Christian Love

But I am getting away from the subject. I only wanted to touch upon this subject because a good many are complaining that Christian people don’t help them. I have sometimes fifteen or twenty letters a day, coming from Kansas, and Europe even, asking us to take up a collection. They say: "Here is a poor woman. Just get the people to give a penny apiece." Suppose we began doing that sort of thing. We should have to have somebody to look up this man or this woman and find if they are worthy. If we took up one collection, we would have to take up five hundred. I never found a person true to Christ but what the Lord would take care of them. I think it is a good thing for people to suffer a little until they come back to God. They will find that God will take care of them that love Him. A great many say, "Oh, I love God." It is easy enough, to say this, but if you do love God He knows about it, be assured. He knows how much you love Him. You may deceive your neighbors, and think you love God, and assume a good deal of love, when there is really no love in your heart.

Now it says in Corinthians 8: "But if any man love God, the same is known of him." God is looking from heaven down into this world just to find that one man. God knows where he lives, the number of his house, and the name of the street he lives in. In fact, He has the very hairs of your head numbered, and He will take good care of you. He will not let any of His own children come to want, He will not let any of those that come to want suffer, He will provide for their wants if they are only sincere, but He don’t want any sham work, When the Lord was here He was all the time stripping those Pharisees of their miserable selfrighteousness. They professed great love for Him while their hearts were far from God. Let us not profess to love God with our tongue and lips, while our lives are far from it.

DON’T KNOW THEIR OWN MINDS

Another class say, "I don’t know whether I love God or not. I am really anxious to know whether or not I love God." Now, if you are really anxious it won’t take you long to find out. You cannot love God and the world at the same time, because they abhor each other. They are at enmity, always have been and always will be. It is the world that crucified God’s Son; it was the world that put God’s Son to death. Therefore, if we love the world it is a pretty good evidence that the love of the Father is not in us. We may say our prayers and go through some religious performances, but our hearts are not right with God because we cannot love God and the world at the same time. We have got to get the world under our feet and the love of God must be first in our hearts or else we have not got the love of God.

The command we have is that he who loveth God loveth his brother also. Now, if we have got our heart full of enmity and jealousy and malice toward any of God’s children it is a sure sign that the love of God is not in our hearts. To love a man that loves me that don’t require any goodness; the greatest infidel can do that; but to love a man that reviles me and lies about me and slanders me-that takes the grace of God. I may not associate with him, but I may love him. I may hate the sin, but love the sinner, And that is one of the tests by which to find out whether you have love in your heart. The first impulse of the young convert is to love every one, and to do all the good he can, and that is the sign that a man has been born from above, born of God, and that he has got real love in his heart; and these tests God gives us that we may know.