GOD-KIND OF LOVE VS NATURAL SELFISH HUMAN LOVE

I remember a woman came up to me in a meeting I was holding in a church. She said, crying, "God knows I love my children. " I brought them up right, but not one of them will come to church with me except my daughter." Her daughter played the piano at that church. She said, "There isn't anyone in all this church that has loved their children as much as I have loved mine."

Well, I could look at her daughter playing the piano and see that something was wrong with her. She was about twenty-four years old, and she'd taken music lessons and had even been to college. But if you looked at her, she'd duck her head to hide from you. I said to her mother, "When your daughter was growing up, did you ever allow her to have friends? She must be intelligent because she made good grades in college and she graduated with a degree in music." I knew a little bit about the family from what the pastor had told me. I asked this mother, "Did you ever permit her to have a boyfriend or a friend at school?" "No," her mother answered, "I just kept her at home. I wanted to protect her because I love her so much." I said, "You're lying. You didn't keep her at home because you loved her so much. You kept her at home because your love is selfish." I know that's not the way to win friends, but sometimes you have to jolt people to get them to see the truth! "Well, I just love her too much to let her go," the mother said to me. "She's never been away from home one night in her life." I said, "No, you don't love her. You love her with selfish human love. If you really loved your children with the God-kind of love, you'd want them to have friends. You'd want them to mix with people their own age and grow up and live a normal life." Then she said, "My son is seventeen years old, and he just ran off from home. I don't know where he is. Pray that he'll come back." I said, "No! I'm going to pray that he'll stay gone. Thank God, he had enough sense to get up and get out of that mess. That poor girl sitting over there at the piano stool probably hasn't got that much sense because you've warped her personality."

You see, here was a woman who was born again and even filled with the Spirit and attended a Full Gospel church, but she really didn't love her children with the divine love of God at all. She loved them with a natural human love, and that can be selfish. (Kenneth E. Hagin)