The Jason DeMars Podcast

Agape And The Family

• Jason DeMars

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Hungry for a love that actually transforms your home, your friendships, and your future? We dig into the four loves—agape, phileo, storge, and eros—and show how only one can lead the others without warping into control, codependence, or chaos. Starting with Exodus 34 and the balance of mercy and justice, we unpack why grace requires truth, why the cross makes mercy make sense, and how the gospel reframes what real love does. Then we walk through Peter’s restoration in John 21, where Jesus meets a humbled friend and calls him higher, turning phileo into a mission—feed my sheep. That same call lands in our homes: fathers, mothers, and singles are invited to order their loves and lead with purpose.

We move from teaching to practice fast. You’ll hear how love without hypocrisy requires hating evil and clinging to good, why a family altar matters, and how to stop confusing strong feelings with faithful love. We name the counterfeits—smothering affection, grief that rules a house, and romance that dethrones covenant—and replace them with a better pattern. Eros is a spark, not a steering wheel. Phileo is warmth, not a warrant to avoid truth. Storge is tender, not a license to idolize your children. Agape is the guide that keeps every affection pointed toward growth in Christ.

There’s also hard-won encouragement for anyone who has failed. Like Peter, you can be restored and recommissioned. If you’ve drifted, fallen, or misordered your loves, you can repent, rebuild, and lead those around you toward life. God’s elective love even uses suffering to shape character, establishing us so we can love when feelings fade and serve when convenience ends. By the end, you’ll have a vision for your home that’s simple enough to start tonight: open the Word together, pray, set healthy boundaries, speak life, and keep going. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review so others can find the message. What step will you take first?

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SPEAKER_00:

Greetings, Bible believers and followers of the End Time Message. Welcome to another episode of the Jason Demars Podcast, the place where we explore the incredible mysteries hidden within the pages of the Bible. I'm your host, Jason Demars. It's time to get started on another journey into the heart of God's Word. If it's your desire to grow in Revelation and see the message in the light of the Bible, you're in the right place. Today, brothers and sisters, we delve into the scripture, guided by the extraordinary revelations that God chose to unveil through Brother William Marion Branham, a messenger with a unique calling to fulfill Malachi 4 and Revelation 10:7 and unlock the secrets of the end time message. Our purpose isn't to have another basic Bible study. We're going to dig deep and peel back the layers of prophecy, decoding the signs and perhaps discovering how the Bible resonates within the very fabric of our present day and time. In this podcast, my purpose is to help you grow in your faith through solid Bible teaching through the lens of the message of Malachi 4. So grab your Bible, a cup of coffee, and let's get started. And remember that your feedback, testimonies, questions, and prayer requests are always welcome. Please send them on social media or at jasendamars.com. With that said, let's get into today's podcast. God bless you all. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast this week. The Lord willing. I will get a little bit more consistent with it. We've had a lot of upheaval with moving, and you can see I'm in a different place. I'm I'm actually in near Mora, Minnesota, where my wife's family cabin is, and recording there with a nice stone background of the fireplace and beautiful setting. But my desire is to get back into the podcast. You know, we've just had so much through the traveling recently, we've had so much feedback from so many different people, how they've been blessed and helped by the podcast, and also about the books that we have at jasondemars.com. You can order those there. A number of brothers from India recently, when we were up in Edmonton, mentioned how they were using one of the articles I wrote many, many years ago, maybe 12, 13, 14 years ago I wrote it about the seven parables, and they're using it for outreach and translating it into all the different Indian languages. And I was shocked, I had no idea. So that was so encouraging to me. And so I really appreciate your feedback. You're always going to hear me say that.com or it's on the different social media platforms that you're listening to this on, whether it be YouTube, make sure to subscribe and like and comment, or if you're listening in on Apple Podcasts, we need your feedback there. Definitely appreciate that. I have kind of a new series, although it's an old series. I've been preaching it in churches, and I may have done portions of it in the past for podcasts, but I want to start on a like a series on family, and in particular looking at first looking at love and boundaries, what love is, what evil is, and then I want to look at what uh forgiveness is. You know, of course, there's four different words in the Greek language that speak of love, and so these are different ways of looking at what love is, and it's very important for us to be able to really have an understanding of what is love. People say, you'll hear them say all the time, love is love. And you know, how can homosexuality be wrong if they love each other or whatever whatever whatever perverted thing is out there, how can we say it's not love? How can we say it's not good if if if people love each other? And so it just depends on how you define love. You know, most people most people define love as just a warm feeling, or they look at it as in the sense of falling in love, and you know falling in love is a good thing, but is that what biblical love is? And so I want to look at that. I want to look at family, how how that intersects with family, but then I also want to look at it, how it intersects with friendship. That's another type of love, how that intersects with your your personal walk with the Lord, and how your personal uh walk with the Lord intersects with family, with friendship, and then look at look at forgiveness and how what big part of redemption forgiveness plays. And so there's a number of different routes I want to go. I also want to look within this in family, looking at the the provisions of a husband and a father. And when you look at the provision of a husband and a father, to see also regarding what inheritance is. And I think there's a real genuine picture that the Lord is painting for us, especially in this dark and evil hour. My goodness, I look at what's happening in in the world today, and even how much of an upheaval has taken place in society, just as far as family in general, and raising children, and becoming a grandparent, and aging. All of these things are like we've we've taken the devil's substitute. Even as believers, maybe we're not even aware of how we've taken the devil's substitute. We've gotten away from the program that God laid forth for families and fatherhood and motherhood and old age and inheritance in the Bible. And I think I want to I want to show how all of these things really intersect for the vision that the Bible puts forward. The first thing, you know, I really have got some deep diving and studying and research and scriptures to put together on that other part, but the love portion that we want to talk about, I've I preached it and I know I've posted a couple of the videos on my website of what I preached in Norway. I preached some of this at Brother Paula Fontaine's church. And so I know I've preached this a few different times, and if you know, if you're one of our my listeners that's heard it before, forgive me. It definitely comes out different at a church versus at doing a podcast. So it's just a different process, it's a different procedure for me, how the anointing works, and so really want the Lord to take control. And that's earlier today, really had it heavy on my heart that I needed to record this podcast. So I believe that the Lord's gonna use it, and it's something that he wants to help one of his children with that's out there that needs this word today or whatever day it is, it could be years from now that you're listening to this. Who knows? But we'll start out looking at the four loves and what is love. 1 John 4 16, and we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him. So God is love, but not all love is God. This word for love is the word agape. God is agape. So God's love is agape love. God's love is not merely filial love, it's not merely storge love. God's love is agape love. And he that dwelleth in agape dwelleth in God and God in him. So John also tells us that God is light, and Jesus says God is spirit. So all the attributes of God flow out of these three things. God is love, God is light, God is spirit. And so for us to understand who God is, we can't say God is love and then bring our modern interpretation and viewpoint of what love is, but we have to understand love in the threefold balance of light and spirit. Right? So Exodus 34, 6 and 7 gives us a picture and an understanding of all of the this balance that we have to do. You know, you you have this on one one side, his love on one side, but you also have his justice and his wrath on the other side. And you you if you just take one, then you don't know who God is. You only have a part of God, you don't have the fullness of God. And so Scripture brings the whole picture. Exodus 34, 6. And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children unto the third and to the fourth generation. So God's mercy makes no sense at all without the context of the fact that God visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. So, in other words, mercy makes no sense without God not being a God of justice and wrath. So if God is not a God of justice and wrath, then it's not mercy anymore. So mercy means that you're not gonna get what you deserve, you're gonna get what you don't deserve. God is going to forgive your sins, he's going to pardon your sins. That's not what you deserve. What you deserve is punishment. You do you've created, you know, people look at sin as just something small and it's not offensive to God, but true men of God through the ages understood when they sinned, they sinned against God. David said, I've sinned against thee and thee only. Of course, we understand that you know when we've sinned against God, when we've turned against him, we've actually committed what some writers will call cosmic treason. So we've committed treason against the Almighty, and so when you've when what's the punishment in America for treason? It's execution, it's death. And most countries, that's what it is. If you've committed treason, if you commit espionage against your own country, they're gonna put you to death. They can't tolerate those things. And so very important for us to understand when you've sinned against God, you've not just committed a light thing, you've committed treason against the Almighty, and he told us the day that you eat thereof, that day you die. And the reason so many people just walk over God's mercy is that that not the minute you sin, you don't perish. So you think, well, God isn't going to punish me. I can do whatever I want to do. But this is short-term thinking. The fact that God doesn't punish you immediately, open up the earth, and swallow you up down to hell is because he's giving you mercy, he's giving you a space to repent from your sins. And so God is merciful and gracious and patient and good, and he speaks the truth. At the very same time, in this context, we understand that mercy and patience and graciousness, in the context of the fact that he doesn't clear the guilty, so there has to be a means for him to have mercy. So if he's going to have mercy, he has to make a way for himself to have mercy. And so that's why he always provides a sacrifice. He provides a sacrifice and he provides mercy so that we can repent, so that our sins can be cleared, so that he can clear us. But if you don't repent, and if you don't accept the sacrifice, then God will not clear you, and he will visit your iniquity upon your children, your grandchildren, and your great-grandchildren. And so the point of what I'm bringing this up is not necessarily to preach the gospel, though that's a great chance to preach the gospel to you. Jesus Christ died for our sins. Jesus took the punishment that we deserved. He was our substitute. He was not guilty. He was sinless, he was perfect, he was faultless. So so God, by his grace, took our sins and took our sins and placed our sins upon Jesus Christ at the cross, and he died in our place. And what's necessary for us? Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. So repentance and faith in Jesus Christ is the requirement for salvation, for the for your for mercy to be poured out upon you. And so without seeing the balance, the gospel itself doesn't even make sense. So if God just loves everyone the same in exactly the same way, then how does it make sense that we need the gospel? God hates sin. God will punish sin. God even hates the sinner. But his mercy and his love provide a means of escape. Is it God's fault if we reject the means of escape? No, it's not God's fault. It's our fault, it's our problem. Brother Branham says in the sermon adoption number four, I said, Oh Lord, that's what I'm here at the church for, trying to set the church in order, telling you, brother and sister, there's only one thing can enter that, and that's perfect love. He's speaking of his, he had a vision, and he wasn't sure if it was a vision or if he actually went into that other dimension. And in that other dimension, he saw believers that had passed on and that were over there, and he said they had perfect love. And now he's saying the only one that can enter that is perfect love. Not because you're loyal to the Branham Tabernacle or the Methodist Church or Baptist Church, them's alright. You should be, but oh friends, you've got not because you spoke with tongues, danced in the spirit, because you cast out devils or moved mountains with faith. That's all right, for that's all right. But still, unless that real perfect love is in there, that was where perfect love was. And that's the only thing that'll let you in there. That's the only thing that can stay there. It's the only thing there was there. Oh my, it's an adoption. God before the foundation of the world. Amen. He saw you there, and he ordained that only perfect love could enter. And so that's where we see we're looking at God is going to move and work within the heart of his people to create a perfect love. All right, this is what we've got to enter into. So John 21, 15 through 18, we're all familiar. This is Peter. After Peter had denied him three times, the Lord Jesus comes and reaffirms him three times. But the way he reaffirms him is very interesting. Because we have Peter who has affirmed his love, said, I'm gonna go to uh I'll go to the to death with you. I'll defend you to the very end. And Jesus says, Satan has desired to sift you as wheat, but I've prayed for you that your faith fail you not. Before the cock crows three times, you'll deny me three times. Before the cock crows, you'll deny me three times. Excuse me. So here after the resurrection, here's Peter interacting with the Lord Jesus. And he says, This, so when they had dined, Jesus saith to Peter, so John 21, 15. So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest, agape thou me more than these. He saith unto him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I feel thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. Now we see a humbled Peter. The Lord Jesus asks, Do you agape me? And he says, Lord, you know, you know that I'm fond of you as a friend. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. This is the humble Peter saying, I failed. I failed, I'm unable. I'm being honest from my heart, Lord. Before I declared my agape love for you, my godly love for you, but after my failure, I can just say, Lord, I'm fond of you. But Jesus doesn't come to him with a great rebuke. What does he do? He gives him his commission: feed my lambs. You're gonna be the shepherd. You're gonna be the shepherd of the sheep, feeding them the word of God. My goodness. So this is the Lord Jesus seeing what Peter no longer could see in himself, seeing the vision of not what Peter was, not Peter's failure, but what he was gonna shape Peter into. And I think this is so so neat, so cool what the Lord is doing here. He's looking at Peter and he's loving him in such a way, saying, I know you're right here, Peter, but I'm calling you up here. I'm speaking to you like you're up here. Even though you're down here, I know that. I can see that, but here, this is what I'm calling you to. I believe that's the love that we have to have for one another. I believe that's the love we need to project to our wife, to our children. We we literally can, by the spoken word, that's what the Lord Jesus is doing. By the spoken word, we can call people up higher. We can we can plant the seed and give them the vision of something that's higher and greater and deeper. So verse 16, he saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, Agape thou me. He saith unto him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I felio thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep. So once again, Peter uh Jesus is saying, Do you agape me, Peter? Peter says, Nah, I felio you. Right? This is this is uh friendship. That's what what filio is fondness, friendship. Peter is keeping himself humble, saying, In myself, I can't. I can't do it, I can't accomplish it. I tried on my own and I failed miserably. What does the Lord say? Feed my sheep. So I believe that him asking, Do you guide me? And then you feed me. He's calling Peter up higher. Peter says, I'm down here, Lord. The Lord says, I can see you're down there. I know what's happening, I know, I know what you did, I'm reaffirming you. But I'm also speaking the word into your life that you're going to enter into something greater, something deeper, and something bigger than you could ever imagine. Verse 17, he saith unto him the third time Simon, son of Jonas. Uh-oh. Philio thou me? So now here he's bringing it down to Peter's level. Do you are you sure that you filio me? Are you sure you just denied me three times? Though this has to absolutely cut to Peter's quick. And he says, Peter was grieved because he saith unto him the third time, Philio thou me? And he saith unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I felio thee. Jesus saith unto him, Again, there he's down here, says, Feed my sheep. I'm calling you up here. But then Jesus goes even further and lets him know, You will, you will be victorious. Very, very saying thee, when thou art young, thou girdest thyself and walkest whither thou wouldest, but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. Amen. So Peter, you went where you wanted to, you did what you wanted to, you denied me, you walked away, you ran, you scattered with the other sheep. But and you so you failed. I see that, but I I'm telling I'm telling you down the road, and I'm telling you, I'm calling you to a higher calling. You will lay be willing to lay down your life for me. You will accomplish what you said before and failed. Here you're you're going to have a higher victory. And I believe that's what the Lord's speaking into your life right now. Maybe you're in a situation and you're listening to this and you think I failed so miserably. But guess what? You got up, you didn't lay down there, you didn't quit, you got up, you you listened to another message, you you took the time. I mean, you're you're you're taking the time to listen to a podcast. This isn't just, you're not just going to church on Wednesday and Sunday, but there's a hunger inside of you, desiring something a little bit more. This shows that God is calling you up higher. You may have failed miserably, you may have completely messed up. You may have caused irreparable damage to your life. God is calling you higher. God is calling you to bring redemption not only into your own life, but to bring redemption into the lives of those around you. And it's up to you to lead your family that way. If you're a man, you lead your family that way. If you're a woman, enter into the vision that the Lord has for godly womanhood and follow that. If you're a young lady, you've been you you you maybe you failed. Young man, maybe you failed. Maybe you maybe you hurt yourself so bad you you you committed adultery, or you committed fornication, or you listened to the person. Listen to the wrong person, and it brought a reproach upon you, and you brought damage into your life. Well, guess what? It's not complicated. Repent. But I did this and I did that. So did Peter. The Lord Jesus right now is calling you into something higher. You're right down here. Do you do you uh do you love the do you love the Lord? Do you agape the Lord? You might respond, I'm I I feel you owe thee, Lord. But he's calling you to something higher. Maybe he's not calling you to be a shepherd, but he's calling you to feed the sheep in your life. If you're a if you're a mom and you have children, feed those little lambs. If you're a dad, you've been called to feed your wife, and you've been called to feed your children. It shouldn't just be, I take my family to church. Where's your family altar? Do you do you read the Bible and pray? Maybe read a devotional or teach your children? Are you teaching your family the fundamentals of the faith? You say, I'm not qualified to do that. If you're a father and you have children, it's your job. You didn't know you signed up for it, now you do. If you're a mom, you have daughters, go read Titus 2 and find out what the Lord is telling you to teach your girls. Teach them about modesty, teach them about discretion, keep them, teach them about chastity. These things the Lord is calling you higher to. He has a vision for you. You say, I failed, I couldn't do it. Well, we have a great example. Peter failed. Maybe he failed worse than you did. The Bible says, if you desire deny the Son of Man before man, I will deny you before my Father in heaven. That's the absolute truth. And yet, within that absolute truth of the justice of God, there is an abundant mercy, there is an abundant grace, there is an overflowing love that he has and says, You're my predestinated seed. It doesn't matter what mess that you've got yourself in into, redemption is here. Amen. Romans 12, 9 and 10. Oh, I so enjoy this. I pray that whoever heard those words that it would be an encouragement to you. If that encouraged you, let me know that encouraged you. I felt such an anointing to say that. Oh my goodness. If you if you were encouraged and if the Lord spoke to you particularly, send me a text or send me an email, love to hear from you. Romans 12, 9. Let love agape be without dissimulation. Dissimulation means concealment of the opinions, sentiments, or purpose, but it includes also the assuming of a false or counterfeit appearance which conceals the real opinions or purpose. How many of you are sick of two-faced Christians? How many of you are sick of false people that put on a facade, a veneer on the outside, and they say the right words, but their heart is far from you? I hate that. That's loving with dissimulation. Don't love with dissimulation. Let your love, let your agape be true, honest, sincere, and real. Very next thing he says is abhor that which is evil or hate that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. So, right along with being able to love right, you also have to hate evil and cling to that which is good. If you don't, if you don't, if you don't have the capacity to hate evil, then you also don't have the capacity to love. So God hates evil and loves righteousness. So if you don't if you if you don't hate evil, you can't love righteousness. You can't love evil and love righteousness at the same time. It's it does it's incongruous, it's an impossibility. In order to love love other people properly, you also have to hate that which is evil. And to hold close to that which is good. And so without holding to what is good. Then your love becomes disordered. And you'll understand that a little bit more as we go along. And this is going to maybe take weeks, weeks to go through. I'm going to do everything within my power to report record a podcast every week. You pray for me. I I like I like my ducks to be in a row and everything to be in order and to have a nice setup place and studio. And well, thank the Lord. He provided something else for me. But it's it's it's difficult on my temperament to have to be an upheaval and have my belongings in storage and have stuff here and there and travel this place and that place. It's it's it's not a simple thing. The Lord, the Lord is our strength, though. Alright. So that's agape love, then verse 10. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love, in honor, preferring one another. Right. So kindly affectioned this word is phylostorgos. So in one word, it puts together the two of the Greek words about love, philio and storge. Philio is friendship, storge is family affection or affection to someone you're connected to. So be kindly affectionate one to another with brotherly love. This is the word philadelphia. Delphi means brethren. It's it's like neither a male or female word, means brothers and sisters. So philio broth is is is um friendship, but here it's brotherly friendship, brotherly love. Then it says, in honor, preferring one another. So this is putting other people before your own needs, right? Again, man, there's so many things that can be taken out of context and misunderstood and misconstrued. To put one some people above to put other people before yourselves doesn't mean you put other people before your family. In the church. Amen. You don't you if you don't he a man that would not provide for his own has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. And so in our love has to be ordered properly. If it's not ordered properly, it will be perverted. So in in this in these verses, you see three different kinds of love mentioned. And in the Greek language, there there's four different kinds. But in the New Testament, three kinds are mentioned. Agape, that's divine love, filio, that's friendship, storge, that's affection, and eros, that's like I would just term it falling in love. And so it's the where they get the term term erotic or sexual, sexual love. And so human loves, without its proper balance with divine love, agape love, end up in the end being complicated forms of hatred. And so when love, when the human love reaches its highest strength without the love of God, it ceases to be love and it turns into a demon. Every love, every human love claims for itself divine authority. And so that's what it tends to do. Human