All?

Last week we started talking about love, loving God to be specific. I am not talking about obeying God and doing all the right things outwardly and putting on our social media that we are #blessed. I am talking about having a heart that is turned towards God. A heart that cares what God thinks or how He feels about a situation. A heart that is concerned about the things that no-one will ever get to see because you don’t want anything to get in the way of your relationship with God. We know that God doesn’t change, but whatever is happening in our hearts has the power to draw us closer to God or make us turn away or pull away from God. We haven’t stopped hiding since Adam and Eve! 

Over the last couple years we have looked at how important our obedience is and how we ought to treat others around us. One thing we can never neglect, is our relationship with God. It is the foundation on which everything else is built. We know we need to love God but we seldom take the time to think about what that will look like. We are going to look at some scriptures on love over the next few weeks so we can see where we have room to grow in our love for God. This is a time to take inventory and to dig our roots deep. Only God can reveal to us where we can grow and I pray that God speaks to you clearly and in a way that catapults your love relationship with Him to the next level. 

Matthew 22:36-40 says:

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

Jesus answered him, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with every passion of your heart, with all the energy of your being, and with every thought that is within you.’ This is the great and supreme commandment. And the second is like it in importance: ‘You must love your friend in the same way you love yourself.’ Contained within these commandments to love you will find all the meaning of the Law and the Prophets.”

We can’t have one without the other. Loving people flows out of us first loving God. When our love towards God ain’t quite right, we will continue to fail in our love towards others. Our relationship with God feeds our relationships with other people. So it is important that we work on our relationship with God. 

In the Message version, verse 37 reads, “Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.”” That is a high standard of love. This only shows us that we need God. To love God, we need God’s help. God doesn’t just want a small portion of us, He wants all of us. We just need to be willing to give Him all we have and He teaches us how to love Him along the way. 

Our verse tells us to love God with every passion of our heart. To me that means there should be nothing off limits to God. If God says to give up something or surrender it to Him, I need to be able to give it up because there need not be anything that I love more or am more passionate about than Him. The verse also says to love Him with all the energy of my being. That means I don’t give God 2 minutes before I fall asleep but I plan my life around God. I plan my day around being with God and spending time with Him. I’m not saying quit your job and spend the whole day with God. God knows we need to work but make time to talk to Him during the day. Involve Him in your decision making. Don’t just go to Him with a made up mind, brain storm with Jesus! Yes, I said it, brainstorm with Him. Run your ideas by Him, He loves to hear it. 

The verse also says to love God with every thought within me. That means I need to love God not only in my actions but in my thoughts. We can obey God outwardly but inwardly be giving him the side eye. Sometimes we care more about being seen to be doing the right thing than we do to be right with God within. That is not okay. We need to love God with our thoughts. Our thoughts toward Him are to be kind, full of honour, gentle, patient, trusting, full of hope, not keeping a record of past disappointments and so on. It’s one thing to do and say the right things, it’s another to think the right things. We need the Holy Spirit to transform our minds so we can think right, Romans 12:2. We need God to help us to love God. 

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano