John 14: 15 “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”
How should we love God? What will He accept? We can’t love Him just any old kind of way. The only way to love God is through obedience to Him. Nothing says, “I love you, Lord!” like doing exactly what He says when He says it (nothing more and nothing less). God told us in His word what He wants, and we just need to obey.
Obedience is learned through praying, reading the Bible and following the Spirit. This walk with Christ is not a waltz in ¾ time, it changes tempo many times until the dance is done. We will get off beat, stumble and even fall, but God is more concerned with us keeping time with the Holy Spirit, than just memorizing the steps. He wants us to learn his way and His voice, not memorize His commandments. He wants the law written in our hearts, not on tablets.
I had to learn God’s way. Years ago, God told me to start praying for people as He commanded (on the spot) while in their presence. I was a shy introvert so I gave him all the reasons it wouldn’t work; plus, that person he told me to pray for didn’t deserve my prayer because of the way they treated me in the past (I thought), etc. God told me, “You don’t determine who deserves prayer and who doesn’t.” Weeks passed and he gave me another chance: to go to hospice and pray for a friend of the family who was dying; but I made up an even bigger, lamer excuse. Well, I didn’t go, and He didn’t ask me to pray for anyone else. He saw my heart and saw that I wasn’t ready. He also allowed me to see (for myself) that I wasn’t ready to step into obedience at His word.
Many years have passed since then…
God’s commandments are not suggestions and He does not waste words. He will repeat Himself in different ways until He knows we hear and understand, and then He will become silent about the matter and move on, sometimes for years.
1 John 4:19 “We love him, because he first loved us.”
God is love. He can’t run out of love, and He can’t stop loving us. God’s love is very different from our love and has nothing to do with feelings but is based 100% on truth. His love is stable, consistent and eternal. He loves unconditionally and that is how He commands us to love Him, ourselves and our neighbors.
People, on the other hand, are not love. They run out of love very quickly and usually do bad things in the name of it. They love things, animals, other people, church, church music (all the things that belong to God and even calling God’s name), but they don’t really love God. This love is based on feelings.
We were loved by God before we were born, but we were not born with the love of God (the way most people think). We were born in sin and we must receive Christ to receive true love. All that “love” stuff people say they have for you – if they are not born again and have not received the true love of God through the Holy Spirit, it will crack under pressure. Without Christ, man is broken, and his love is incomplete, destructive and without truth. Many relationships have been destroyed trying to love without Christ. I know so many people who break God’s commandments in the name of love; they lie to keep from telling the truth, they steal and kill in the name of love for someone else, and they love God a little (if it won’t cost anything). Man’s love cracks under pressure; then the source and motive of that love is revealed.
But the love of God will not crack under pressure, it grows stronger. Under pressure, the wise receive more wisdom, truth goes deeper, and we yield better fruit. Families who love God go through the same things everyone else goes through, but they come out better on the other side.
love bears fruit
John 1:12 “But as many as received him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.”
As we obey God we grow in love and our relationship with Him deepens. We bear fruit and receive power to walk in the earth without being conformed to it or affected by it. This same power transforms us into righteousness and enables us to transform the lives of others in the name of Jesus. Everything that God commands us to do is impossible without him, which is the reason for the Holy Spirit. We can’t even follow God without the direction of the Holy Spirit. If we’re attempting to have the fruit of the Spirit to be good, forgiving, kind, loving, powerful or anything that He is (without Him), we won’t succeed. The Holy Spirit produces all the things that God commands of us (love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance). We must have Him in order to be like Him.
But Satan has a substitute for everything good that God created. His followers mimic God’s power by looking “right” instead of being good; by looking “nice” instead of being kind; or acting “quiet” and “sneaky” to look like they have peace, etc.
He loves us enough to change us ~Terri
God’s love changes us from the inside out. By obeying Christ, we become more useful to our loved ones and the kingdom of God. I have seen entire families made whole and generational curses broken. I have seen everyday people delivered and liberated just from a conversation with a righteous person who obeys God. When we don’t conform to the molding of God, He can’t use us because we would break everything in the kingdom – and our households. When God calls someone, He shows them what they will look like in the end, but then He gets started on the demolition of changing them into who they were created to be.
put God first in everything and ask Him before you do anything ~Terri
Matthew 6:33 “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
As we move in His steps, He clears the path for our feet to land. God has so many ways to get us to where He wants us. We don’t even know the destination, so how can we know the path. Many Christians feel that if they are busy (and just stepping), they are loving God. These people are not necessarily seeking God; they are seeking the benefits of the kingdom. But busy work is dead works. Unless God told us to do it, it is dead and disobedient. Instead of doing the things he commands, we often want to do the things we like, then of course He should like it, too. We like thinking up things to give Him such as pagan holidays (christmas, thanksgiving, etc.), gifts that He didn’t ask for; giving Him our lame worship and sporadic praise. We often do what we want instead of what He said, and that doesn’t count in the kingdom.
Christians in the church often recite Romans 8:28 which states, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” But the Bible clearly states that this promise is to them that love (obey) Him – not just profess Him. Obedience brings good things because He is good and is drawing us toward Him in good steps. But Satan works things toward a bad end because he is bad.
God uses all things, but everything is not necessary. He can use our disobedience for teaching purposes, but we don’t need to sin in order to be effective; some of that stuff was unnecessary. He can use us whether we have one leg or two, but I’d rather have two. It is more expedient to learn from obedience.
follow God step by step, we don’t know where we’re going ~Terri
Luke 10:27 “And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself”.
God’s love is 3D (three dimensional). In the Old Testament, He loved us from heaven; in the New Testament, He loved us through His son Jesus; Today, He loves us through the Holy Spirit.
We should also love in 3D: by loving God, loving ourselves and loving our neighbor as ourselves.
To love God is to walk in obedience to Him.
To Love ourselves is to obey the Holy Spirit in healing our bodies (eating the things God says are healthy, keeping our bodies free of disease and ailments and keeping away from poor life choices), minds, and spirits; and by keeping His commandments.
To love our neighbors as ourselves is to want the same things for them as we want for ourselves. We will love them (through Christ) as ourselves.
When we walk in disobedience, we hurt ourselves and our neighbors. We rely on our feelings and feelings change as we sway from pressure. But God will keep us from swaying through prayer, His Word, and the Holy Spirit. As we are obedient to God, we begin to see that the events in our lives are authorized by God (and not the devil) in order to bring us into maturity towards Him.
God calls us all to surrender to obedience, and He is always checking our grip on earthly things to ensure we don’t hold on to them tighter than we are holding on to Him.
We are nothing without God and we cannot enter His kingdom without obedience.