love claims for itself divine authority. And so that's just what this statement, this modern statement in North America that you'll see Methodist and Lutheran apostate Methodist and Lutheran churches put forward. Love is love, and they put a rainbow sign there speaking to the homosexuals. So love is love. It's like a rebuke to those of us that say that homosexuality is perverted. And so it's not a rebuke, it's just another form of idiocy that they have to say that all love is love. I mean, psychologically, we understand love is not always love, right? It's very, very easy to understand that on a on a very much uh logical level. People call things love, but that just because you call it love doesn't mean it's truly love. You know, there the the homosexual movement is is claiming for itself divine authority because it's love, then you have to bow down your knee at it. See, it's become a it's become a god to them, and in the moment that it becomes a god, it turns into a demon. It's something distorted, evil, perverted, twisted, and destructive. So here's a few examples that we can talk about, and I've spoken about this a number of times, and so I'm just going to take a few minutes to go into this. We'll go into this a few examples, and we'll finish there. There's much more to cover. I'm gonna take another 20 minutes or so to go in, and we'll see. We'll see how far we get. So consider a mother who loves her son so much that she smothers him to the point he cannot function as a separate human from his mother. He doesn't know how to take care of himself, he isn't allowed to find someone to court because it would break his mother's heart. Everyone says, Wow, that mother sure loves her son, but is it love if it stifles and damages the growth and independence of her son? No, it isn't love. She's attached to him out of the lack and the brokenness that she has in her own life, but it isn't love. It isn't love, it's codependence, not love. There's a big difference between love and being dependent on another person. Love is not a dependence on another person or forcing another person to be dependent upon you. Another example, consider a mother who lost her son. The son was a young, an in a young age, whatever age you meant, could figure out she spends the rest of her life mourning and complaining about that, drowning in sorrow, making her husband and children miserable through her bitterness. Now, of course, we understand there's a grieving process. Everybody grieves differently. No one can define for you how you'll grieve, but in time, there needs to be a time of healing and a season of moving on because there's other people to love and there's a life to live that God has so ordained for you to have. And so in her bitterness, she's drowning in sorrow and she makes everyone miserable around her. Her husband and her other children are have to be miserable with her. And what she did is she made an idol out of her disease deceased son and made everyone around her bow down to this idol. This love that she, this love, quote unquote, love she has to her son that died isn't love. It's a demon. And she's going to tell you every time she can't how much she loved her son and how her life was ruined. But if she had love in her heart, she would learn to let go of her bitterness and learn to be able to move on, even having that heartbreak, learn to move on and love her family that is there with her. Consider a father that dotes on and spends all his time protecting and guarding his daughter without allowing them to grow, focusing all his energy on loving his daughter without spending time and energy on his wife. If he had love in his heart, he would know that the order of his love is corrupted and that in trying to protect and guard his daughter, he's actually in the long run damaging her because the best gift he can give his daughters is loving their mother well. And also, of course, helping those daughters grow towards maturity and entering into their own home and finding a godly husband that would redeem her and would recreate another godly home. So, as we said before, love begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god. In other words, human love claims for itself divine authority that then overrides all other obligations. It demands unconditional allegiance. It then becomes a demon and destroys both us and itself. When human love reaches its highest point, its pinnacle, it then claims divine rights and wants all others to bow down and worship it. As we said before, the sodomite rights group. They say love is love. How can it be wrong if they love each other? That's a form of madness when Eros love is deified and becomes an idol. The Bible says there's none good save one, and that's God. So a human love without God is not good at all. As it rises in its human strength, it changes from something beautiful to something hideous and very destructive. Alright, we have a few more minutes to go. I hate saying it that way. I gotta I got all the time in the world. This is a podcast. You can pause it and come back and listen to it later. If it's too long. Alright, so let's look at the the before we go further. I want to just talk a little bit about Eros love. As I said before, Eros love is, and this might be good, this might really help some young people. Eros love is what I term falling in love. And of course, we have this picture in in Disney and in Hallmark movies where everything has to order