Loving God.

An important aspect of finishing strong is to love God. Sounds simple enough. How hard can it be to love God? Yet people struggle with it. That is because we live in a world that models selfish love. A love that is dependent on what it can get not what it can give. A love focused on service of self and not service of another. What can you do for me? Is the question that stands in the middle of worldly love.

This type of love is flawed, and it causes us to pick the people in our lives or treat people differently based on who we think we need. That is not God’s way. That is not the God kind of love. Meaning we don’t in turn love God because of what He can or has done for us. Because what happens on the day you pray and you don’t get the answer you wanted or expected? If your love is based on or conditional upon what God has done for you or can do for you, then your love is fickle and it will not last long.

God is not sitting in heaven waiting to meet all our demands. You are going to pray sometimes and things are not going to turn out how you expected and you need to be okay with that. It is a part of life. We don’t understand everything on this side of heaven, but we do have some significant truths about the nature of God and who He is that we get to hold onto until that day comes when we are face to face with Jesus. These truths create the foundation of our relationship with God.

We know that God loves us so much He gave us Jesus to die for us. God didn’t have to do that. He could have said, “You know the law, live by it and you will be ok. Break the law and hell will be waiting for ya. Good luck.” But He didn’t. Why not? Because He loves us. He does not want to lose any of us, but rather wants each and every single one of us. We can choose hell by refusing to accept the sacrifice of Jesus, but God will never send us to hell because we are bad. We choose. People go to hell because they choose not to accept that their spiritual debt has been paid in full by Jesus and would rather depend on themselves.

Anyway not the point of this post, point is, us loving God is a response to who He is. He is loving, He is kind, He is forgiving, He gives us chance after chance after chance, especially when we don’t deserve it. He is good. We watch a lot of superhero movies and we get to see a lot of villains and how power corrupts people and sometimes we can put that on God and wonder if He really is good or He is waiting to get us. God really is good, and we already have a villain in our story and his name is Satan, so that role is taken. You can rest easy.

So how do we love God? Do we need to pray more? Prayer is great and we are encouraged to pray about everything, but that’s not it. Do we put on our worship music and lay on the floor worshipping God? There is a time and place for that but no, that is not how we love God. 1 John 5:1-5 tells us not only how to love God but how our lives look when we love God. 1 John 5:1-2 says, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Messiah is God’s spiritual child and has been fathered by God himself. And everyone who loves Father God loves his children as well…”

Stopping there for a second, we see that first we need to believe that Jesus is the Messiah (the Son of God) and this enables us to become children of God. It takes faith to believe in Jesus not love. Love is then determined by how we treat God’s children, those around us. You can’t say you love God and also tear down other Christians or anyone for that matter. Your treatment of those around you show your level of commitment to Jesus.

1 John 4:19-21 says, “Our love for others is our grateful response to the love God first demonstrated to us. Anyone can say, “I love God,” yet have hatred toward another believer. This makes him a phony, because if you don’t love a brother or sister, whom you can see, how can you truly love God, whom you can’t see? For he has given us this command: whoever loves God must also demonstrate love to others.”

We first love God by loving those around us and treating them well. It sounds contrary to loving God first and putting Him above all else but that is actually how we do it. By doing what He has asked us to do, which is to love one another.

Matthew 25:34-40 says, and this is Jesus speaking, “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’

“Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

“And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’” When we love those around us, we are actually loving God. The opposite is true if you read on in verses 41-46.

We’ll continue next week.

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano.