later, I said, “Honey, do you know that I love you?” She looked at me and said, “Really? Because that’s what you just said about all those cars.” I learned the hard way that we need to understand what we mean when we talk about love. English and Norwegian don’t have many words to distinguish different kinds of love. “Love” can refer to a nice car, a favorite food, the weather, a relationship, or the deepest desires and dreams of our hearts. We use it for objects, interests, friends, romance, and lifelong commitments. In some languages, it is kind of a generic term. Greek is different. It actually has four words for love. Storgi refers to our affections. That’s what I mean when I talk about cars. When I tell a friend that I love him, it’s phileo, what we might refer to as brotherly love. When we are talking about romance, we use the word eros. It is a sensual and intimate kind of love, generally how we would describe the love between a husband and wife. But all of those words fall short of agape love, which expresses a deep, unwavering commitment to seek the best for someone, a love that is not subject to change and does not rise and fall with moods or circumstances. This is the kind of love we are referring to whenever we speak of God’s love. When the Bible says God is love, talks about the love of Christ, or says love is a fruit of the Spirit, it’s agape. As we’re learning the language of love, we need to remember the difference between these different categories. There are also different expressions of love. Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages has helped me understand the different ways we communicate and receive love. The five love languages are words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, quality time, and physical touch. Sometimes we express love in ways that do not connect with the person we are communicating with. For example, one of my love languages is words of affirmation. I tell people how much I appreciate them or how gifted or helpful they are. My wife gives and receives love through acts of service. When she demonstrates love by cooking or cleaning or serving in ministry, she is expressing love in a way that is meaningful to her. She may

appreciate my words of affirmation, but they do not fill her heart the same way an act of service would. So one of the ways I need to show my love for her is to do something for her. But if I want to connect with my daughter, the best way to demonstrate love is by spending quality time with her. I have a friend whose love language is physical touch, so it’s important to put an arm around him or give him a hug when we say hello. Though all of these love languages can all be meaningful, most of us find that one or two of them are especially important. God communicates in all five love languages, and He uses them all very well. So I need to learn how to hear His affirmation, but also to allow Him to minister to me with acts of service. I need to spend quality time with Him. I have to be able to receive His touch, which can be difficult with a God who is not physical, though He has ways of ministering to us through the physical expressions of His people. I need to know how to receive His gifts freely and gratefully, without feeling like I earned them or am obligated for them but simply to enjoy them. He wants to express His love in multiple ways so we can know the fullness of that love. What is your love language? How do you receive love? How do you like to give it? What expressions give you the greatest sense of connection with the ones you love? Do you come alive when someone tells you what a great job you did? Or are you especially touched when someone gives you a gift? Becoming aware of these things will help you understand yourself and how you receive love from other people and from God. It will also help you understand other people and know how to connect with them—how to deposit love into their account or fill up their love tank. The love of God is like a diamond with many facets, each of them a different expression of extreme value. If you learn that language, you can give someone a touch that says, “I’m here for you,” or speak words that lift them up at just the right time. You will recognize when you might need to serve someone or when you just need to spend some time with them. God knows the way into each person’s heart. We can become sensitive to the ways God’s love is expressed in different situations for different people.

THE CLIMATE OF LOVE One of the best places to learn the language of agape love is in 1 Corinthians 13. This is the “love chapter” of Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth. It is like a letter from God that opens up our eyes and ears to recognize His nature. If we get used to this description of love, then we begin to understand the culture of His family and notice when something doesn’t fit—when we’re talking about a different kind of love. Most of all, we learn how God expresses His love and how we can receive it. And if we receive it, then we can become fluent in it and learn how to speak it, communicating His heart to others. That’s a big part of developing a convergence lifestyle—learning God’s love language so we can experience it and communicate it to the world. Here’s how Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 13: 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. Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:1-8) Read through that passage again and reflect on each phrase. This is a description of God’s kind of love. It is always unselfish, always generous,

always hopeful. It keeps no record of wrongs, and it never fails. It is always reliable and will never waver. Sometimes we have a hard time grasping what this love means for us. We read the words, but they don’t really sink in. Imagine, for example, that before I was saved I had a problem stealing pens and pencils. For some reason, I was just drawn to them and couldn’t keep from putting them in my pocket. (This is not a true story, of course, but it makes for a good example.) When I got saved, I got free. I no longer stole pens and pencils. I was no longer a thief and didn’t even think in those terms anymore. But imagine that one day I’m sitting in a pastor’s office and notice a nice pen with the church’s logo on it. I think, “Wow, I really like that pen.” And I’m sitting there tapping it on the desk, taking a few notes, and the next thing I know I have put it in my pocket. Not long after I leave, I get a sense of conviction. I realize that isn’t who I am anymore. I’m no longer a pen thief. So why did I do that? I go back to the pastor and confess, telling him I’m so sorry that I stole his pen. “I know I shouldn’t have done that, pastor. I’ve just always been a pen thief.” Even though I haven’t stolen in years, I still see that as part of my identity. That’s sometimes how we think about our own sins—they remain in our minds for a very long time—but it isn’t how God thinks about them. He is love, and love keeps no record of wrongs. From God’s perspective, that theft in the pastor’s office would have been the first time I took anything because He has removed our sins from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). There is no record of our past failures. So as soon as we lay down our sin, we can continue on as though it never happened. That is a picture of God’s love language to us. It’s the way He thinks, and we need to learn how to receive that kind of love. It can be very difficult to receive that perspective. It is not how human beings normally think. We have expectations of each other, and when those expectations aren’t met, we are disappointed. Our minds tend to keep a record of those disappointments. If my wife expects me to be home for supper and I don’t show up, I will have disappointed her and the rest of my family. But she loves me, and love does not think evil of others. It keeps no

record of wrongs. So even though I am aware that I did something wrong and say I’m sorry for it, I can continue on without my failure being held over my head or remembered for a future conversation. That is how she loves me, and her love is an expression of God’s love for me. If I do the same thing over and over again, it gets a little more difficult for a person to forget about it. But God has the capacity to overcome those kinds of expectations and disappointments and see the big picture. If I have sinned against Him a hundred times, each time is like the first time for Him. He continues to believe the best because love believes all things. I need to receive that love, as foreign as it is to human ways of thinking, for myself. Human nature often turns this around and believes the worst. When we do not receive the freedom of God’s love for us, we tend to project our own disappointments onto others. If they have fallen short of our expectations again and again, we start to operate in fear that it will keep happening. We guard our hearts against disappointment and mentally keep a record of their wrongs. We stop speaking the language of love, and some of the thoughts and words that flow through us are actually creating a worse situation. We let the past prophesy the future. Not only have we stopped speaking the language of love; we have removed ourselves from an environment of love. We have forgotten what it is like to be in the Father’s living room with the warmth and acceptance of His family. That is why it is so important for us to capture these characteristics of agape love. We need to live with a clean slate—receiving it for ourselves and offering it to others. God no longer has any record of our wrongs in His book because love keeps no record like that. We may still do something wrong, but we clean up the mess and move on as if it never occurred. I am not suggesting that we should be irresponsible. This is not a license to keep sinning. As soon as I recognize an area in my life that violates love, I want more than anything else to restore the relationship. I know when I’ve missed the mark, and I actually want to say I’m sorry and ask for forgiveness. I take responsibility because a convergence lifestyle thrives on fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But once I’ve taken responsibility and received forgiveness, I cannot afford to live in regret. I

have had to learn not to rehearse all of the things I did again and again, going through the record of my failures and disappointments. That’s the only way I can live in this climate of love with others, never keeping a record of their wrongs. I have to know how God has freed me from them so I can express that same love to others. I need to keep immersing myself in the language of love. No longer keeping a record of wrongs is just one example from the passage in 1 Corinthians, but you can practice with any other characteristic of love you see mentioned there. What are some areas of life where you have stopped believing the best of someone because of his or her behavior? Where have you grown envious of the blessings and opportunities God has given someone else? Where have you put your guard up to protect yourself from the disappointments you expect from people around you? Your ability to receive the language of love from God and to give the language of love to others go hand in hand. They are very much related to each other. If you shut down in one, you will shut down in the other. But if you receive the language of love, you will be able to speak it in every area of life.

LEARNING THE LANGUAGE If you understood Norwegian, you would have jumped right in at the beginning of this chapter without any confusion. If you understand God’s love language and get to know Him as a person, growing closer to Him in intimacy and receiving the love He has for you, you begin to speak this language yourself. One moment you will be aware of His touch. Another moment you will sit in His presence because quality time is important to Him and to you. You will come to recognize how He serves you. In whatever ways He is communicating love, you will begin to notice that He is connecting with you and transforming you with His nature. One of the best ways you can apply this practically to your life is to go through the characteristics of love in 1 Corinthians 13 and practice them one by one. Adjust your hearing in each area and listen what He is saying. God is patient because He is love, and love is patient. So think about the

ways God is patient with you. The word for “patient” in some translations is “long-suffering,” so let your mind dwell on how God defines “long” and think about how His love for you just goes on and on and on. Then think about His kindness. How does He express that to you? If He is kind because love is kind, then difficult circumstances cannot be an expression of any lack of kindness on His part. They are not a statement of His thoughts about you. So where do you see His kindness in your life? Then consider how He does not envy, is not proud, is not rude, and so on. He is never jealous of you when you experience good things, and He never holds His kindness over your head as a tool of manipulation to get you to do what He wants you to do. He is the embodiment of the very nature of love. Let this passage become a definition of who the Father is for you. To reinforce the implications of this passage, try reading through it several times substituting “Father” for every time the text says “love.” “The Father suffers long and is kind; the Father does not envy; the Father does not parade Himself, is not puffed up . . . the Father never fails.” With every phrase, just receive that from Him. Anything you sense that does not fit this definition of love is not from Him. Anytime you hear a rude, accusing voice in your mind, you can know it’s not Him. If you wonder if He is satisfied when you or the people you love are having a hard time, you can get rid of that thought because it does not fit His description of love. Anytime you suspect that He only loves you for what He can get out of you, you can know that this is not how He defines love at all. The Father hurts when you hurt. He rejoices when you receive the truth about who He is and come into the fullness of what He has for you. He keeps no record of your wrongs, even though He can see them all. Instead, He chooses not to remember them. He endures all things, believes all things, and hopes all things. In fact, He has an incredible hope for you in every situation you go through. He wants a relationship with you, and He wants you to learn His language so you can experience His love fully. He loves like the best imaginable father, because that is who He is. If you have stopped believing this because of the disappointments and discouragements in your life, I pray that you will tune your ears again to the

language of love. Do not listen to the disappointments; they are not a reflection of your Father. Go back to that resting place we developed in the last chapter and look Him in the face. Hear His voice: “I believe in you. I will not disappoint you. You may go through trials, but I have overcome them all. In Me, so will you. I am so proud of you.” Remember your robe and your ring. See the delight in His eyes when He welcomes you home. Practice hearing His voice as it really is. Become fluent in the language of love. This will change you. Practice the language of love first by receiving it —hearing the Father’s patience, kindness, hope, and every other facet of His love. We will talk about how you express this same love to others later, but for now, just soak it in. Immerse your heart and mind in His patience, kindness, and goodness. Always hear His voice through that filter, not through the filter of you past experiences of shame, regret, disappointment, and fear. Perfect love removes those intruders from your heart and frees you to live in peace. Say yes to His love, and let it become the primary language you hear and speak.

FOCAL POINTS Central truth: As you immerse yourself in the environment of God’s love, you become fluent in the language of love. Key verse: “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8) Big question: How is our ability to receive love related to our ability to give love?

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. Before reading this chapter, how would you have described God’s love language? In what ways has your understanding of His love language changed as you have spent time thinking about it? 2. Does understanding the different languages of love help you recognize the love of those around you? Does it make you more sensitive to God’s love? If so, how? 3. In this chapter, we learned that God knows the way into each person’s heart and that He wants each of us to become a vehicle for expressing His love. In what ways can that change how you see the people around you? 4. How do you think your relationships might be changed if you began to ask God in every situation, “Father, how can I take advantage of this opportunity to communicate your heart?”.

GROUP EXERCISE Have each group member read 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 to another group member (make sure everyone is covered), inserting his or her name in place of “love.” For example: “Bob suffers long and is kind; Bob does not envy; Bob does not parade himself, is not puffed up ...” Hearing those words and identifying with love is a powerful way to immerse ourselves in the culture of love and become fluent in the language. Debrief by letting some members share how the experience affected them.

PREPARING FOR MORE Think through some of the ways you have tried to become more loving in the past—toward God or toward others. What helped and what didn’t? Spend some time asking God to empower you supernaturally to encounter and express His love.

CHAPTER 4

A BAPTISM OF LOVE

I remember as a college and seminary student reading some stories about the ministries of people like Charles Finney and D. L. Moody. Sometimes in their meetings people would describe something like a wave of liquid love that came over them. But beyond that experience was a transformation that took place in their lives. It confirmed for me that there was something more than I had experienced—not that there was anything particularly wrong in my life, just a sense that there had to be more. I wanted to know the Father’s love in a way that transformed me like that. Some years later, I was going through a spiritual drought. I was tired, burned out, worn out, and feeling rejected deep in my soul. It was one of the darkest moments in my life. I was hungry and thirsty, but I didn’t know what I was hungry and thirsty for. I already knew Jesus; I knew of the Father’s love; and I had had experiences with the Holy Spirit. I didn’t realize that the stories I had read about in some of the great ministries of the past were about to become my story. I had just started Global Mission Awareness, but I was living as an orphan—not literally (I have great parents) but spiritually. I was living for God because I didn’t know how to live from Him. I was like the older brother in the story of the Prodigal Son, working in the fields without realizing what it meant to be fully alive in the family home. I was still trying to become somebody rather than realizing that I already was somebody. But no matter how much I did, it was never enough. I received an invitation to a meeting with a small group of leaders in 2000. Jack Taylor, who would become my spiritual papa, was there. We had a great time connecting and encouraging one another. [Perhaps another

sentence about what was going on there – messages, studies together, times of sharing, etc.?] Once while Dennis Jernigan was playing the piano and singing, he invited me to come up because he had a song for me. So this stoic Norwegian, who gave hugs about as easily as a tree trunk, went up to hear Dennis’ song. “Leif, this is the Father’s song for you,” he said. As he started playing, something came over me. It started like a little rain but was soon a waterfall. I ended up on the floor, lying in puddles as waves of love came over me. Pictures of my childhood came to mind, almost as if I was watching a movie of my life. I saw the rejection, the pain, and the wounds that had been planted in me long ago and were still there. The waves wouldn’t stop, and I kept weeping as the Father’s love washed over me. When I eventually got up, I no longer felt like an orphan. I knew I was a son. I heard an audible voice—the only time I can honestly say I’ve heard God audibly. “Leif, you are my son in whom I am well pleased.” If that sentence sounds familiar to you, it echoes what the Father spoke over Jesus at His baptism (Matthew 3:17). I had read the verse many times, but at this moment the verse was reading me. It changed my life, and instead of trying to live for love, I began to live from love. I call this my baptism of love, and I want you to experience it too. The circumstances will likely be different for you—God has a way of personalizing our encounters with Him to fit our needs and personalities— but the depth of experience can be the same. This is what every human being is truly longing for—not just an encounter but an ongoing relationship. The human heart was created for this. I recently read an article about two droughts in China during the last century that killed around 60 million people. They were devastating droughts. But as I was thinking about those horrific experiences, I realized that there is another kind of drought going on all over the world. People are desperately thirsting for love. They are even dying from a love deficiency. I hear story after story of suicides, of people living in fear and loneliness, looking for love but never finding it. They are part of the creation that is groaning for redemption and longing to see a revelation of the sons and

daughters of God. They need to see people who have not only experienced the Father’s love but have become the Father’s love. So far in our journey in this book, we have rested and received the Father’s love. The seed has been planted within us in very fertile soil. But the next part of the journey is for the seed to become a tree. We need to take what we have received and embody it. In this chapter, we will explore what it means to have a baptism of love and how we can move from receiving the Father’s love to becoming it.

WHEN LOVE MOVES IN When Jesus came out of the water after His baptism, the heavens were opened up and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove. A voice from heaven said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17). God spoke this affirmation over Jesus before He had done any miracles or taught any crowds. Before He had done any of the ministry we read about in the gospels, He had received an A-plus from the Father. Jesus received some core revelations in this experience at the beginning of His ministry. First, He received the revelation of affirmation. He was affirmed by the Father and received the Father’s assurance. This was more than just an encouraging word. This is how God shapes our perception of ourselves. When we have the affirmation of the Father, we don’t have to look for affirmation anywhere else. We don’t fear the opinions of others. We know who we are. Second, Jesus received a revelation of the Father’s affection. Before He had done any of the amazing things we read about in Scripture, the Father was already proud of Him. I can relate to this as a father; when my children were young, I could tell that they blossomed when they saw my affection for them in my face. When I watched them in a play or on a sports team, they knew how proud of them I was. They sensed my love. When we see the Father’s affection for us, we flourish, no matter what anyone else thinks of us.

The third revelation Jesus saw was His identity. The Father identified Jesus as His beloved Son. When we experience a baptism of love, we know we are first and foremost a son or a daughter. We may have other roles in ministry or business or at home, but above all of those other identities is our standing as a son or daughter of God. That’s who we are. Jesus also got a revelation of the Father’s favor. He didn’t have to strive to gain the Father’s favor; it was already His. And finally, He got a revelation of the Father’s approval. If we got an A-plus before we ever took the class or got three points before ever making the long shot, we would completely rest in the outcome ahead of time. We would live without stress and would not seek the approval of anyone else. We would come into a place of rest in the Father’s affirmation, affection, identity, favor, and approval. That’s what happened on that day in 2000 when waves of the Father’s love washed over me and I heard His voice. For the first time in my life, I knew my Father was pleased with me. I had been serving Him all around the world, trying to be pleasing to Him. But He said, “No, Leif. You are already mine, and you are already beloved. You are my son.” I may have been a servant or pastor or missionary, but that is not primarily how He saw me. In His eyes, I didn’t carry any title at all other than “son.” And I was loved. That was such a contrast to the ways I had been thinking. For years, the enemy had been telling me that I needed to do something in order to have something, and to have something before I became someone. I had heard the whispers: “Leif, you never do enough. You aren’t there yet.” But when I heard the Father’s voice, I could respond, “I don’t have to do anything. I’m already His beloved son.” Every time I had gone overseas to minister before then, I had felt pressure. Now I knew there was nothing I needed to do to be pleasing to the Father. He was already pleased with me. It was a huge paradigm shift. I saw God differently, and because I saw Him differently I saw myself and everything else differently. The seed of love had been planted in my heart, and I began to grow into a tree of love that could carry fruit for others.

Notice the sequence with Jesus. He was baptized with water, then He was baptized in the Spirit, and then He was baptized in love. Very soon afterward, the enemy came in to test Him with three temptations. But Jesus already had an A-plus before the exam. When the enemy urged Him to turn rocks into bread, He could say, “No, I don’t need to prove Myself. I’m already a Son. There is nothing you can test me with because I already have the testimony of approval from My Father.” And this is our story too when we are baptized in the Father’s love. We know who we are—a son or daughter of the one who created the universe. We don’t need anything that the enemy can tempt us with. We already have the favor of our Father. Something deep in my core, at the very roots of my life, changed when loved moved in. His perfect love took away fear. I knew my Papa delighted in me. I am His happy thought, His pleasure and joy. I began seeing myself the way the Father saw me and other people the way the Father saw them. This stoic Norwegian began hugging and kissing people all over the world. Words of affirmation came out of my mouth easily. I sensed a river of love flowing out of me. I had spent my life trying to receive the Father’s love, and now that I had received it, I wanted to become it. It wasn’t the end of my journey, of course, but it was a new starting point. I no longer had to strive for what had already been given. Everything changed. That voice still rings in the depths of my heart today. I should probably give you a warning. When love starts to move in, other things come out. I am actually encouraged when people tell me that they have anger or fear rising up and don’t know where it is coming from. To me, that means they have had a baptism of love, and the Father’s perfect love is casting out fear or uprooting their anger. It may feel a little disorienting, but when His liquid love starts to touch the different areas of our lives, things that were taking its place start to go away. When we get squeezed, whatever was in us comes out. This is actually an encouraging sign. Be patient with that. Your journey includes an infusion of love along with joy, patience, peace, and all the fruits of the Holy Spirit. You are a seed growing into a tree, and good fruit will come from you. But trees don’t

grow up overnight. Our new nature has to mature in us. Some fruit may be immediate, but we can always know that more will come. It is always increasing as we grow into the fullness of His nature. My prayer for you is that you will experience the fullness of the Father’s love, even in those areas of life where you are uncomfortable with intimacy. I pray that you will hear the Father’s voice of affirmation, affection, identity, favor, and approval over your life. When you get comfortable with love, you get comfortable with God. You get comfortable with yourself and the people around you too. This is all part of the journey of experiencing a baptism of love.

EXPECT TO ENCOUNTER THE FATHER’S LOVE That is what I want to release over you as you read these words. The Father will do for you the very thing He did for me. It may or may not feel as dramatic as it did for me—your circumstances and personality are different from mine, but His love language with you will be perfectly suited to who you are. You may not sense a waterfall or waves washing over you, but you will experience something. Maybe you notice that you are suddenly hearing the voice of the Father in ways you have not heard Him before. Perhaps you will suddenly realize that you affirm others or bless them much more easily. But I do believe as you rest in the Father and gaze into His loving eyes, you will sense something of His liquid love coming over you. Over time, these experiences will increase. Even if they feel like only a few drops to start with, they will eventually turn into rivers or downpours of love. They will flush out anything in you that is not love, and you will become an expression of what you have received. The words the Father spoke over Jesus at His baptism were unique to Him at the time. But as those who believe in Him and who have entered into His life, these words are also ours to hear. We can experience the Father’s pleasure over us. We can know our identity in Him. We can be certain that we have already gotten an A-plus from Him before we ever started to serve. We can rest in His love.

Listen now to the Father saying your name. Hear His affirming words: “You are Mine. You are already my beloved son/daughter. I love you. I am already well-pleased with you. There is nothing you need to do to become my son or daughter. There is no favor to earn. I delight in you and call you My own.” As you rest in this truth, receiving the pleasure of the Father, live with confidence in who you are. Wake up every morning knowing you already have an A-plus. Immerse yourself in the assurance that this is the revelation God has for you. You will sense the liquid love of God increasing in greater measure. And you will realize that you are becoming the love that a desperate world is thirsty for.

FOCAL POINTS Central truth: When you realize how much the Father delights in you as a son or daughter, everything changes. Key verse: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17) Big question: What do you think you need emotionally in order to flourish in life?

REFLECTION QUESTIONS 1. Have you ever experienced a spiritual drought or a sense that “there has to be more”? If so, how did you handle it? In what ways did God meet you there? In what ways are you still anticipating more from Him? 2. How might knowing the Father’s affection help you flourish? How does His affirmation affect your need for affirmation from others? 3. Have you ever felt pressure to “become” someone or meet certain expectations? In what way has this affected you? How does your identity as a son or daughter of God change those patterns? 4. In this chapter, we have seen that, “when you get comfortable with love, you get comfortable with God.” In what ways have you found this to be

true in your life? In what ways are you still growing in your comfort level?

GROUP EXERCISE Get a copy of “The Father’s Love Letter” (you can find one at http://www.fathersloveletter.com or purchase a copy at http://shop.globalmissionawareness.com). Have one person read this letter to the rest of the group as members close their eyes and listen. Then share how these words affected your emotions and sense of identity.

PREPARING FOR MORE How do you see yourself? Spend some time thinking about your selfperception—whether it is healthy, critical, inflated, insecure, and so on. Then think about God’s perception of you. Do those two pictures align with each other? Do you and God agree about you? Identify any areas of difference as you prepare for the next chapter.

CHAPTER 5

LOVING YOURSELF

A few years ago, I was doing a conference in Colorado with Heidi Baker, Che Ahn, and a few other leaders. I had been going from city to city for a while and had just returned from another country, and I was very tired. People would come up to me and ask me to sign a book or pray for them— normal requests that I am usually happy to answer, but at a time when I didn’t have much fuel left in my tank. I realized I had a problem. Even as an extrovert, I didn’t want to be around people. I was emotionally empty. I had not taken the time to just love me—to be filled up with the love of the Father and see myself the way He saw me. I felt as if the dove had flown away and I was left with pigeons. And I, known as an “ambassador of love,” was supposed to speak that afternoon on a very relevant topic: loving yourself. I hadn’t loved myself very well. I had not had any time for exercise or rest or taking a walk. People would come up to me at breakfast and share their stories, and I always enjoy when they do that. But I recognized some warning signs of trying to get by on empty instead of living from fullness and overflow. And now I was going to have to speak on a topic I was not practicing well at all. How was I going to stand up there after the great speakers on our program and re-present the love of the Father? What was I going to say to people who had read my book on the baptism of love if I didn’t have much love to give? I felt a lot of pressure. I went to my hotel room to prepare my message, but I did not sense the Father’s presence. I couldn’t hear His voice, feel His love, or see His face. I decided to lie down, put on some pleasing music, and soak in the Father’s love, but my mind kept going in different directions. I looked at my watch

and noticed that the time was getting closer to my turn to speak. I wished I could cancel the message, but that clearly wasn’t an option. People were counting on me. It happened to be the day before Mother’s Day, and I wondered if perhaps I was just missing Norway. I missed my mother, the cake she would always make on holidays, the coffee, and my family members. I thought, Maybe if I call my mom the presence will come back and I can focus on my message. So I called her, and after we finished talking, nothing happened. A little while later, I called my wife, wished her a happy Mother’s Day too, and told her how much I wanted to be home with her and the kids. Nothing brought the feelings back. I was still drained. Then I heard a simple, inner voice. “Leif, could I trust you with my Mama?” That’s strange, I thought. I tried to get rid of the voice. It must have been stirred up by my Mother’s Day calls. It seemed like a distraction I might need to rebuke. “Leif, can I entrust my Mama to you?” I heard it again and again, and after several times, I started to weep. I realized what was going on. It was a reference to John 19:26-27, where Jesus was hanging on the cross, knowing He was about to go away and thinking about what was most valuable to Him: His own mother. Culturally, His half-brothers should have been the ones to take care of their mother, but Jesus looked to John, who was standing there near Mary. “Woman, behold your son!” He said to His mother. “Behold your mother!” He said to John. Whatever John’s plans were from that moment forward, they changed. He started to take care of Mary. Jesus knew John could be trusted with this very personal request. Still, I wondered how this related to me. But as I thought about it, revelation started to flow. I got insight into the heart of the Father. My message was practically written for me. Something in the heart of John made him different from the other disciples. We’ll explore what that something was a little further down, but had very much to do with the message I was about to preach on how we love ourselves and my burnout during that season. The connection wasn’t easy to see at first, but as I

thought about it, it suddenly became very apparent. John’s understanding of Jesus’ love for him had transformed him from within.

THE PROBLEM OF AN ORPHAN HEART Imagine again if I could take you in a time machine back to the beginning. This time, however, let’s go even a little further back— before the beginning. Before creation, before there was an Adam and Eve, there was God. The word in Genesis 1:1 for God is Elohim. El is singular, but Elohim is plural, referring to three or more. In the beginning, there was a Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit. We speak of them as three in one—God in three persons—which is hard to understand, but this is how Scripture presents the Trinity. But the important thing for our discussion here is not understanding the doctrine of the Trinity but seeing how these three persons of the Trinity related to each other. The desire of the Father, Son, and Spirit was to have a family on earth that looked like the family relationships of heaven. Part of these relationships is loving yourself so that you can love others. This goes to the very root of the issue that was in my life, and really the issue common to all humanity. It is the root of all other roots. If we don’t fix it, love will always leak out of our lives to the point that we can never fill up and overflow. Understanding how this works is vital. There is a pattern in Scripture that reflects a culture of honor. The way the Father loves the Son and the Spirit is the way He loves Himself. The way the Son loves the Father and the Spirit is the way He loves Himself. And the way the Spirit loves the Father and the Son is the way He loves Himself. There is no difference in the levels of love within the Trinity, no biases or preferences, no favoritism. God is characterized by fullness of love in everything, from every angle. You will never find the Son in Scripture saying, “Why do you get to be the Father and I have to be the Son?” We see this kind of insecurity among human beings after the Fall, and we know about an angel named Lucifer who became jealous and wanted more for himself. But the Father, Son, and Spirit were in perfect love.

So why didn’t the angel Lucifer experience the Father’s love in the same way? There was some root issue in him that missed this culture of honor. Lucifer didn’t love Lucifer the way that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit loved Lucifer. He saw something deficient in himself, even though he was in the presence of perfect love. He did not love himself the way they loved him. That led to an effort to elevate himself, which ultimately led to his fall, and a third of the angels fell with him for the same reason. Everything we attribute to demons today, all the problems in the world that came as a result of the Fall, all of the biases and insecurities and jealousies —all of it comes from a problem of created beings not seeing themselves with the love the Father, Son, and Spirit had for them. It all comes from the same root. When we step back into the garden, where a perfect God created Adam and Eve in His image, we see that root issue come to the surface. Lucifer, with his orphan heart that had not loved himself the way the Father had loved him, told Eve that if she ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she would be like God. That might seem like a reasonable temptation until we realize a very startling truth: that Eve was already made in God’s image. She had already received the perfect love of God. She and Adam were already there together with God, bearing His image. But the enemy was able to tap into the same root issue in Eve that he had in himself —she didn’t love Eve the way Papa loved Eve. When Adam and Eve fell, that was the root of the problem, and it is still the root of our problems today. When we deal with that, the enemy cannot touch us; he cannot convince us we are missing something because we will know that we already have what we need. If he can get you to question that you are perfectly loved by your Father, he will keep pushing that button and tempting you to fill the void with something else. If you have settled that question, you will not give in to his temptations for substitute loves. As I’ve shared my story, you can probably see where this was an issue in my life. I was looking for love in the wrong places and tried to fill the void with other people. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to please people or recognizing that they have a part in meeting your needs. But

when we do not love ourselves well, we cannot love anyone else well. It’s like trying to put a gas mask on the people around us without wearing one ourselves. We won’t last very long if we don’t take care of ourselves. The reason we have a hard time saying no to counterfeit loves is that we do not have a big enough yes to the true one. When that happens, we say yes to a lot of other things and no to ourselves. We carry pains that are constantly looking for pleasure. But the pleasures we seek never really soothe the pains. In our journey toward becoming love, it will be necessary to love ourselves the way Papa God loves us. In my background, that wasn’t a very acceptable mindset. It was considered selfish to talk about yourself or mention the idea of loving yourself. You were supposed to love God and love others. That’s it. This value is embedded in Scandinavian culture and in many others too. So even though I was saved and filled with the Spirit, I was still dealing with this root issue. I didn’t realize I couldn’t love others as I loved myself (Mark 12:31) if I didn’t love myself. This root of selfnegligence affected every area of life. When that’s our perspective, love leaks out and we can never get filled up. We need to plug up the hole by loving ourselves the way the Father loves us.

THE DISCIPE JESUS LOVED This brings us back to John. Why was he entrusted with Jesus’ mother? I’ve travelled all around the world and met some very gifted people. But who would I trust to take care of my mother the way I would? Very few people are on that list. So I wondered why Jesus chose John. Why not Peter or James? Of course, John was standing there at the cross and the others had fled, but I think there was something more—a reason that prompted Jesus to go ahead and assign that responsibility to the one standing there rather than waiting until after His resurrection to give it to someone else. As I thought about this, I realized that the difference with John was his sense of identity. He knew who he was. He saw himself the way Jesus saw him. More specifically, he loved himself the way Jesus loved him.

All of the disciples knew Jesus loved them. So did many other people who encountered Jesus and were touched by His ministry. But none of the others were willing to call themselves the one that Jesus loved. We don’t see that in any of the other gospels—only John. When he had to refer to himself in the gospel he wrote, he called himself the one that Jesus loved. If I did that when I was speaking—“I’m His favorite, the one He loves!”—I’m not sure it would go over very well. Yet this is how the Holy Spirit prompted John to refer to himself, again and again. John loved John the way Jesus loved John. And that changed everything. So John not only knew who he was; he had also experienced the intimacy of Jesus’ love. In the upper room when all the disciples were gathered around Jesus for the Last Supper, Peter asked who was going to betray Him, but only John seems to have heard the answer. Why? Because he was leaning up against Jesus where he could hear the whispers of the one who loved him. This posture may be a little odd for a Middle Eastern culture, but John had put his head on Jesus’ chest. He leaned in. He alone heard what Jesus was saying. The next day, John was the only disciple who stood at the cross while Jesus was crucified. Where were the rest of the disciples? They had fled when things were tough. John understood that the fellowship of suffering is part of a relationship of love. When we have learned to love ourselves well, even when things are difficult, we will be able to remain with Jesus. The other disciples eventually learned this lesson; some of them were martyred for the faith in later years. But John got it first. The last picture I saw was John in his old age, exiled on Patmos. This time he saw not only the global Christ who loves the world but the cosmic Christ who rules and reigns over the entire universe. The King of kings and Lord of lords came to John and revealed things to come. So John was not only the one who found his identity as “the one Jesus loved,” leaned on Jesus in intimacy at the Last Supper, and stood at the cross and received his assignment to take care of Jesus’ mother. He was also trusted with the revelation of the future—all because he was immersed in love.

If you read John’s three letters, you can tell that they come from someone who is bathed in love. These are love letters—written in love and written about love. This is where we are told that God is love; where we are strongly encouraged to walk in love and love one another; and where we are inspired to behold the manner of love that the Father has given to us. We are warned that if we love the world, we are not loving the Father or letting His love dwell within us. Again and again, John emphasizes loving the Father and loving others. I don’t think John would have been able to write these things if he had not seen himself as the beloved. He loved himself as the Father loved him, and therefore he could overflow with that love for others to experience. Because of that, Jesus revealed himself to John very personally and entrusted to him His most personal concerns. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, He was surrounded by circles of friends. Crowds witnessed many of His miracles and teachings. He sent 72 followers out to do His works. The 12 disciples got to spend all of their time with Him. And three of those were especially close to Him, seeing things like the Transfiguration and the raising of Jairus’ daughter. And if we had to pick one who was closest to Jesus, it would probably be John. At least that’s how John saw himself. When I envisioned myself in that arrangement of friends, I realized I had been among the crowd. The root issue in me not seeing the Father’s love for me had kept me from drawing in close. The Father told me that He wanted me to learn to love myself the way He loved me. I am still on this journey with Him, but it has become my life’s message. Knowing our identity enables us to draw close in intimacy, and intimacy is where God entrusts His heart to us. This whole vision of John’s life unfolded before my eyes while I was lying on the floor in Colorado hoping God would give me something to say in my message. I suddenly saw this revelation of John loving himself the way Jesus loved him. I asked Jesus to give me the journey of John, and I am learning a lot from that process. I realized in that moment that I was too busy to experience God the way John did. Not only wasn’t I loving myself the way Jesus loved me; I didn’t even have time to love myself the way

Jesus loved me. I had too many things going on to be able to receive love, enjoy it, and overflow with it. I needed to make some changes in my life.

YOUR TRUE VALUE Until we capture that sense of love for ourselves and come into agreement with God’s thoughts toward us, we will always have root issues that keep us from being who we were called to be. So it is important to ask: In what areas of your life is it difficult for you to love yourself well? In what areas do you tend to say yes simply because you are striving to find love and acceptance? In what ways do you need to take better care of yourself because of the value God has placed on you? I saw a visual illustration a few years ago that helped me understand value. I had been waiting in a church parking lot before people had started arriving for the service, and I saw two old cars come in and park near each other, with a space in between. The cars weren’t terrible, but I could tell they had not been well cared for. A little while later, I heard the beautiful sound of a new Corvette come into the lot —black, chrome wheels, 400 horsepower, a high-performance machine. The driver of the Corvette could have parked between the two older cars, but instead he parked at a distance. He understood the value of his car, and he didn’t want to squeeze in between cars that had not been valued. After all, if their owners didn’t value their own cars, they might not be careful with his when they opened their doors. And at that moment, I heard a little voice: “Do you see how the cars in this parking lot doubled in average value when this car came in?” God values each one of us enormously. Jesus did not come to fix old clunkers; He came to restore us to a brand-new look. When we take care of ourselves, we are acknowledging the value He has given us. Just as no one would pour contaminated fuel into a car like that or leave trash in the back seat, we need to put good fuel in our bodies and take care of ourselves. We need times of refreshing to make sure we don’t get worn out. We need to spend time in the Father’s presence being renewed and restored. We need to value ourselves the way He values us.

You are extremely valuable. When you can see how much you are loved and come into agreement with God in His love for you, you will begin to find tangible ways to love yourself. You will start to see that the love you have received is the love you are becoming. That love becomes more than a revelation and an impartation; it becomes an activation. You get filled up and begin to overflow. As you think through this chapter, consider these questions: • What signs do you see of not loving yourself the way God loves you? • In what ways have you devalued yourself or let others devalue you? • What things do you say yes to when you should probably say no? • What would you do differently if you were completely filled up with the Father’s love? If you know you have value, you can add value to everyone around you. But you might be parking too close to some people who don’t know their value yet, and their carelessness might affect you. That’s when it helps to establish some boundaries. You still love those you people, but you are protecting what is valuable. Our ability to love others directly depends on our ability to love ourselves. We cannot give what we have not received. We love best when we are filled up with love ourselves. My friend David Wagner says he tries to lie with the Lord for about an hour each day, just worshiping and getting filled up with the Father’s presence. He understands the importance of becoming love. “People can argue with my theology or my preaching,” he says, “but they can’t argue with my love.” So part of his journey to become love involves just spending time in the Father’s presence and immersing himself in the Father’s love. You may not have time for an hour to do that every day, but you can probably find some time to just be—to lie on the floor as I did in that hotel room in Colorado and soak it in. This is where revelation comes from and how we align ourselves with the Father’s heart. It is one of the most important ways to love ourselves.

As you learn to love yourself, you will make the enemy nervous because he knows that your love will spill over into others. You will love your neighbor as you love yourself, and if you love yourself well, that is threatening to him. That’s a good sign; it means you are experiencing and upgrade in love and giving one to the people around you. They see how you have experienced love and begin to experience it too. In the spiritual realm, you have authority over what you love. So let your love abound more and more, increasing for yourself and for others. When you look in the mirror, learn to see value—a person for whom God sent His only begotten Son. He paid an enormous price to bring you back into the family, and there is nothing wrong with loving yourself the way He loves you. In fact, it’s important that you do. Let the love you have received be the love you become.

FOCAL POINTS Central truth: Loving yourself well is vital for experiencing the Father’s presence. Key verse: “When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’” (John 19:26) Big question: What happens when we don’t see ourselves the way God sees us?

REFLECTION QUESTIONS 1. What is your first reaction to the idea of loving yourself well? In what ways has some Christian teaching undermined this idea? Why is it so important? 2. How would you describe the love that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have for each other? How is this love different from what you have experienced with other people? 3. How is our ability to love ourselves related to our ability to love others?

4. In this chapter, we discussed the root issue of an orphan heart and the love John the disciple had experienced with Jesus. What made John different from the other disciples? How did his ability to love himself the way Jesus loved him shape his destiny?

GROUP EXERCISE Launch a discussion in your group with this question: “In what areas of your life is it difficult for you to love yourself well?” Listen to each other’s responses and notice experiences you have in common as well as the unique ways we all wrestle with the same problem. Then spend some time praying for each other and affirming your love for each other.

PREPARING FOR MORE Think about the different lenses you have looked through during your life— sunglasses, corrective lenses, reading glasses, magnifying glasses, camera lenses, telescopes, microscopes . . . you can probably think of several. How have they changed your vision? How do they help you, and how do they distort normal vision? As you think through this illustration, try to apply it spiritually to the different ways you see God and people.

CHAPTER 6

SEE, THINK, FEEL, SAY

One morning after a long flight to Pakistan, I woke up early to the sound of Muslim calls to prayer. I was tired and jetlagged, and also a little irritated because I had only slept two hours and hoped for more. Unable to go back to sleep, I turned on the television, but the only programs airing that time of the morning were some imams teaching. I have to confess, I had some judgments in my heart. While I was watching one of the imams, I heard the Lord speak. “I want you to see this person the way I see him. What do you see?” When God asks a question, it is never because He lacks answers. He wants us to consider the way we are seeing and come into an understanding of His perspective. So I began describing what I saw, and it was all from a very natural perspective. I was not looking at this imam through spiritual eyes. But I stopped and listened to the Holy Spirit. “This is a peacemaker,” the Holy Spirit said. “He is an ambassador of peace.” I had not been seeing an ambassador of peace. But as I started to look at this man the way God looks at him, and as I tried to capture God’s heart and sense His feelings, I began to come into agreement with what He was saying. I realized I had been wearing different glasses from God’s. I needed to put some new glasses on and see from heaven’s viewpoint. Before long, I was speaking to the television and declaring heaven’s perspective over this teacher. I eventually created a peace award for him, and he has since become a very dear friend. That was the beginning of my understanding of the different glasses we wear, and it has shifted the way I see. All of us are wearing glasses, and the

color of the lenses gives us different visions of the world around us. As we become love, it will be very important to be aware of these lenses and realize we do not see the world the way it actually is. We see it from a natural point of view. We may see a lot of things that are true on the surface, but they are not the truth— the bigger picture of what God is doing and how He sees. We will have to learn to see ourselves and others from heaven’s perspective. The Different Gods We See I recently read an article about a study done by two sociologists. They conducted a survey that suggests that there are four kinds of God in America.1 People tend to see Him in categories described as authoritative, benevolent, critical, or distant. More specifically, some people saw Him as ruling and reigning but not particularly involved in our lives; as someone who will judge us after we die; as someone who comes across as a grandfatherly figure who tolerates whatever we do and sometimes answers our prayers; and as someone who often gets angry, as if He is likely to have wild mood swings. And I wondered, How did America end up with a God who does not look like Jesus? As I’ve spoken at churches since then, I’ve started to ask some of the same survey questions the sociologists asked, and I’ve learned that many Christians in our churches have the same views. Some have a very biblical understanding of who God really is, but the perception of 90 percent of Americans is that God does not look like Jesus. Jesus said that those who have seen Him have seen the Father (John 14:9), yet many who believe in Jesus have a completely different view of God. How did they get this distorted picture? It comes from not being able to see from heaven’s perspective and not having an encounter with the Father’s love. My desire is for everyone in the world to experience a Father who looks like Jesus. In my experience, that comes from learning how to look up, look in, look out, and look forward. We first look up and see a loving Father. Then we can look in and love ourselves the way He loves us. Then we look

out and love others the way He loves others. And finally we look forward to envision what He envisions. Suggested graphic: Look Up, Look In, Look Out, Look Forward This is a big part of our journey of becoming love. The way we see affects the way we think, and the way we think helps us capture the emotions of God, the rhythm of His heartbeat. We then feel what the Father is feeling about us, the people around us, and the circumstances we find ourselves in. Our vision, thoughts, and feelings shape what we say, which has profound effects in our lives. When we see with the right lenses—when we agree with what God is thinking, feeling, and saying about our lives— we align ourselves with truth, and it’s the truth that sets us free. God has reoriented my vision on many occasions. I was once part of a conference in Bangkok where one of the sessions was a little noisier than I would have liked. Someone was creating a disturbance, and as a speaker, I know how hard it is to teach while someone is yelling throughout the message. I was sitting there with other leaders wondering why an usher wasn’t taking the person out, and again I was getting a little irritated. I saw correctly enough in the natural, but I wasn’t seeing what God was seeing. I wasn’t looking through the right glasses. When it was time for us to pray for people at the end of the session, I heard the Holy Spirit tell me just to sit down. I saw the severely autistic boy who had been making all the noise, and I looked at his mother. “What do you think I see as a loving Father?” the Lord asked me. “What do you think Jesus sees?” I realized I had been more concerned about myself than about this woman and her son. She had come to the meetings hearing testimonies and stories. I’m sure she had hopes and expectations for her son. That boy had never been able to look into her face or express what he was thinking. This mother lived with the pain of that daily experience all the time. Every day was a very personal struggle and a reminder of the brokenness of this world. I started to feel the weight of their circumstances and sense what the Father was seeing.

The woman took her son up for prayer, carrying him to one of the speakers. The speaker and some other people prayed while the boy was still moving around and making a lot of noise. I was no longer sitting in judgment; I started to weep because I had changed my glasses. I was now seeing the way Papa God saw it. Then He asked me, “Leif, what do you think about this boy? What do you think about his mama?” And my heart and mind were being filled more and more with love for this family. Even though several hundred people had come up for prayer, I just sat there, really only aware of this mother and son. I didn’t pray for anyone. I just received God’s feelings. And then in front of everyone, this boy pushed through the crowd, crawled up into my lap, and put his legs around me. At first, the boy kept making noise and was pretty restless. But then he looked at me and started grunting, as if he were trying to talk. Now that I had seen through the eyes of the Father, I could tell that this boy was seeing something, longing for something from God. For the next hour and a half, I sat with this boy, and he kept soaking more and more in. He was capturing something in the Spirit. He put his head on my chest, and I could tell he was starting to melt, more and more until he was comfortable with love. He couldn’t look directly into my eyes, but he tapped my face and tried to communicate. Something was clearly happening. When I took the boy back to his mother, she was weeping, and so were others around her. Whether or not a miracle had taken place, I don’t know, but this was at least a starting point. When the mother came back that evening, she said when they had gotten home that afternoon, her son looked into her eyes for the first time since he was born and spoke his first words. I just wept and wept—both for the joy over this mother and son, and also for realizing how much my glasses had distorted my vision at first. I want all of us to be able to have the eyes of Jesus and for people to look into our eyes and see Him. Jesus always had perfect vision because He looked up and saw the Father. That was His first and only guideline. He said He only did what He saw the Father doing, which means that He made the Father’s work His only lenses. That’s what I would like to see as I am becoming love. That’s

the starting point—looking up and knowing that God is a loving Father. If you think He is bipolar in nature, getting angry at any moment, you will follow that pattern and have frequent mood swings. If you see Him as critical, you will judge the people around you. If you think He is distant, you will likely be detached in your relationships. But if you see Him accurately, feeling His love for you, you will overflow with love for others. That’s why it’s so important to be aware of your glasses. Who He is to you is also who He will be through you.

THE FATHER WHO RUNS When we see differently, we begin to think and feel differently. Before my baptism of love in 2000, I believed with all my heart that God is a holy God. Of course, I still believe that today. Scripture is very clear about His holiness, and I would never want to compromise that fact. But my view then was that if I sinned, God would turn away from me. If He is a holy God, He cannot fellowship with us in the midst of our messes. I felt that whenever I sinned, I would have to do the right things—confess, ask for forgiveness, and repent thoroughly enough—for God to turn back toward me again. I had to be cleansed again for Him to accept me and connect with me again. This is how I had been taught. I saw God through these glasses, and those glasses affected how I saw myself too. That perspective kept me constantly focused on myself as the key to interpreting God’s thoughts. Sometime after my baptism of love, I was reading the story of the Prodigal Son. This parable actually should be called the story of the Loving Father, because that is really the focus. Religion tends to emphasize the failure of human beings rather than the faithfulness of God, but the story is about a father’s relationship with his two sons, a rebellious son and a religious son. We saw earlier how the rebellious son ended up in a pigpen— the worst possible place for a Jewish boy. And we saw that when he was so far from the father in every way and wanted to go home, he didn’t actually repent. He thought like a drug addict might think today—that being in the basement of his parents’ house would be better than living on the streets as

a homeless person. The motivation was not to repent but to negotiate a better situation. Even though it involved a big change, it was still a selfabsorbed perspective. The part of this story that captured my heart after my baptism of love was that the father was looking for his son to come home. He wasn’t looking away from him; he was looking toward him. The son had sinned as offensively as a person can sin, yet the father had not turned away. Every day, he was looking, full of compassion, waiting and hoping for his son’s return. That parable, which I had read many times before, gave me a new picture of the Creator of the universe longing for His children, even when they still smell like pigs. As we saw earlier, the father began running, not away from the sin of his son but toward him. Maybe other villagers were ready to throw stones and condemn the wayward son, but the father ran to him, embraced him, and kissed him again and again—while he was still dirty. Only then do we start to see signs of repentance. It was the goodness of the father that led to his change of heart. That is still how God relates to us today. That is the picture of God we need to see, the lenses we look through when we look up. Unlike the four versions of God most Americans see, the true God is not turning away from us when we sin. We’re the ones who turn away from him. His love is actually the safest place we can go when we mess up. Our thoughts and feelings—our sense of guilt, shame, embarrassment, frustration, and disappointment—will drive us away from the Father. The best thing we can do, however, is return to His embrace, receive His kisses, and rest again in His love. If we look at Him through those true lenses, we can then see ourselves accurately. When see ourselves the way He sees us, our thoughts and feelings completely change. We begin to think the way He thinks and feel the way He feels. We realize that sin doesn’t fit who we are now. The enemy’s temptations cannot give us anything the Father’s love has not already given us. We are beloved sons and daughters in whom He is well pleased.

If your tendency has been to see God as angry or critical, ready to judge, this picture of Him can be transforming. If you think God is in a bad mood when He thinks about you, you will become very self-absorbed and conscious of your sin, and you will grow very tired very quickly. But if you recognize that He is a good Father, and that no matter how big or frequent your messes are, He is ready to embrace you and still delighting over you, you will find repentance to be very natural and affirming. The Greek word for repentance is metanoia, which simply means changing the way you think. So to repent involves coming back to truth again and thinking the way God thinks about you. The Father only has good thoughts about you, and He is always wanting the relationship to grow and your connection with Him to strengthen. He wants you to know that nothing can separate you from His love. His pleasure over you has not gone away. All of your thoughts, feelings, and words begin to align with His when you see this. Some people think this view of God gives us permission to sin, but it actually transforms us so we don’t want to sin anymore. When you realize that this is what your Father is like, you want to be with Him. You enjoy experiencing His presence, hearing His voice, and gazing at His face. When we sin, our first reaction is to turn back to Him rather than to turn away, but our first reaction is not a reliable instinct. When we realize what He really thinks of us, we are drawn to this kind of God and want to be like Him. Our vision, thoughts, feelings, and words align with His.

ASK HIM WHAT HE SEES If you want to assess how closely your vision aligns with God’s, spend some time thinking about how you see, think, feel, and talk about God, yourself, your friends, and your “enemies” or adversaries. Then ask God how He thinks about Himself, you, your friends, and your enemies or adversaries. How closely do those two pictures resemble each other? Where do your vision/thoughts/feelings/words differ from God’s? Wherever they do not align with each other, ask God to impart His thoughts and feelings to you. Ask for His glasses and practice seeing the way He sees.

Now get a little more specific. Take some time to look up, then look in, then look out, and then look forward. Make it personal. Look in the mirror and ask, “Papa, what do You see when You see me?” We have already talked about the good thoughts He has toward each of us. Write some of those thoughts down. Ask Him about His thoughts toward you. “Papa, what do You think of me? How do You feel? What is Your heart, your passion toward me as a son or daughter?” Now say what you know to be true. Our words are powerful, and they will always align with what we are seeing, thinking, and feeling. They flow out of whatever is going on inside of us. So it is extremely important to align our words with what we are now seeing, thinking, and feeling from the Father’s perspective. Look in the mirror and say, “I’m made in Your image. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You are well pleased with me. You are jealous for my love. You run toward me when I have sinned. You embrace me with Your love. In Christ, I am Your righteousness. I am filled with Your presence and power.” You could go on and on; this is just a sampling of what you might say. There are many biblical truths for you to discover that will encourage you. When you come into agreement with what God says about you—even if it feels uncomfortable at first—you are aligning with the truth that sets you free. When you look into the mirror and see, think, feel, and say what the Father sees, thinks, feels, and says, it is a life-changing process. This is part of your journey in becoming love. You look up to see who He is, then look in to see who you are. You start to see, think, feel, and say like He does. When you see, think, feel, or say something different, it moves you away from His view; it’s like putting on the wrong glasses. At that moment, it is important to adjust yourself. When you do, something happens on the inside. You find your security again, recognize your value, and experience His love.

FOCAL POINTS Central truth: We have received love so we can become love.

Key verse: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) Big question: What do people look like when you see them from heaven’s perspective?

REFLECTION QUESTIONS 1. How do you see God? Take time to write down how you know God in your life? Share the unique ways you know God as a group. How can we correct some of the distortions in our perspective of God? 2. We have talked about looking up, looking in, looking out, and looking forward. Do you think the order of these views is important? Why or why not? What happens if we try to look in other directions before looking up? 3. Think of a time when you were not looking at a person or situation from heaven’s perspective and needed your vision reoriented. How did you come to the realization that your view was not aligned with God? What steps did you take to adjust it? In what ways have you tried to cultivate that process in other situations? 4. Who God is to you is who He will be through you. With this truth in mind, why is it so important to “wear the right glasses”—first as we look at Him, and then as we look at others?

GROUP EXERCISE Have each person in your group write his or her name at the top of a sheet of paper, and underneath the name write, “When I look at you from heaven’s perspective, I see ...” Then have everyone pass their paper to the person on the right, who will then write one thought about that person that completes that sentence. Keep passing to the right until every person has written on everyone else’s paper, then return the sheet to the person whose name is on it. Each group member will have a very affirming, encouraging, maybe even overwhelming reminder of how God sees them—and how others see them through God’s eyes.

PREPARING FOR MORE Spend some time thinking about the “why” of your life—what really motivates you, what you have a burning desire to do, and what you want to have accomplished when you reach the end of your life. _________________________ 1 Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, America’s Four Gods: What We Say About God--And What That Says About Us, Oxford University Press, 2010.

CHAPTER 7

COMPELLED BY LOVE

On one of my trips to the Middle East before my baptism of love, I found myself in a very uncomfortable atmosphere. I was in an evangelistic meeting, and I saw a group of men with long beards heading toward those of us who were leading the event. I wondered if I was about to be killed. But soon I realized why the men were shouting. I saw a quadriplegic man on a stretcher on top of a bus, and these men had driven seven hours to bring this friend to the meeting in hopes that Jesus might heal him. God was doing some amazing things—this was the first night I had seen blind eyes opened—and this man was able to get up and walk. This was a significant moment in my life. One of my memories from that event is of a woman who came to me late that night. I still have her picture in my office because I cannot afford to forget what happened. She opened up her burqa to reveal her face, and she told me that she had prayed the prayer to receive Jesus. “That’s wonderful,” I told her. Then she said she had also been healed that night. Again, I rejoiced with her and told her how wonderful that was too. This was the kind of testimony that motivated me; I just wanted people to know how loved they are and how good God is. I was sensing such excitement for this woman, and I was so encouraged to see the joy on her face. I was ready to celebrate! But suddenly she became sad. Through the translator who was with us, she asked me how long I had known about this Jesus. I started thinking. I had known Jesus since I was a child. My home country of Norway had just celebrated 1,000 of Christianity. And my new country of America had known of Jesus from its founding. So I told her that the countries where I had lived had known Jesus for a very long time.

“Then why didn’t you come earlier?” she asked. “I had never met this Jesus. My husband never got to hear the name of Jesus before he died. My son, he died of cancer and never got to know about this Jesus. Why didn’t you come sooner?” I have never forgotten that moment. I had been going to Guatemala often around that time, and I had been to Kenya recently too. I was busy going to many different places in many parts of the world. But it took a comment like that for the reality to sink in that there are so many people out there who have never experienced God’s love because they have never had an opportunity. No one has shared the truth with them. They have never heard that Jesus is alive, or even known His name. While many of us are waiting for His second coming, many others have never even heard of His first coming. Today, that is one of the experiences that drives me to continue doing what I do. It gets me up in the morning. I have been through many illnesses and injuries, but even if I am lying there wondering if I am going to live, I realize I can’t afford to die because there are far too many people who have never experienced God’s love. Something deep within me compels me to give this love away—not out of fear or the need to perform in order to please God, but because I love them. The love that I’ve received is the love that I’ve become. I want to take it to the farthest reaches of the world. What drives you? What is the “why” of your life? What do you wake up in the morning with a burning desire to do? This is one of the reasons I encourage people to adopt a life verse; it helps you answer that “why” and keeps you focused throughout your journey. One of the verses important to me in this season of life is 2 Timothy 1:7: “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” I have been dwelling on that one for a couple of years. What does my life look like when I have no fear and am full only of power, love, and a sound mind? How do I love the way God loves, think the way God thinks, and walk in His power? This is where our upgrade of love has been leading us: learning how to be compelled by love. We have received love so we can become love; and we are becoming love so we can release it.

THE ‘WHY’ OF GOD If you could summarize the whole Bible in one verse, it would have to be John 3:16. I’ll even give it to you in English this time! “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” This is one of the most often-quoted verses in Scripture, and there’s a reason for that. It captures the motivation of God in sending His Son: He did it for love. In fact, as Jesus says in the next verse, “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” This is the “why” of God, the reason He gave us this redemption plan that included the sacrifice of His Son. He loves the world. He loves the 7-plus billion people who are living today, every Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, Christian, and believer or non-believer of any other persuasion. He loves every Democrat and Republican, every rich ruler and every homeless person, every man, woman, and child who exists. He loves these people so much that He gave what was most valuable to Him. This theme of love shows up in Jesus’ teachings throughout the gospels and in the letters His followers wrote that make up the New Testament. In John 17, Jesus prays that the perfect love that He shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit would be in His people. That’s why He left heaven to come to earth. He wanted to share His love and bring us into the intimate relationship of the heavenly family. This is God’s wonderful plan, and it is a gift. It cannot be earned or achieved; it can only be received. Everyone is looking for this gift, though most people do not realize that this is what their heart truly longs for. But when they see it in the people who have received it, become it, and then released it, they can experience it too. So we have to learn to give love away. Just as the Father gave His love away by sending His Son into the world, so are we able to give His love away as we are sent into the world. Paul wrote a passage that expresses this beautifully: For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those

who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. (2 Corinthians 5:14-15) Just as love motivated Jesus, the love of Jesus motivates us. He actually paid the ultimate price for us so that we no longer have to live for ourselves. We don’t need to be selfish or look out for our own interests; He has satisfied our deepest needs, and He promises to be sufficient for us in every situation. With our love tanks full and the promises of God in our hearts, we are free to invest in this love and share it with others. Jesus did not die on the cross to make us valuable. He died because we are valuable already. When we see how valuable we are, we are compelled by His amazing love for us to show others how valuable they are. Love becomes the driving force of our lives. The lady in Pakistan who asked why it took so long for us to tell her nation about Jesus reminded me that the darkest places in the world need to experience His life and love. The dark places of the world actually don’t have a darkness problem; they have a light problem. All it takes is for one person to be the light there, just as a single match can change the darkness in a room. Light is always greater than darkness. Love is always greater than fear. When we realize that, we are motivated to go be the Father’s love and release it to those who have not seen it. The enemy wants to keep us from doing this by crippling us with fear. He comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). He does not want us to experience the assurance and security of what God’s love does for us, and He does not want this love to motivate us to release it to others. I experienced a little of this fear recently when I was at a restaurant. A few older women were sitting at a table having a wonderful time—they seemed like old friends—and I felt a strong desire to bless them. That’s what God’s love does. It gives. But then fear crept in. I was afraid they might find out and think there was some agenda behind it, or that they wouldn’t understand and think I thought they were in need. So I sneaked away and paid for the bill. But I wrestled with that even as I walked away from the restaurant. Even this simple act of love took a little bit of risk because love

works by faith. After I had done it, I could tell something happened in me. I started to sense a real joy, and I realized that sneaking into my car and imagining these ladies trying to pay for their meal later was more enjoyable than the good meal I just had. Love overcame fear. The world does not understand unconditional love. People have been conditioned to believe that they have to do something in order to become something. When they encounter unconditional love— that there is a God who loves them so much that He gives without demanding anything in return—their whole perspective changes. That is the love that compels us.

THE BIGGEST ENEMY OF LOVE I am often asked to tell a story when I speak. It has become a favorite among those who have heard me share it. The story begins when I was a little boy in Norway. I was sitting outside, and a tiny dog came over and began to growl at me. Before I could do anything, it bit me on my hand, and I started to bleed. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was a big moment in my life. Fear entered in. From then on, every time I saw a dog, fear would rise up. Dogs could sense it; they were attracted to me, even with a lot of other people around, because they could tell I was afraid. That fear actually kept me from relaxing and enjoying my life. I would find myself making plans or avoiding certain situations based on the likelihood of encountering a dog. I lived in this fear for many years. One day as an adult, when my family and I were living in Florence, Ala., a pit bull came into our backyard. I had just written my book on the baptism of love and would speak before thousands of people all over the world telling them how perfect love casts out fear. And I really had made a lot of progress, having come into a place of being compelled by love. But I still had a little fear of dogs. So when this pit bull came into our backyard, wearing plenty of scars from all the fights it had been in, I know it sensed my fear. If a cute little kitten had been in our yard that day and the intimidating pit bull went after it, do you believe this ambassador of love would have

risked danger to rescue that cat? Probably not. I have nothing against cats, but my fear would have been far greater than my love for that kitten. But if my little daughter had been there and the pit bull had gone after her, you can absolutely believe I would have gotten over my fear in a hurry and fought that dog. Why? Because my love for my daughter is far, far greater than my fear of dogs. Perfect love casts out fear. Fear is the biggest enemy of love, and most of us have had areas in our lives where fear has crept in. Sometimes that fear gets in the way of our love. I can only be in relationship when I bring love with me, so I go into my marriage with love, bring it to my kids, take it to the store, take it to the office, and carry it with me wherever I go. But if I don’t have love with me, fear will come creeping in. We wear two different antennas—one of them recognizes opportunities to love, and the other recognizes the potential for rejection. There is quite a bit of tension between these antennas, and I think we often experience that tension without even being conscious of it. Should I show love to boss who is unfair to me, or withhold it because he might reject me? Should I put myself out there for the neighbor who keeps her distance, or should I just let her isolate herself and miss out on the love God has for her? I think we weigh these kinds of question in a balance almost instinctively and without realizing it most of the time. But if our love grows much bigger than our fear, fear will fade away. Love will compel us. We will still need discernment about what we can do that is appropriate and timely, but the answer to those questions will no longer be driven by fear. Love and fear cannot go together, and one of them will overcome the other. I have noticed a very strange phenomenon. Even though psychologists, sociologists, and statisticians can tell us that about 95 percent of our fears will never happen, we continue to trust them. They have failed to predict the future in almost every case, but we still put faith in the possibility that they might be real. But even though we are assured that love will never fail (1 Corinthians 13:8), we often leave love behind and go back to fear whenever there is tension between the two. For some reason, we seem to think our fears are more reliable than our love. Why is this the case? Why

do we not trust love as much as we trust fear—especially when the track record for love is remarkable and the track record for fear is unreliable and devastating to our lives? Can we learn to trust love as a power? Can we believe that love is the language that will open deaf ears and blind eyes? The world will not listen to our wisdom until they have first seen how much we care. Love opens hearts that fear has shut down—including our own. Whatever your areas of fear are, they will be the biggest hindrance to your ability to live love out loud. I would encourage you to take inventory of your heart and recognize what some of those fears are. When you have a big enough yes to love, it is easier to say no to fear. And as you’re growing in this area, go ahead and practice love in all the areas that you can. Encourage people with your words, pray for the sick, be generous even when you don’t have very much in your pocket, and look for ways to release the love of the Father to the people around you. Review that description in 1 Corinthians 13 and refuse to be envious, keep a record of wrongs, assume the worst, put your own interests above others’ interests, or rejoice in anyone’s misfortune. Instead, be patient, kind, hopeful, and joyful in truth. Be conscious not only of having received this kind of love from the Father but of becoming it and then releasing it wherever you can. As you do, it will increase.

LET LOVE COMPEL YOU I would encourage you in this journey to take simple steps on a daily basis. I try to find one little thing each day that I can do to release love. The voice of fear usually tries to intervene, but I choose at least once a day not to let it stand between me and love. I want at least one person each day to experience how good God is and how loved he or she is. I especially want to do this with my wife and children, of course, but then I try to go beyond and reach someone else. I don’t take these steps to perform for God and reach a certain standard; I’m just aware that I have someone in me whose name is love. And that love is exactly what people have been looking and longing for, whether they realize it or not. I want them to see the connection

I have with my Papa and His love that compels me. It becomes much easier to say no to fear, guilt, shame, and every other obstacle when my love is my strongest motive. You can help love grow stronger in several ways. First, consider the “why” of your life and find a verse that you are going to focus on in depth for a season. You don’t have to make it a “life verse,” but at least for this season make it your theme. Maybe that verse is the same as mine about having the wisdom, power, and love to overcome fear (2 Timothy 1:7). Or perhaps it might be 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 about how the love of God compels us. You may find another that is particularly meaningful to you. Whatever it is, use that verse to align you with God’s motives for sending His Son into this world to demonstrate the Father’s love. Carry that motivation with you to your family, your church, your workplace, the local store, or wherever you encounter people who need a light in their darkness or even just a reminder of the love they have already known. Second, remember the story of the pit bull. Fear thrives when our love is not strong. But in areas where our love is strong, we are willing to do all kinds of things we would not normally do. Use that knowledge to your advantage and remember that perfect love casts out all fear. Realize, as Paul wrote to Timothy, that you have not been given a spirit of fear. You are filled with enough wisdom for any task today, power for any problem, and love for any person you encounter. Cultivate your love so that it grows increasingly strong and overcomes your increasingly irrelevant fears. Next, ask yourself what love looks like. More specifically, what would it look like if fear were completely absent? If you go to school, what does love without fear look like in the classroom? If you work in an office, what does love without fear look like in a meeting with coworkers? For times you are at home, what does love without fear look like with family members? I would challenge you not to get overly analytical with this. Let it flow from you naturally. Love first and ask questions later. What do I mean by that? I think we often look for people who deserve love and overlook those who rub us the wrong way or have offended us in the past. But love is unconditional. So as you are practicing, don’t forget to

represent love even among those who don’t deserve it or may not even recognize it. Remember the eagerness of the loving father to run to the son who had rebelled against him. Remember that Jesus was moved to love a lot of people who others considered unlovable. I find myself wondering sometimes whether I’m supposed to give something to a homeless person, as if I can know if that person will spend it wisely or not. I’m learning that if I had the impulse to begin with—usually a prompt from the Holy Spirit— I should love first and then ask questions. I do not have to wonder if other people are valuable. They are. So my first instinct needs to be to bless. Look for opportunities to love as if you are on a treasure hunt. Be intentional about finding one tangible action a day that demonstrates love— an encouraging word, a generous gift, and act of service, just something that expresses the heart of the Father. If your spouse normally does something for you—making coffee, preparing a meal, washing clothes—wake up a little earlier one day and do that for him or her. If a coworker is normally left with a thankless task, pitch in and do it once in a while. Take small but consistent steps. Daily walks become long journeys that change lives. Practice love and see how it changes the environment around you.

FOCAL POINTS Central truth: The more we realize love is more powerful than fear, the more motivated we are to release love to those around us. Key verse: “The love of Christ compels us.” (2 Corinthians 5:14) Big question: What would life look like if you were completely motivated by love and completely free of fear?

REFLECTION QUESTIONS 1. According to John 3:16-17, what is the “why” of God’s plan for us? How does receiving and becoming love align us with this motivation? 2. Why is fear the biggest enemy of love, and how does love overcome it? Why does God say that perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18)?

3. Can you think of any times when fear inhibited your love and shaped your decisions in negative ways? Why do you think fear has seemed so strong in those situations? What steps can you take to develop a level of love that casts those fears out? 4. What does it mean to “love first and ask questions later”? When you think of applying this principle to your life, what situations come to mind? How do you think your life and relationships would change if you consciously took this approach once each day?

GROUP EXERCISE Make a friendly pact with other group members to go on a treasure hunt this week—to look for opportunities to demonstrate love in tangible ways. At the end of the week, share your experiences with each other. In what ways did this treasure hunt stretch you? What fruit did you see from it? How motivated are you to make it a regular practice?

PREPARING FOR MORE Think through the strategies you have used to find balance in your life. How have you prioritized the things that are important to you? How successful have you been in balancing all your responsibilities? Notice the ways in which this approach creates tension between the different loves in your life.

CHAPTER 8

WHOLEHEARTED LIVING

A few years ago, I had a major struggle with balance in my life. When I was spending time with Jesus, I felt as if I should have spent more time with my wife and children. When I was traveling, I felt that should spend more time studying. If I spent a lot of time with my family, I felt that I wasn’t spending enough time ministering to people. Should I spend more time receiving or pouring out? With family or traveling to dark and desperate places? Studying or sharing what I had learned? I could never answer those questions. Whatever I was doing, it felt like I was taking away from something else. I was never fully, 100-percent engaged in the things in front of me. And I had been struggling to find that balance for years. One Sunday morning, I was speaking at a church in Ohio, and the Holy Spirit taught me a lesson I have never forgotten. I was being introduced by one of the church leaders, and the build-up was actually increasing my fatigue. I was being introduced as a ministry leader, conference speaker, author, apostle of love, and so on. And I knew the expectation of the audience was being raised higher than my energy level was. Before it was time for me to go up and speak, I heard the Holy Spirit say, “Leif, lie down.” You just don’t do that when you’re being introduced at a large church. I even knew some people in this church who were an important part of my life, and I didn’t want my behavior to embarrass them. But I was obedient to what I was hearing and lay down on the floor. When the speaker finished his introduction, I didn’t get up. There was an awkward pause, and they weren’t quite sure what to do. After a few moments, they called my assistant up to the platform to promote some of our products. Still, I rested

on the floor. I think a pretty long time passed—it felt like we were nearing the end of the service, but I don’t know actually how long it was—and finally the Holy Spirit said, “Now stand up.” Then He said, “Heaven is a rhythm, not a balance.” And I got the sensation of a waltz. I even started humming the Viennese waltz a little bit. I realized that when I had been lying down, love came down. When I leaned forward, love was releasing. And this is how life with the Holy Spirit is supposed to be. When I lean back in rest, I receive; when I lean forward, I release. The timing is a rhythm, not a balance. I don’t have to juggle; I can be sensitive to seasons and moments. What I behold, I become; and what I become, I release. The atmosphere started to change for me. I felt joy and peace, and healing began to take place. I became aware of the need to do a heart check and sense the seasons. I realized that when I’m resting and relaxing, I’m also receiving. I’m posturing and positioning myself to receive from a resting place.

