When you were born again, God became your Father. He is a love God. You are a love child of a love God. You are born of God, and God is love, so you are born of love. The nature of God is in you. And the nature of God is love.
It’s A Family Thing
Ours is a love family. Everyone in the family has God’s love shed abroad in his heart, or else they are not in the family.
Now they may not be exercising it. They may be like the one-talent guy who wrapped his talent in a napkin and buried it. But the Bible declares that the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. That means the God-kind of love has been shed abroad in our spirits.
This is a love family. Love is the basis for all the activity of the Body of Christ in the earth.
We choose to love all people, even the unlovable. We love as God loves. It involves (the) giving of our lives for the benefit of mankind. This does not merely refer to dying physically. It mainly refers to our being willing to give up our own will and way and take time to pray and intercede for all men.
In John 15:13 it says,
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Giving Of Ourselves
God loved us while we were yet sinners and sent Christ to die for us. We are to love the same way. We give our lives for mankind.
One of the ways we give our lives for mankind is by giving ourselves to prayer. It involves sacrifice. It involves laying down our own desires for the benefit of mankind. There is sacrifice in giving up your own will and time to pray for others.
Love is the basis for all Christian activity. Compassion is an ingredient of divine love. How do we know this is so? Because God so loved the world that He gave Jesus. And Jesus so loved us that He gave Himself for us. And in His earthly ministry, again and again we see compassion.
As we look at that wonderful truth, remember that Jesus said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). If you want to see God, look at Jesus. Jesus is the will of God in action. Jesus is the love of God in action. And in His earthly ministry, He was moved with compassion.
Jesus had compassion on the people and asked us to share in that compassion by praying that the Lord of the Harvest would send laborers into the field. Jesus was moved with compassion and healed the sick.
In Matthew 14:14 it says,
Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick.
Jesus’ compassion led to the feeding of the four thousand:
Then Jesus called his disciples unto him, and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and have nothing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way.
(Matt. 15:32)
In His compassion, Jesus healed the blind:
Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes: and immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed him.
(Matt. 20:34)
Compassion Brings Deliverance
In every instance where Jesus was moved with compassion, the person or persons were delivered. Human sympathy says, “I know how you feel; I’m so sorry.”
Divine compassion says, “I feel how you feel.” And it brings deliverance.
Jesus’ compassion brought deliverance. If we have the divine compassion of Jesus, there will be deliverance. But I think too much of the time we’ve tried to bring deliverance without God’s divine compassion. That’s where prayer and intercession come in.
Dr. John G. Lake is known for his ministry that was well marked with apostolic ideals. He did an amazing work in South Africa just after the turn of the century. So many healings took place in his tabernacle in Johannesburg, report of them reached the leaders of the nation. Some of the top government people sought him for help on the behalf of the wife of a certain government official.
When Lake went to her home, he found her bedridden with terminal cancer. He determined that she was a Christian. Then he began to give her Scripture to teach her about divine healing and to get her faith activated. She made a decision to trust God for her healing. The doctors had given her up to die and were only giving her pain relievers to keep her comfortable. But she decided to stop all drugs.
She said, “If I’m going to trust God for my healing, and I am, then I’m going to throw myself completely over on His mercy.”
“This woman was in such pain,” Lake said, “that one of the ministers of the church and I stayed at her bedside around the clock, praying. As we prayed, she would get relief.”
One morning, after having prayed all night, Lake went home just long enough to bathe and shave. Then he started back. “When I came within two blocks of the house,” Lake said, “I heard the woman screaming in pain. At the sound of those screams, somehow I seemed to just enter into a divine compassion.”
Lake entered into the sufferings of Jesus. He began to feel just like Jesus feels. For Jesus can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities (Heb. 4:15).
Lake said, “I found myself running those last two blocks without even thinking what I was doing. Without thinking, I rushed into the room, sat down on the edge of the bed, picked up that emaciated body in my arms like a baby, and began to weep. While I was weeping, she was perfectly healed.”
May His Love Permeate Our Heart
Somehow, the compassion of Jesus, the love of God, was able to permeate his heart, his spirit. Dedicated believers can enter into that area of compassion by one way – and you will not get there any other way – and it is by fellowship with God.
You cannot fellowship with God; you cannot sit in the Presence of the Great God of this universe without His love permeating your being, and without His compassion flowing into you.
And it is when you can get into this place that you will be able to do as Jesus said in John, Chapter 14:12,
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.
The works that He did were born out of love and compassion. The works that the believing ones shall do, including prayer, are products of sharing in His ministry of love and compassion.
Excerpt permission granted by Faith Library Publications
Rev. Hagin served in Christian ministry for nearly 70 years and was known as the "father of the modern faith movement." His teachings and books are filled with vivid stories that show God's power and truth working in his life and the lives of others.
Rev. Hagin was born on Aug. 20, 1917, in McKinney, Texas, a son of the late Lillie Viola Drake Hagin and Jess Hagin.
Rev. Hagin was sickly as a child, suffering from a deformed heart and an incurable blood disease. He was not expected to live and became bedfast at age 15. In April 1933 during a dramatic conversion experience, he reported dying three times in 10 minutes, each time seeing the horrors of hell and then returning to life.
In August of 1934, Rev. Hagin was miraculously healed, raised off a deathbed by the power of God and the revelation of faith in God's Word. Two years later, he preached his first sermon as pastor of a small community church in Roland, Texas.
In 1937, Rev. Hagin was baptized in the Holy Spirit and began ministering in Pentecostal churches. During the next 12 years he pastored five churches in Texas: in the cities of Tom Bean, Farmersville (twice), Talco, Greggton, and Van. In 1949, he began an itinerant ministry as a Bible teacher and evangelist.
During the next 14 years, Jesus appeared to Rev. Hagin eight times in visions that changed the course of his ministry. In 1966, he moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he opened a ministry office. That same year, he taught for the first time on radio—on KSKY in Dallas. In 1967, he began a regular radio broadcast that continues today as Faith Seminar of the Air. Teaching by his son, Rev. Kenneth W. Hagin, is also heard on the program.
In 1968, Rev. Hagin published the first issues of The Word of Faith magazine, which now has a monthly circulation of more than 250,000. The publishing outreach he founded, Faith Library Publications, has circulated more than 65 million copies of books by Rev. Hagin, Rev. Hagin Jr., and several other authors worldwide. Faith Library Publications also has produced more than 9 million audio teaching tapes and CDs.
Other outreaches of Kenneth Hagin Ministries include RHEMA Praise, a weekly television broadcast hosted by Rev. and Mrs. Kenneth W. Hagin; RHEMA Correspondence Bible School; RHEMA Alumni Association; RHEMA Ministerial Association International; RHEMA Supportive Ministries Association; the RHEMA Prayer and Healing Center; and a prison ministry.
In 1974, Rev. Hagin founded RHEMA Bible Training Center USA and in 1976 moved the school and ministry offices to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where they remain. To date, RHEMA Bible Training Center USA has 23,000 alumni, and RHEMA Bible Training Centers have opened in 13 other nations: Austria, Brazil, Colombia, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Romania, Samoa, Singapore, South Africa, and Thailand. Together, the 14 schools have more than 28,000 graduates worldwide.
RHEMA Bible Church, pastored by Rev. Hagin Jr., began holding services in October of 1985 on the RHEMA campus in Broken Arrow and has since grown to become a thriving congregation with more than 8,000 members.
Rev. Hagin's daughter and son-in-law, Pat Harrison and the late Doyle "Buddy" Harrison, founded Harrison House Publishers in 1975 and Faith Christian Fellowship International Church in 1977. Both organizations are based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Until shortly before his death in September 2003, Rev. Hagin continued to travel and teach throughout the United States and into Canada conducting All Faiths' Crusades and other special meetings.