itself around falling in love. You know, you might have you might have made commitments to other people and you thought you loved them, you committed your life to them, you're going to marry them, but then you go back into your old hometown and you see the person that you loved when you were, and you had you were discontent with them and didn't want them, but now you're coming back and you realize you're you fall in love with them in your hometown, and and then you break up the engagement to the other person and you get married to this one. And so at the very best, this is a very deep form of a lack of commitment and a lack of love, actually. It's not love at all. In fact, falling in love, we we talk about falling in love. Now, scripture never speaks about falling in love, it doesn't say husbands eros, your wife, it says husbands agape, your wife. And of course, you know, God created the sensation, the emotion of falling in love. But if we stayed in this position of falling in love our entire life, we'd never get anything done. We would be so infatuated with this person that we wouldn't be able to work, we wouldn't be able to go to church, we wouldn't be able to do anything. All we would be doing would be loving on this person. And so falling in love is a good thing. God created it, otherwise, none of us would be here today. It's a part of life and it's it's good. It's good to fall in love, but it also we have to understand its limitations because if I'm a married man and I've made a covenant with my wife in the presence of God and of the minister and witnesses, and then you know, I'm at work and suddenly I fall in love with another woman, and then I obey that falling in love, that emotion of falling in love. I'm a very sick person. Now, people do that all the time. Worldly people do that all the time. You know, I'm getting a divorce because we fell out of love. We don't love each other anymore. But the truth is you fell in love with someone else, and you wanna the old feelings that you had towards your spouse are gone and they're redirected towards someone else. Now, this isn't love because you've broke the covenant, you've been unfaithful to your spouse, your husband or your wife. It's literally, it's literally a lack of maturity, it's a lack of wisdom. Now, you you can absolutely make a mistake, not have the guardrails up, get in conversations at work, and suddenly you feel yourself falling in love with this person. You you as an adult, you have to have, and especially as a Christian, you have to have self-control, and it should cause you in those moments to run away. Cut that relationship off, cut that friendship off. Eros will you can't obey the whims and the will of Eros love. Eros will shoot his arrow into you, and if you follow that, you'll be like a madman going from person to person. It doesn't work that way. Love is a love is not a feeling, love is not an emotion. Love is a choice and a decision. You've already made a choice and a decision, a commitment to God. It's the same thing for young people. You might, what do they call it, catch feelings? That's probably an old uh antiquated term, but I'll just say it that way. You might catch feelings for some boy you meet that's in the world, or some boy might catch a believing boy might catch feeling for a girl in the world. But the Bible says not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. So you have to surrender this sensation to the Lord and allow him to dictate who you love and don't love. And remember, it's a choice. Any anything that you could fall into, you can fall out of. And so eros love is a good thing to start out a relationship, but it's a very poor way to continue it because you you don't live in that condition, you don't live in the intensity of that love, and that's it is an intense version of love, but no one can live up to that intensity, and it goes up and down, and it's it's a wonderful thing, it feels great, but if it's not hand if it's not placed in its proper order and channels of agape love, it will be twisted and perverted, and it will literally ruin your life, it will destroy your life. You'll have three or four ex-exes, and you'll have kids by five or six different women. We don't follow that. We don't follow our emotions, we follow the word. Right? Love is not an emotion, so eros is not true love. Right. So agape that speaks of divine love. Also, if you do any research about it and look into it, you'll see it's an unconditional love. That's that's partially true, unconditional love. It's a love given whether or not the person deserves it or not, in that sense. It's also a sacrificial type of love, it's a giving of yourself, giving of a part of yourself to others. But I want to look even deeper to see what God's love is, and in turn help our love to go deeper and going forth for the purpose that God has for us. Brother Branham says in the sermon, Hear ye him. Men and women, hear me today as your brother. Let all your little isms and your little sensations drop. Find the love of God. I'd rather have his love than every gift he's got in the kingdom. Give me his love. That's what the world is looking for today is to see a display of real love. It'll win souls when you got love. They can tell it when you got love. We got too much make-believe love, we got too much love, philio love, trying to make it agape-o love. We need real godly love. So you can have a you can have a felio love and claim that