by David Brandt Berg June, 1977
Note: This was written during the Family International's famous "Flirty Fishing" ministry when Family woman would go to nightclubs in Tenerife (Canary Islands) to meet lonely men and share the Gospel with them.
From pretty young shop girls and waitresses and secretaries to elderly widows and rich old dowagers; from handsome young clerks, bookkeepers, technicians, white-collar workers and engineers to wealthy businessmen, retired widowers, single shopkeepers and even bachelor farmers, we found them all the SAME:
HUNGRY, LONELY, EMPTY, UNHAPPY, DISSATISFIED and SPIRITUALLY DESTITUTE--ALL LONGING FOR LOVE of all kinds, but especially for a love they had never known before, true love, sincere love, genuine love, the truly great love of their life, the Love of all loves of the Lover of all lovers, Who alone can satisfy that deepest yearning of every human soul for total love and complete understanding.
He is the POWER and LIFE of the universe that some people call God but that the Bible itself calls Love, for "GOD IS LOVE." ( 1Jn.4:8 )
HE'S PICTURED IN HIS SON CHRIST JESUS, a Man Who loved everybody, even the poorest and the worst of all. He is the Lover of all Lovers, Who came for love and lived in love and died for love that we might live and love forever!
BUT HE HAS NO HANDS BUT YOUR HANDS and HE HAS NO LIPS BUT YOURS and He has no eyes but your eyes and no body but your own, for you ARE His Body, His Bride for whom He died that you might live and love others as He did with YOUR hands, YOUR lips, your mouth, YOUR tongue, YOUR eyes and YOUR body broken for them as He was for you, YOUR blood shed for them as His was for you, YOUR life given for them as His was for you, to even die for them as He did for you.
SO WE SOON FOUND OUT WE COULD NOT ENTER THESE PLACES FOR PURELY PERSONAL SELFISH RECREATION, exercise and entertainment. We could not come face to face and body to body with those who clung so desperately to us with such a yearning for us to meet their needs. We could not withhold bread from the hungry--the Bread of Life, Christ Jesus, nor drink from the thirsty--the Water of His Word, which satisfy the most ultimate longings of the human soul.
FLESH CAN SATISFY FLESH, BUT ONLY SPIRIT CAN SATISFY SPIRIT, and we soon found that we had to give of BOTH to "satisfy ALL their needs according to His riches in glory."-- Phil.4:19 . We could not withhold ANY need from the love-starved as long as we had it by us and within our power to meet it and to give our ALL for their healing and His glory.
WE SOON FOUND THERE WAS NO STOPPING PLACE, NO LIMIT to which God would go to save a poor lost soul with His infinite love and unlimited mercy! We soon found OUR hearts irresistibly drawn into the vacuum of THEIR hearts to satisfy their SPIRITS, even as our BODIES were irresistibly drawn together and sucked into each other to satisfy their FLESH!
THERE WAS NOWHERE TO DRAW THE LINE BETWEEN THE TWO, FLESH and SPIRIT. There was no halfway, there was no "almost". It had to be "all or nothing at all" or they could not believe it was real love. They could not understand how you could offer to fill their heart but not their body, to satisfy their soul but not their hungry flesh.
The two were INSEPARABLE, the one could not go without the other and we had to feed them BOTH together. "If a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily food (a necessary physical need like sex) and one of you say unto them, 'Depart in peace! Be ye warmed and filled!'--Notwithstanding ye give them NOT those things which are needful to the body, what doth it profit?
"Even so FAITH, if it hath not works is DEAD!"-- Jam.2:15-17 . In other words, if in the faith of God you really love them, they cannot understand it or believe it unless you really show them by some visible tangible WORK or ACTION that puts your WORDS into WORKS and puts your faith into effect and makes it fact and not fiction, a sample, not just a sermon!