By: John Mitchell
LOVE—–A willingness to prioritize another well being or happiness above your own. Giving to another person unselfishly, for their own benefit.
What does God say about how He wants us to love Him? “Jesus said to him”, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment,…” (Matthew 22:37) How do we love God so deeply, and completely, the way this scripture tells us to? It doesn’t come from just saying, “Good morning God. I’m in a big hurry now, because I have a lot of things planned for today. So God please bless my day, and bless my plans for myself. Thank You, in Jesus name I pray. Amen.” A deep love for God can only come from a deep personal relationship with God. How can we have this deep personal relationship with God? To have a deep, personal relationship with anyone, we have to spend time visiting, and communicating with them. We can’t truly love anyone unless we communicate with them, so we can decide if we like the person enough to have a love for them. If someone mails us letters to communicate with us, and we never take time to open and read the letters, we are rejecting that person without knowing anything about them. If we don’t open the Bible and read what God wants to tell us, then we are rejecting God without knowing anything about Him. If you don’t love God, maybe it is because you don’t know enough about God to be able to truly love God from your heart. The more we read and study the Bible, the more we realize how much God loves us. If we daily read and study God’s word, it will soon be like the love of God is flowing out of the words of the scripture that we are reading, and into our heart, and then over flowing out of our heart back to God, and to others around us. God truly makes it so easy to fall in love with Him. “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. We love Him because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:8&19) When we read and study the Bible scriptures, we are spending time visiting with God. God communicates with us through His scripture, the inspired word of God. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God…” (2 Timothy3:16) By reading scriptures we find out about God’s will and plans for us, that we must obey and follow to be able to spend eternity with God in heaven. We communicate with God through our prayers. In prayer we can tell God about the issues of our heart, and ask Him for His will to be done in our life. “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made know to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7) God is God. ”It is He who made us, and not we ourselves;” (Psalm 100:3) God makes the rules, not us. We don’t command God to obey and serve us. God commands us to obey and serve Him. We must put God in first place in our life, by submitting to God’s will for us, over our will for us. Jesus is our example, “…I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.” (John 5:30). “He who does the will of God abides forever.” (1 John 2:17) “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” (Matthew 6:33) “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28) If God is not in first place in our life, we are refusing to obey God’s will for us, and we are in rebellion against God. If we “love” God only to get from God what we want for ourselves, that’s not “loving” God. Better said, it is using God to get what we want from Him, only when we need God to help us. When we get what we want, we think we don’t need God anymore, so we don’t tell God how much we “love” Him, until our next problem or need happens. Or do we just say that we “love” God, because we don’t want to go to hell? We can talk like we love God, thinking that will get us inside the gates of heaven, but we are fooling only ourselves. “…the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7) God knows what is in our heart. “These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me, and in vain they worship Me,…” (Matthew15:8-9) The Israelite’s prayed to God to be freed from their slavery in Egypt. God freed them, and they left Egypt with great riches. Then they complained about their food, God gave them manna to eat. They complained about not having meat. God gave them quail to eat. Then Moses went up on Mount Sinai to talk to God. While Moses was gone, the Israelite’s made a golden calf to worship. Most of the Israelite’s were not thankful for all that God had done for them. They loved what God provided, not the Provider. They soon got tired of it, or started to believe it came from their own ability, without God’s help. They did not love God with all their heart, soul, and mind. God communicated with, and had a relationship with, Adam and Eve. God wants to communicate with us, and have a relationship with us. God’s Bible scriptures to us, guide us in how to live a righteous life, and through our prayers to Him, we can communicate the issues of our heart, to God. When we praise and worship God we are telling Him how much we love and honor, and respect Him. The scriptures also help us to be in submission and obedience to the will of God for us. All of this helps us to have a deep personal relationship with God. We each need to study and rightly divide the scriptures. “…they received the word with all readiness and searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.” (Acts 17:11) “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15) Just like faith without works is dead (Acts 2:17) so also is love of no value, if it is just empty words and not from the heart. ”though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,…but have not love, it profits me nothing. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:3,13) So many people, kind of flippantly say, “O, yes, I love God.” It’s said with no feeling, as if they are just expected to say it, before they start talking about some things that are more important to them. The more we realize how much God has done, and is doing for us, the more we love God. He has, and does love us, and forgives us, and has had mercy on us, from Adam and Eve to us, now, on this day in our lives. God has a special plan for each one of us. “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11) “Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.” (Psalm 139:16) The more we read the scriptures, and pray, and worship God, the more our love for God grows, and the better we understand His will and plans for us. ”Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” (James 4:8) Because of the love in our heart for God, we gladly serve and obey Him.. Right now, today, the question is, do we love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind? THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS QUESTION !!! IT IS A HEAVEN OR HELL FOR ETERNITY QUESTION !!! God has already done all that needs to be done for us to be able to go to heaven. Many people refuse to follow God’s plan of salvation for them. “For many are called, but few are chosen.” (Matthew 22:14) 2 Peter 3:9 tells us that God does not want anyone to perish, but instead that everyone should repent. And John 3:16 tells us that God loves so much that He sacrificed His only Son, Jesus for us.!!! If you have never started to follow God’s plan for your salvation, now is the time to start. If you started in the past, but have not been faithful to God, now is the time to repent, and remain faithful to God to the end.