it's agape love, but it's not love, it's just friendship. And from that time, Brother Branham says, but let me tell you a little secret. The most powerful force in the world isn't speaking with tongues or interpreting tongues or being honored by God to be a minister or to be an evangelist or to be a prophet. The most powerful weapon that I've ever found in my life is love. The phileo love, which the Greek word comes from friendship, like you have for your wife, there's a difference. It'll become a mother. Mother for that baby run through a blazing fire. Her life means nothing. That's phileo love. What will agapo do? See the godly love. We must love, divinely love one another. Then you don't see your brother's mistake. If he does make a mistake, you never look over the top of it and you love him anyhow. See, that's it. Love those that love you. Then does not the sinner do the same thing, but love those who doesn't love you. That's what shows the spirit of God is in you, because he loved you when you were his enemy and he loved you. And if that spirit's in you, it'll make you love your enemy as you do your friend. Right. In the Smyrna Church Age, chapter four of the church age's book, Brother Branham says, You see, they could not figure out God's love. They thought that love meant no suffering. They thought that love meant a baby with parental care, but God said that his love was elective love. The proof of his love is election, that no matter what happened, his love was proven truly by the fact that they were chosen unto salvation. He may commit you death to death as he did Paul, may commit you to suffering as he did Job. That's his prerogative. He's sovereign, but it's all with a purpose. So God's love that submits us to suffering has a purpose. If he did not have a purpose, then he'd be the author of frustration and not of peace. His purpose is that we have suffered a while. After we have suffered a while, we would be made perfect, be established, strengthened, and settled. Hebrews 5, 8 through 9, though he were a son, yet learned the obedience by the things which he suffered, and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him. In plain language, the very character of Jesus was perfected by suffering. And according to Paul, he left his church a measure of suffering, that they too, by their faith in God, while suffering for him, would come to a place of perfection. So God's purpose, God's elective love, is extended to us for a purpose. And what is that purpose? That we would be made like unto Jesus, that we'd be changed and transformed into his image, that we would be, that the character of Christ would be molded and shaped into us. So when God loves us, God loves us with a divine purpose. And when that love comes forth and is extended to us, that power comes to us, that that love, which doesn't see the fault, but sees the vision of what they are to be. That's connecting the dots. So agape love is a power force that extends itself for the purpose of our spiritual growth into the image of Jesus Christ. So I think that's where I want to stop right there. Looking at that, we'll we'll come back and we'll look at 1 Corinthians 13 to see what love is and what love isn't, and then we'll continue on as we look at uh at love and we'll continue in its in its family sense. So as a father, as a mother, as a husband, our our purpose and our vision of loving our family is loving them to help them grow spiritually. Right? So that's that's the place that the Lord is looking at for us to see to see in us reproducing Himself, reproducing His own love in us. And so when we when we love, when we love our family, when we love our our wife, when we love our children, we're leading them deeper into growth in the Word, deeper into growth spiritually, deeper into growth as sons and daughters of God. And so if we're not if we're loving them just with affection, that's good. There's nothing wrong with affection, there's nothing long wrong with friendship. All of these things are good, but if it's not ordered with agape love as its foundation and also as its motivation, then those loves will be disordered and selfish. Ultimately, file love is what pleasure you can get from friendship from another. Storge love, again, it's the affection that you can feel towards another. It's what the other person does that makes you feel warm towards them. Eras, again, it's a very internalized, internalized feeling of how that other person makes you feel emotionally. And all of them is focused on self. And so without agape love, all those loves will then be out of order, out of cater, going in different directions that ultimately cause damage and not growth. And so, as parents, as a father, as a mother, we have to have that vision for our family that it's our duty to bring forth spiritual growth in their lives. And so we should be praying in that direction. We should be looking at things in that direction. If once we once you see this as your principal purpose in your family and in your life, it really starts to shape things and you'll start to look at things very, very differently. Look at yourself, look at others very differently. So I trust this has been a blessing. We'll continue on next week. If you have any questions or prayer requests or testimonies for me, I sure appreciate you sending that to me at jasondemars.com or through any of the social media that you're listening to this podcast on. God bless you.