Revival: What’s Love Got to Do with It 
Michelle Mihalakis

1. True Love
•	Luke 9:51-56
•	When you love someone and they have a need, their need is your focus. God's focus was on the city of Jerusalem because He loved her. 
•	We sometimes forget that the word spirit is synonymous with the word love.
•	The Bible tells us in Is. 66:8,"Who hath heard such a thing? Who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children."
•	God requires that we speak His will into existence through prayer. 
•	When the church gets down to business with God it emits powerful waves in the spirit realm through a city and beckons the lost. It compels them to come. 
•	The whole process of the spiritual birds and bees starts with prayer. God is always looking for someone to pray for the lost. He looks for someone to birth His burden. 
•	When Zion, or the church travails, she is birthing the will of God into existence. To travail means to birth, and prayer is the first part of the birthing process. When we pray for the lost the Spirit of God visits them.

2. The Nature of Love
•	After we've travailed in prayer for the lost, God will send a messenger to minister to their needs.
•	In Gen. 1:2, the Bible says, "And the Earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." We know the Bible says that God is a Spirit, but have you ever stopped to think why God is God? The reason is conveyed in 1 John 4:8 where it stays, "God is love." 
•	Love is the most powerful force in the universe. Real love is moving, the way God moved on the waters. 
•	So we can say that Loved moved on the face of the waters. The nature of love is that it is stirring. When love moves, something happens.
•	In the Hebrew language the word moved means to brood over. The Amplified Bible uses the words hovering, brooding, and moving. 
•	Webster's Dictionary defines brood as offspring, progeny, that which is bred or produced. Brood comes from the word breed, which means to give birth to something.
•	 The word brooding is also compared to a bridegroom hovering over his bride.
•	When the Spirit of God was moving, it was birthing; it was bringing forth life. When love moves, it creates something. Wherever you find love, you will find that the recipient will never be the same again. Love stirs the emotion and soul of man. Real love is of the heavenly dimension. 
•	Real love demands a response because love, never fails.

3. You Shall Recieve Power
•	Acts 1:8 tells us, "But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the Earth." 
•	Many people want to have the gifts of the Spirit because they want to experience the power of God. But why would God equip someone with power if they never go anywhere to use it or need the power?
•	The calling of an apostle is a powerful one because it means one sent. There isn't anything more apostolic then being sent by God into our communities. 
•	God will stand behind His Word and equip us when we put ourselves on the firing line by going into enemy territory. 
•	The bolder we are and the more willing we are to go, the more He will equip us for the job. He doesn't want us to go into our cities ill-equipped. 
•	If you want to see real apostolic power, pray, fast, and start knocking on doors and witnessing to everyone you can. You will see apostolic power!

4. Really Apostolic
•	We want to call ourselves apostolic, but apostolic is going and moving, no matter what the cost. It means giving up other things you could be doing with your time. 
•	If one person will dare to pick up the message of the gospel, go into his or her city, and spend hours witnessing the gospel, God would turn that city upside down. It only takes one. 
•	God turned a whole continent upside down through the Apostle Paul. What about you? How long has it been since you moved? Love is so predisposed to moving that if it does not move, it will die.
•	When God moved on the lost soul called planet Earth, He was searching for and found a worshiper. 
•	The Spirit of God is still searching for someone who has need of a savior. And when He finds a worshiper, He sends someone to them who will convey His love message.
•	It was after God moved on the face of the waters that He said, "Let there be light." First, He displayed the love of God by moving and reaching for the planet Earth, then He spoke to her. 

5. The Prayer Life
•	I once heard a wise preacher say that you cannot win someone to God that you have not first prayed for. 
•	When we pray, we carry with us the presence of God to our world. You can always tell in a church those individuals who have a strong prayer life because the presence of God emanates from them. 
•	When we have the presence of God with us through prayer, we can present to the lost the anointed Word of God, and together they form the power of God that can transform anyone!

6. Love Brings Movement
•	We can't say we love if we are not willing to move toward the sinner because real love has to move. Real Intercession will cause you to not only pray, but put action behind God's burden. True prayer will cause us to move. 
•	The principle of love cannot fail. If love will move, many souls will be birthed into the kingdom of God. 
•	Human utterance produces the divine energy of God to create the new birth time and time again.
•	We live in a world that flows through the vehicle of communication. It's not a wonder because we were created in God's image and He is the Word. We are in a war of words. Words create information and knowledge. 
•	The problem that most people have is that they have difficulty discerning what is the right information. Many people involve themselves with the wrong information. Information that is idle is a waste of time. 
•	If information doesn't teach us something or progress the kingdom of God, it is a waste of our time.

7. Knowledge
•	The first thing God said after He moved on the earth was "Let there be light." In other words, let there be knowledge; let My Word be manifest. 
•	The Spirit of God moves and is in the faith dimension. Faith is a spiritual concept. Faith with movement is life. When God moved on the earth, He set the faith dimension in operation.
•	Faith is the response to being loved. When someone shows us love, we put a certain amount of trust or faith in that individual. 
•	By loving us, they have earned our trust. When we trust someone, we are receptive to what they have to teach us. Love is the carrier of the word.
•	Gal. 5:6
•	Love is the workhorse that faith rides upon. If you love someone, they will usually listen. The moment two people start arguing the scriptures, the carrier called love just died. Love will not operate in anger. 
•	When two people have heightened emotions, no one is really listening to the other speak. And whether they realize it or not, they just lost their audience.

8. They Must Hear
•	Romans 10:14 states that, "How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?" 
•	The first thing God wanted the earth to receive after He embraced her was knowledge. Knowledge gives understanding.
•	f you study the parable of the sower, you will find one of the main factors that caused folks to leave truth was the lack of understanding. 
•	When you teach a home Bible study you are bringing the presence, Word (knowledge), and power of God to their home. The spiritual atmosphere of where they live will change.
•	When God breathed into Adam the breath of life, Adam received something God-like, and that was faith. 
•	The Bible tells us that God has given to every man a measure of faith. If someone is breathing, they have life. As long as they have life, they have hope.

9. Defining Faith

•	Heb. 11:1 tells us the definition of faith: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The lost have a seed of faith that becomes watered when God opens their heart to His Word. 
•	The only thing that can cause that seed of faith to grow is the Word of God. When God opens the heart of man to His Word, "little faith" meets "big faith."
•	Numerous times when witnessing the gospel I feel the anointing of God as I expound truth to someone. 
•	What is happening when we feel the Spirit of God in this manner is the Spirit is piercing the heart of that person and the words that you are speaking are penetrating and affecting their heart. 
•	When we feel the anointing while ministering to them, we need to continue to flow in the vein that God has opened up for us. It is a confirmation to Keep it up. 
•	Your words are having an affect. Keep it up I am with you.
•	The Spirit that hovered over Mary and caused her to conceive is the same Spirit that hovers over the lost wanting them to receive the seed of the Word of God so they can be birthed into His kingdom. 
•	There is nothing more miraculous or powerful than the salvation of a soul. It is on the top of God's list of priorities.

10. The Acceptable Word

•	The Bible tells us that the preacher seeks out the acceptable Word. This Word that the Lord wants delivered to the lost of this world and His people is so precious it takes great searching to find the right words. 
•	When a man asks a woman to marry him, he wants the words spoken to be just the right words. God feels the same way.  
•	Not just any word will do. It has to be anointed and led by the Spirt of God. So the love, presence, and Word of God are in the service surrounding a hungry soul. 
•	The sinner goes down to the willing to give his life for this new found love and begins to I God. 
•	His praise turns into worship while the Holy Ghost is we and hovering over him. After he has entered into worship, the Spirit powerfully becomes one with them, and a conception or birth occurs. 
•	Then they can cry, "Abba, Father!" The angels and the saints of God rejoice right along with them.

The above article, “Revival: What’s Love Got to Do with It” is written by Michelle Mihalakis. The article was excerpted from the 10th chapter of Mihalakis’s book The How’s & Whys of Witnessing the Gospel.

The material is copyrighted and should not be reprinted under any other name or author. However, this material may be freely used for personal study or research purposes.