SENSE THE RHYTHM OF THE SPIRIT Years ago, I wrote a book called Transformed by Love. I came across a quote in that book that I apparently needed to be reminded of. (Sometimes you just need to learn from what God has already taught you.) I had written, “If we want to make the transformation of love last in our lives, then we must continually tune our hearts to His. To do this, we must learn to feel every touch, hear every word, and see every move of His presence.” This journey of love is a journey of the heart. When we are struggling, it is very often a heart issue. Heart attacks occur because blood was is not flowing properly to the heart. Sometimes this happens to us spiritually and emotionally. If we are not aware of what is going on in our hearts, we can get clogged up and cannot receive the flow of love we need. Every time I start to feel tired or burned out, I realize this is happening with me. So I start to ask some questions. “Heart, what do you feel?” And I can hear my heart tell me what is wrong—that it’s a little tired or

overwhelmed, or that it hasn’t been fed properly. The Bible says that as you think in your heart, so you become (Proverbs 23:7), so apparently our hearts can think. It is the place where our emotions, will, mind, and conscience operate. That’s why we are told, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23 niv). So it is very important to stop at times and be aware of what is going on in there. Since the Holy Spirit is in our hearts, that’s where we are connected to the Father and the Son. My brain may be limited to what it is able to receive, but the Spirit in me is not. He is connected to the mind of the Father, so we have access to thinking that is much bigger than our brain capacity. We can think the way He thinks. When the Spirit flows in our hearts and we have His heartbeat, it is a rhythm. More important than being intentional in planning my schedule is learning to find that rhythm. Love flows in, then flows out. It comes as the overflow of a healthy heart when we have learned how to live wholeheartedly. When we live every moment fully, other things cannot clog us up and block our flow. The enemy often targets the love flowing into and out of our hearts. He wants to overwhelm us so we start responding to everything that is coming at us and have no awareness of the Spirit’s rhythm or the energy to move with it. It’s great for us to get overwhelmed by love, but when we are overwhelmed with something else—circumstances, challenges, fears—we tire out. Think of your heart as a beautiful garden where Jesus lives. This is where you cultivate the fruits of the Spirit. The life of Jesus within is the hope of glory to those around you. So the environment of this garden is precious. When your heart beats in rhythm with His heartbeat, love flows out of you. You love the way He loves. The enemy does not like the way your heart flourishes with Jesus’ love and beats with His rhythm. So he finds ways to fatigue you. He overwhelms you with circumstances or distracts you so that you can’t deal with circumstances from a place of rest. He will come at you after a victory when your guard is down, and suddenly you are flooded with pressures. You get tired and become very aware of your fatigue. This should be a

warning sign to you, like a fuel gauge in your car that gives you a signal when the fuel gets low. Jesus promised that all who are weary can come to Him and find rest. His burden is easy, and His yoke is light (Matthew 11:28-30). It was never His intention for us to carry all the burdens of worry and stress that we carry. So if our worries are contrary to God’s purposes for us, this is clearly one of the areas where the enemy will concentrate his attention. If you’re looking for a pattern to this, what you will often see is a series of four Fs. The enemy will try to get you fatigued, just as I was when I was struggling with balance in my life. Then he likes to push the button of fear. It is often said that fear is False Evidence Appearing Real, and it appears that way because we have the wrong glasses on and are not seeing circumstances the way Papa God sees them through the lenses of love. We get overwhelmed when we’re looking through the wrong lenses. Then we feel that we have failed, and that stirs up feelings of guilt and shame that wear us down even more. We become very aware that we didn’t love the way we should have loved, or that we were not generous, or that we could have done more. It’s that sense that whatever you do, it isn’t enough. Then the fourth F is feeling forsaken. We feel isolated, alone, out of fellowship with God and the people we love because we just haven’t measured up. Before we know it, our hearts are no longer flowing or beating in the Holy Spirit’s rhythm. When we no longer feel that heartbeat, we experience pain, and pain always seeks pleasure. We have been set up to look for ways of escape or to seek out counterfeit loves to fill our hearts. That’s why it is so important to stop, put your hand on your heart, and ask your heart what it is feeling. You will need to cultivate the beautiful garden of your heart so that life flows out of it consistently. So many things can produce guilt, fear, rejection, and pain in your heart that it is good to check yourself frequently. It is also good to find some “heart specialists” who know something about the rhythms of the Holy Spirit and can help you process the things that are happening in you. You will probably not be content for love just to flow from you a little bit. You want it to flow freely. Be very careful to tend the garden of your heart well.

I find that I get clogged up frequently in this long journey of life, especially as I get busy with ministry and travel. It is almost impossible in the stresses of work and family life not to pick up some clutter—to let the garden of our hearts fill up with weeds. But remember that this is where Jesus lives, where He loves to spend time with you, walk with you, and laugh with you. This is the place of rest where you live from God rather than striving to live for Him. Cultivate this garden well and clear it out as often as necessary.

THE SOIL OF YOUR HEART Jesus once told a parable to the crowds and later, when He was talking with His disciples, told them that if they didn’t understand this one, they would not understand parables at all. What He meant was not that they needed to grasp the information of this parable. They needed to let it sink into their hearts. Only if they grasped it with real understanding would they be able to capture the meaning of the other parables He told. It held the secret that would unlock all the other stories of their lives. The parable was about a sower, his seed, and the soils where his seed fell (Matthew 13:3-23). Jesus described four different types of soil, different environments for the seed the sower sowed into his fields. In some soil, the seed would get rooted and begin to flourish; in others, it would fall and be eaten by birds, never having a chance to sprout, or it would grow for a little while and then dry up, or it would grow and be choked by thorns. These different soils represent is the difference between hearts that receive truth and hearts that do not. A lot of people will read the Bible and think, “Yes! I want that truth. I receive that word. I will apply this message to my life.” Or they will read a book like this and respond very favorably to the lessons. But the initial response isn’t really the issue. A positive reaction is not enough. The real question is whether the seed takes root and is allowed to flourish. That is why this parable is the key to all other stories and truths. Only those who allow truth to sink into the garden of their hearts and grow deep

roots will increase in wisdom, power, and love. Only those who steward the message will find that their seed grows into a tree that bears fruit. If fruit was an immediate process, this might be the case. But it needs to be cultivated over time. Only then do the seeds of truth grow. There is a difference between an encounter and a seed. If, for example, I prayed for you to receive love, you might have an encounter with God or begin a journey that gave you an upgrade in your ability to love. But it would still be an encounter that happened and then passed. If I plant a seed of love in you, however, and the soil of your heart is ready to receive, your capacity to love and the fruit of your love will be much greater in the long run. If, over time, you are able to cultivate an atmosphere and environment that is free of worry, anxiety, fear, guilt, shame, condemnation, regret, and disappointment—if you are able on a daily basis to let the love of the Father wash over you and cast out all the clutter—you will have a much greater upgrade in love than just having an encounter with God that may inspire you but does not give you the tools to make it last. If you put on your robe and your ring for a day or two, you might have an experience of the Father’s love. But if you learn to wear your robe and ring day after day, you will have a lifetime of receiving, becoming, and releasing the Father’s love. It all depends on the soil of your heart and how well you tend to the seed. Don’t do what I have done at times and wait until you are nearly burned out to check on your heart. That’s like having a heart attack and realizing you should have been eating well and exercising all along, or seeing the engine light come on in your car and realizing you haven’t checked the oil all year. It’s the same thing spiritually. If you tend your garden, the seed of love becomes a tree of love, which then becomes a forest of love because it produces its own seed. It works with any fruit of the Holy Spirit—joy, peace, kindness, and so on. When you create an environment of God’s presence in your heart, His fruit flourishes. It’s not a single event or an encounter; it’s a journey and a lasting relationship. I now stop every day and check my heart. Do I feel His love, joy, and peace? If so, I can continue enjoying my fellowship with Him. If not, I invite Him to give me a greater sense of His presence and to overwhelm me

with His love. I want to be connected to the source. If something is blocking the flow, I want to stop for a few moments and clear out the weeds and debris that have gotten in the way. I want to deal with the lies, cast out the fear, and let the truth make me free. I want my garden to be beautiful for the Lord to live in. One word of caution: sometimes it’s important to put fences around your garden. In relationships, we call these boundaries. You want to protect what is valuable. You will find that sometimes you need to let things flow out freely, and sometimes you need to close the gates and cultivate your garden. You need to receive in order to give. Give yourself the freedom to stop, take inventory, lean back into the rhythm of the Holy Spirit, and begin to flow again.

HOW WHOLE IS YOUR HEART? Your assignment with this chapter is to take an inventory of the fruits of the Spirit in your garden. Look at the list in Galatians 5:22 and rate each of your fruits on a scale of 0 to 10. That may sound a little performanceoriented, but the goal is not to reach a certain level but to honestly understand where you are. There is no condemnation for any answers you could give, even if you think you have zeroes across the board. Just assess your level of love, joy, peace, patience, and so on, one by one. Are you full of joy but lacking in patience? Overflowing in love but short on peace? How full is your tank in each of these areas? I find it very helpful to find a quiet place to be fully present with God. Wholehearted living allows us to be fully present in every conversation and relationship, so I try to notice where I have not been present with God and the people around me. Take some time to do that and notice where you have been fatigued. Do simple tasks and activities exhaust you? Are you listening to fear more than you are listening to love? Do you feel as if you have failed in your relationships, work responsibilities, or other endeavors? What areas need to be filled up with His presence and love?

The purpose for this assessment, as I mentioned, is not to create a sense of performance anxiety in you. It’s to reveal where you might need to lean back into the Spirit, hear His heartbeat, and begin dancing in His rhythm again. Many of us can look back into the past and uncover times we have felt forsaken or abandoned, or where our dreams or passions have been disappointed. When the Holy Spirit reveals these areas to us, it is never for the purpose of leaving us in them. He wants to enter in and heal the pain, regret, and sorrow we have experienced. Try to understand where you need to cultivate your garden and ask Him to fill you up in these areas. Invite Him to replace your feelings of pain, regret, and sorrow with love, forgiveness, and freedom. Whenever you notice your wholeheartedness turning into half-heartedness—because you will be taking inventory regularly—stop and cultivate these areas of your garden some more. Be aware when your rating for the fruits of the Spirit falls below a 6 or 7 and run to the Holy Spirit for refreshing. It is much easier, and far more fruitful, to live from overflow rather than struggling to get by. Guard your heart so love can flow wholeheartedly.

FOCAL POINTS Central truth: Heaven—and your life—is a rhythm, not a balance. Key verse: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23 niv) Big question: What does the heartbeat of the Father look like in your life?

REFLECTION QUESTIONS 1. What things tend to block the flow of love in and out of your heart? How have you tried to deal with those things in the past? How can synchronizing with the Spirit’s rhythm help you with that? 2. This chapter describes stress, fatigue, and distractions as tactics of the enemy. How does Jesus’ promise of rest combat these attacks? What can you do practically to cultivate your “garden of rest”?

3. In terms of spiritual fruitfulness, what is the difference between an encounter and a seed? Which creates a greater capacity to love in us over the long run? 4. Do you feel the freedom within yourself to stop, take inventory of what is going on in your heart, and lean back into the Spirit to recapture His rhythm every day? If not, what changes do you need to make in the ways you think about your life and relationship with your Father? Why is it so important to live with a whole heart?

GROUP EXERCISE Sometimes the best way to grow is to learn from the experiences of others. If you have taken the spiritual inventory described at the end of this chapter, ask group members to share their results with each other (with the commitment that there are no wrong answers and no condemnation for any areas of struggle). Explore together what it means to live in the rhythm of the Holy Spirit and pray for each other to grow in their ability to recognize it.

PREPARING FOR MORE What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “heaven on earth”? What are we really praying for when we say, “Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven”? Your answers may include a lot of things, but consider how love fits into the picture—and how people who have received and become the Father’s love can release it.

CHAPTER 9

AMBASSADORS OF LOVE

I heard a story about Mother Teresa visiting Norristown, Penn., many years ago, to help establish a shelter for the poor. City officials were concerned; a nearby state hospital sometimes released patients with little ongoing support, and many of them with mental issues or drug problems ended up living in the streets. As is often the case, many people in the city thought something should be done, and a shelter was not a bad idea—as long as it wasn’t in their neighborhood. In fact, the new convent in Mother Teresa’s order that had just been established was in an area where zoning laws prohibited shelters for the poor. When rumors surfaced that the convent might house bipolar, schizophrenic addicts, the people resisted. They didn’t want that kind of population living nearby. When city officials and concerned residents met, they were all prepared to vote against the shelter. But a little lady was in the room, and she walked all the way up to the front, got on her knees, and pleaded on behalf of the poor and hurting. “Please, please receive these people,” she begged. The atmosphere in the room changed. People’s hearts softened because Mother Teresa knew how to be an ambassador of love. Where did she get this kind of authority? She had won the Nobel Peace Prize, but that didn’t create her authority; she won it because she already had it. It wasn’t because she was successful at her convent in India or because of her position or fame. It certainly wasn’t because she had a lot of money. It was because she knew how to love. She could speak very directly to presidents and prime ministers, and they would listen. They may have had a lot of power, but she had a greater authority.

You and I have been given authority to represent heaven on earth. Remember that when you are watching the news and seeing all the bad things going on in the world. We have the authority to come into difficult situations as a different kind of people—as ambassadors of love. We think differently. We relate to people differently. Where the enemy comes the steal, kill, and destroy, we come in to represent abundant life and love.

