When denying ourselves reaches the point where we divide between the self that wants things and the honoring of God, and when we throw off all our emotional ties and worldly attachments and turn our face to God with the courage of faith and the obedience of sacrifice and the honor of service, then the love of God is poured into the heart through the Holy Spirit in a way that is beyond words.

The Holy Spirit, beyond His work in the holy rites, also works this way through good deeds like prayer. When the deed reaches the point of being pure in honoring God!

The pouring out of God's love through the Holy Spirit here is a new work in human nature. It completes redemption and holiness by the divine blood. For the love that is divine and given to us is one of the fruits of the cross!

The pouring out of God's love in the heart is the first living sign—a hot sign—of the strong closeness to God that prepares the way for unity. For 'God is love'!

When God's love is set on fire in the heart, everything in it changes! It changes from its very nature itself. It creates in it new possibilities and new powers and new understandings. It takes away from it weakness and stumbling and despair that were thought to be hopeless. For love is a correcting power that rules with authority without limit. Its purpose in man is to make him more fit to live with God, to match his will with God's holy will, to match his purposes with God's purposes.

What love does in one person, it does in another person, each according to his need. So each person comes near to his brother. So love is a uniting power like no other. It works by persuasion and by authority and by a secret that goes beyond words. It is the most precious thing a person can get in his life on earth. It is the bond of unity. Unity with God and with the saints. There is no unity without love, and no love without the Holy Spirit.

At first, God's love is poured into the heart in the whisper of the Holy Spirit. So when a person reaches the point of denying himself, unity with God is completed. After that, God's love flows out from the person to others through the work of the Holy Spirit living in the heart. After that, the Holy Spirit breaks down the person's pride and cleans the dirt of his heart.

The pouring out of God's love in the heart cannot happen except through the Holy Spirit. There is no time separation and no nature difference that separates love and the Holy Spirit. So when the Holy Spirit is there, God's love is poured into the heart that thirsts for God.

As long as the Holy Spirit lives in the heart, love flows without anything stopping it. Yes, it flows with great joy like rivers of living water flowing wherever they go!

We cannot separate God's love from the Holy Spirit. But when the pouring out of love in the heart is stopped, it does not mean the Holy Spirit is absent. It means the Holy Spirit is busy training the person and cleaning his dirt and his uncleanness first. The Holy Spirit does not stop and does not get tired of training and correcting. He does not allow any sin, no matter how small, because it stops the pouring out of love and stops his living there!! The training of the Holy Spirit and His correction to the heart all the time—it is love in the deepest points of how it really works!!

God's love cannot be poured in the heart except after the Holy Spirit cleans the heart from any other love. The hardest thing that stops the pouring out of God's love is love of the self. It is a poisonous root buried in the soil of lust. Its fruit is all bitter: greed, envy, hatred, spite, pride, greatness, bitterness, enmity. The worst of them is greed. The Apostle Paul called it:

For greed makes the soul, instead of being a temple for the Holy Spirit, a temple for an evil spirit of lies. It corrupts it by the false things of love.

A sign that the Holy Spirit lives in the heart is the presence of love. A sign that the Holy Spirit wins and rules the heart is the pouring out of love or its flow to others without counting or fear.

The pouring out of love proves that the Holy Spirit lives in the heart and shows His action and His joy. The Holy Spirit reaches the peak of His action and joy in the human heart when He wins by the persuasion of love in bringing together the people of God in true unity—that is, in the unity of faith and worship and peace. For unity is the bond of unity. Unity with God and with the saints. There is no unity without love, and no love without the Holy Spirit.

Here notice that the Holy Spirit's work to make us deny ourselves through good deeds is not just a fight against the soul or a negative resistance to remove and destroy its being or nature. It is a pure positive action to guide every good deed to make sure it goes in its true and faithful path: from God and to Him through the person—by the witness of the self itself! So the soul becomes in the end the greatest one who gets good from the good deed if it goes God's way—that is, if it began with the soul knowing God's grace and ended with honoring God. The soul becomes holy by God's holiness!