# The Way of Agape

## Metadata
- Author: [[Nancy Missler]]
- Full Title: The Way of Agape
- Category: #books
## Highlights
- The pressure of a substantial weekly audience kept me seriously in the Word of God, preparing and researching, without which the intense pressures of my business life would probably have made a casualty of my study time. ([Location 175](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=175))
- Like the apostle Peter, I was always long on action and short on caution. (My Jewish friends have explained to me what a guarantor is: that's "a schmuck with a pen.") ([Location 200](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=200))
- In my "Biblical life," I have enjoyed wonderful sponsorship from Chuck Smith— my teacher, mentor, and close friend over these many years. His tutorship and his personal example have been among the most profound influences on my life. In my opinion, his philosophy of ministry is without equal. His emphasis on the study of the Word of God above all other things has made Calvary Chapel unique. ([Location 210](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=210))
- By discovering the real meaning of love—God's Love—and learning how to apply His ways in our day-to-day lives, God has wrought a miracle in our marriage, in our children, in our entire lives. The inevitable tensions are now dealt with on a Biblical basis and I am more in love than ever with this incredible woman. There's a predictable warmth and comfort in our home that was never there before. ([Location 249](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=249))
- We were what the Bible calls "whited sepulchres," which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are "full of dead men's bones and everything unclean." Jesus charges, "outwardly [you] appear righteous" [and loving], but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy. (Matthew 23:27-28) That's exactly what Chuck and I had become. ([Location 266](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=266))
- In the early 1980s, the Los Angeles Times reported: "Marriage is a quiet hell for about 50% of American couples. Four out of 12 end in divorce, and another six (that's ten out of 12) are loveless, utilitarian relationships to protect the children." Recent statistics now show that one out of every two marriages ends in divorce. ([Location 277](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=277))
- A "loveless relationship" is exactly what our marriage had become. We had what I like to call a professional marriage—a marriage where two people are existing together only for the purpose of convenience, show, security or, as the newspaper article stated, "to protect the children." ([Location 281](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=281))
- since I didn't know any other solution to my overwhelming hurts, I'd push all those emotions deep down in my heart, lock them up tightly, force a smile on my face, and come out to begin all over again. I thought that by burying my real feelings and putting on a smile, I'd get rid of the pain and no one would ever know the difference. ([Location 356](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=356))
- The truth is, when we bury our real feelings, we never really get rid of them; we only drive them down deeper and, even though we don't realize it at the time, those hurts eventually begin to motivate all our actions. ([Location 361](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=361))
- Anger and frustration and hurt would totally consume me. At that time, I didn't realize that my anger was just a symptom of a much deeper cause. Underneath my icy exterior lay unvented rejection and hurt that I had never properly dealt with before. ([Location 379](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=379))
- God began that night to show me all the things in my own heart that had quenched His Spirit and had become sin. He showed me my judgmental attitude, my self-pity, my spiritual pride, my self-righteousness, my unforgiveness, my resentment, my bitterness, and my anger—things I had stored up for years. These were things I had never given to God; thus they had automatically blocked God's Love in me. ([Location 434](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=434))
- Having the original negative thought is not sin. It's what we choose to do with that thought that makes it sin or not. We have three options: We can vent that negative thought; we can bury it; or we can give it to God. ([Location 444](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=444))
- God had been in my heart all along;3 however, I was the one preventing Him from coming forth and manifesting His Life and His Love through me, because I insisted upon holding on to my own "justified" hurt feelings. These negative things then acted like a wall or a barrier over my heart.4 ([Location 451](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=451))
- So the first thing I needed to learn was how to release and give these buried hurts and emotions over to God. In other words: 1) How to confess them as sin (i.e., how to acknowledge that I "owned" them and that they had separated me from Him);5 2) How to repent of them (i.e., how to change my mind about following them) and; 3) How to literally give them over to God. ([Location 456](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=456))
- I learned that to love God the way He wants us to love Him is not an emotion or a feeling. To love God means to lose self, to relinquish self, to set self aside, and to be broken of self. In other words, we must give God all our thoughts, emotions, and desires that are contrary to His so that His Love and His Life can come forth from our hearts. ([Location 463](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=463))
- Let me ask you the ultimate question. Do you have this kind of unconditional, forgiving Love in your life? On your own power and ability, can you love like this: "Never keeping records of wrongs, never noticing when others do you wrong, not easily angered, never self-seeking, loving no matter what the cost?" ([Location 1004](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=1004))
- Only God can love like 1 Corinthians 13, because only God is Agape Love. All God desires from you and me is an open and pure vessel so He can love like 1 Corinthians 13 through us. This one truth has changed my entire Christian experience. I can now say that, yes, God does—when I allow Him to—love like 1 Corinthians 13 through me, and it's the most exhilarating, most meaningful and most fulfilling experience of my life. Being an open channel for God's Love is where I desire to stay, because I know when I am filled with His Love, I am filled with God. ([Location 1010](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=1010))
- A good prayer to pray is Psalm 19:12-13, "Cleanse Thou me from [hidden or] secret faults...Let them not have dominion over me." Also, Psalm 139:23-24, "Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting." ([Location 6033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=6033))
- When we are willing to lay everything down, God promises us in Luke 18:30 (as well as many other Scriptures) that He will return a hundredfold, in this life as well as in the world to come, all that we have chosen to give to Him.6 It seems in my own life, the more I am willing to lay at God's feet, the more He returns a hundredfold! ([Location 6089](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00960RX3M&location=6089))