BRINGING HEAVEN TO EARTH I woke up one morning in Pakistan and heard news of a suicide bomb— someone influenced by the thief who steals, kills, and destroys had killed or injured more than 60 people at a church, and the mood in that region was chaotic and dark. But as ambassadors of love who represent Jesus, who came to give abundant life, we bring good news. We speak the language of love. We honor the way Jesus honors. Wherever the Father is, He brings the environment of heaven and the love of His family. So when we come from the Father in the rhythm of the Holy Spirit and in the name of the Son, we bring the environment of the heavenly family with us. We are anointed as ambassadors of love to change things. In the area of Pakistan where this bombing took place, we actually had some ambassadors of love move in and bring reconciliation. Then a small group of us met with Muslim and Christian leaders to help the church and the families that were injured. We brought good news out of the bad news, and testimonies of Jesus began to spread and bring healing. That is just one example among many of how we carry hope into the midst of hopelessness by representing love. The first time I went to Cambodia, I could just feel the brokenness of that nation. I had been invited to go there several times, and in my spirit I knew I was meant to represent heaven on earth in that place. During the time of the killing fields in the late 1970s, Cambodia had been raped and stripped of its identity. The educated people were particularly targeted. When I finally went, I toured the genocide museum and saw some of the

horrific things that were done. I have seldom seen such evil. I knew my responsibility in the midst of that darkness was to be light. We get to represent the opposite of what we see in the dark places of this world because God is light, and He is in us. No matter what the enemy has done, it cannot overcome the goodness of God. I saw an example of that while I was there. Our group had an opportunity to meet some of the victims of the Khmer Rouge, but we also met some Khmer Rouge warriors who had participated in those horrific crimes. How do you represent love to someone who has done unspeakable things and slaughtered people? How do you love them in a way that gives them an encounter with the Father and transforms their life? We know this kind of transformation is possible— that’s how a zealous killer like Saul could become a zealous apostle like Paul. But it takes a change in the way we think to see a Paul in a Saul. We have to see differently. Love does not see people the way they are but the way they are going to be. Love does not treat people according to their history but according to their destiny. Every human being, every family, every city and nation has a destiny. The key is being able to look past the natural and see their destiny the way the Father sees them. So I put my arm around some of those Khmer Rouge and let the Father’s love shine through. I didn’t have that kind of love for them; I needed to receive it from Him. But as I did that, I could sense their brokenness. Only broken people go out and destroy lives like that. Broken people break things, and healed people heal things. So as someone who has been healed, I put my arm around some of these broken people to bring healing love to them. That night we had a service, and afterward a lady came up. I thought she was going to testify about a healing or an encounter with Jesus. But when she started to speak and the translator interpreted her words, I realized something else was happening. She said that because educated people were being systematically destroyed when she was young, she had never learned to read or write. But she always wanted to. And as I was listening to her, Luke 19:10 came to mind. Jesus said, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Not “those who were lost,” although that

is certainly true. But “that which was lost”—the things we have missed or that have been broken because the enemy steals, kills, and destroys. Jesus came to bring beauty out of ashes and joy out of mourning (Isaiah 63:3), so as an ambassador of love, in Cambodia to represent the same love that compelled the Father to send Jesus into the world, my heart was filled with a longing for these broken people to experience restoration. As a group of other women who had never learned to read and write came up to the front, we started to pray. I will never forget what happened next. The Khmer language is extremely difficult to learn. It has 140 letters and a complex writing system. But when this woman opened up a Bible, with tears in her eyes, she was suddenly able to read. The written language made sense to her, even though she had never been instructed in it. She started at John 3:16 and kept going, verse after verse, and she didn’t want to stop. The other ladies stood around listening, then they began to pick it up too. Something supernatural was released in that room as God opened up the ability first for this woman, then for the others, to be able to read. Jesus restored that which was lost. I love talking to my friend Shawn Bolz and hear his heart for that which was lost. He challenges me to look at people and nations in light of their destiny. What is the redemptive value of a nation like North Korea, for example—a place where the light of the Father’s love has been intentionally kept out for many years? What is God’s intention there? Darkness is not hard to see in the middle of the night—we can all read the headlines and criticize what is going on there—but what would it look like for light to shine in that place? Maybe our temptation is just to give a diagnosis, but what does God want to prophesy over that nation? And what would happen if ambassadors of love started to treat that nation according to its destiny? We could begin to bring a cure for its disease. We could see its redemptive value come to the surface and Jesus be glorified there. God loves every single North Korean, and He wants His ambassadors of love to represent Him there. In fact, this is what He wants for every nation, including the one you are in right now. He is calling ambassadors of love to look past the natural and speak destiny and life as they re-present His love.

This does not apply only to nations, as I am sure you are aware. We are talking about a lifestyle of receiving love, becoming love, and releasing love. What does it look like to overflow with love in your home? in your workplace? in your school? in your community? What happens when you see the brokenness of lives and communities? As an ambassador of love, you will notice brokenness all around you, not only among the poor but also among the rich. You will see it among those who are not yet saved, but you will also see it among believers who don’t fully know who they are yet. I have friends who are business executives who see all of their employees not only for their workplace value but for their kingdom value. They want their employees to experience life and growth—in their minds, that is part of their profit. They are ambassadors of love who want their offices to become outposts of heaven on earth that bless all who enter in or are touched by their work. That’s one example of what being ambassadors of love. What does being an ambassador of love look like in your daily life?

YOUR OPPORTUNITIES AS AN AMBASSADOR That is a very good question to ask yourself often. It brings us near the end of this book, but it is only the beginning of your new journey. There are a few more questions I want you to ask too before we close. Some of them will echo things we have already discussed, but they will be helpful to consider again and again. They will remind you daily of who you are. The first group of questions involves going back to your mirror and seeing yourself differently. Who am I? What does God see in me? What is so valuable about me that He would send His only Son for me? How has He demonstrated His great love for me? Then ask yourself, What is my calling? How am I unique? What special sauce do I bring to the table? What has God created and gifted me to do that adds to the climate of love? Do not give in to the temptation to say, “I’m just a …,” and then fill in the blank with whatever situation is disappointing you right now. Maybe you think your role in this season is insignificant, but it is not. You are actually an ambassador of love who

wakes up in the morning ready to face a day of possibilities to represent heaven. Perhaps your ambassadorship is primarily in your home. What can you do to help your home represent the home of heaven? If you are in a school, how can you bring a taste of heaven to your school? If you are a journalist, how can you frame the news with hope rather than just repeating the bad news so many others share? If you are in an office, how can you carry out your business in a way that emphasizes the positive and touches lives with the Father’s love? Wherever you are, how can you shift the environment to look and feel a little more like heaven? It doesn’t have to be a big shift in natural terms; sometimes small acts and attitudes create a big shift in the spiritual world. Ambassadors of love are not hung up on waiting for the big opportunity. We see opportunity everywhere, even in hidden corners or seemingly insignificant comments. As you continue this journey, thank God that no matter your role or position, you get to go out into the world to represent heaven on earth.

RECEIVE, BECOME, RELEASE I want to encourage you right now to receive the impartation that the Father is giving you. Receive His love, become His love, and release His love. You have the grace you need for every stage of that upgrade. In fact, you have everything you need for life and God-likeness through the promises the Father has given you to step into the divine nature (2 Peter 1:3-4). His power operating through His love will make all the difference in your life. I am praying for you. I have already prayed for everyone who reads this book that something will take place in your heart and that you will sense the burning fire of God’s love—that you will be filled with passion, get up in the morning with passion, experience peace and joy with passion, and love others with passion. When you have purpose, you are compelled to move forward in that purpose, and it becomes exciting for you. You will be filled with peace and joy, and the people around you will recognize it in you. They will see something of your Papa in your face.

Jesus told His friends that He was sending them out in the same way the Father sent Him (John 20:21). The Father sent Him in love, so as His friend, you are also being sent in love. You have authority over what you love, so as your love grows for your family, your church, your workplace or school, and your community, you will find that your authority is growing too. You will also find that the Father is increasing your love. You may realize that you can’t wait to get to work and see the people you love, to spend time with friends you love, or to get home and be able to love on your family some more. Your purpose will grow hand-in-hand with your love. Your new assignment as an ambassador of love comes from your new alignment in your relationship of love with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Your alignment and your assignment are closely connected. You are now wearing your robe to remind you of your Father’s love and your ring to remind you of the authority He has given you. You represent the family of heaven on earth. You have grace and power to go into dark places and be light, to go into broken places and be hope, and to go into the pains and disappointments of people’s lives and be love. You have freely received. You have become. And now you freely give. Go and love on purpose.

FOCAL POINTS Central truth: You have authority over what you love. Key verse: “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” (John 20:21) Big question: How does your life reflect the environment of the heavenly family?

REFLECTION QUESTIONS 1. How does love change things in dark places? In times of chaos? In hostile situations? In places of brokenness and mourning? What are some specific situations in your life where an environment of love is needed to transform another kind of environment?

2. Do you tend to see people in terms of their past or their destiny? How does this perspective affect the way you relate to them? 3. What does being an ambassador of love look like in your daily life? 4. Spend some time thinking through what it would look like for you to overflow with love in your home, your school or workplace, your church, your community. Whose lives need a touch from the Father’s heart? What situations need a change in atmosphere? Whatever your answers are, consider them an invitation to be an ambassador of love there.

GROUP EXERCISE Conduct a small ceremony in which each member receives some token of their upgrade—a certificate, a badge, a gift, or something else that represents a change in status or a new season in life. As part of the ceremony, take time for each member of the group to look every other member of the group individually in the eyes and say, “Congratulations, you are an ambassador of love. You have everything you need for this journey.”

PREPRARING FOR MORE Consider the rest of your life an adventure in love. Learn to see yourself as a vital part of God’s purpose in revealing His heart to the world. And be fearless.

REFLECTION The new temperature in your heart is going to change the temperature around you. You have learned how to receive, how to become, and how to release. You have a seed that is becoming a tree that will become a forest. You have been upgraded in your love, and you are well on your way in an exciting journey of manifesting the Father’s heart.

This is more than a lifelong journey. It is an eternal one. That’s the nature of agape love—it lasts forever. But you need to know that tests will come. You will find yourself in situations that are the opposite from what you have prayed for and do not always make love easy. Love is most needed (and best seen) in a climate that is contrary to love. No one will know that love overcomes fear unless fear is there to begin with. No one will see that it lights up the room unless the room was dark at first. You will see opposite forces coming in, and one of the reasons is that the things taking place in your life are extremely valuable—and extremely threatening to the powers of darkness. Don’t give the enemy too much credit; your love will overcome. There is no question about that. But be aware that it will have to overcome some things. You are moving into a season of releasing, and it will be important to learn the rhythms in your life. Whenever you are wearing out, overwhelmed, or facing resistance, don’t worry about it. Just lean back and receive the Father’s love. Be refreshed. Then lean forward and release. It’s a lifestyle, and you will learn it as you go. Remember that it is not what you do that makes you who you are; it is who you are that makes you do what you do.

RECEIVE To review, remember too that you already have an A-plus from the Father before you take the exam. You are not under pressure. You do not have to become His child; you already are. You can look in the mirror and tell yourself that you are loved extravagantly, that you have the nature of the Father in you, and that you are wearing His robe and His ring. There is nothing you need to do to receive His love. Just receive it.

BECOME Then become it. In the middle of all of life’s circumstances, look up, look in, look out, then look forward. These are the four dimensions of your new

glasses, and the order of them is important. When your glasses get a little dirty, look up again and see the Father’s smile. Look within and smile at yourself. Look at your circumstances and smile because you know you will overcome them. And look ahead and smile because you are walking in the power and promise of your Father. See, think, feel, say. Tell the Father every day, “I just want to see what you see, think what you think, feel what you feel, and say what you say.” As you practice these things, you will become the love you have received.

RELEASE Finally, live your love out loud. Release what you have received and become. Look at any circumstance in your life—relational, financial, physical, professional, academic, in your family, in your community, in your nation, whatever it may be—and ask, “What would this look like if love moved in? How is love perfected in this situation? What if perfect love transformed this situation?” This is a wonderful starting point for your mission as an ambassador of love. Love will compel you to take the environment of heaven into your relationships and circumstances. Your upgrade has been confirmed! You are a world-changer and history maker. The world will never be the same.

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