Do you really love God?

Do you love God? No do you really love God? No I mean do you really love God? This is a question that some Christians will immediately and without thought answer yes to. This is a question in which not only will they lie (yes I said lie) and answer yes to but will be offended if you ask them more than once. And don’t you dare do what I just did and say that they are lying when they answer yes. You’ll get responses like; “How dare you say I don’t love God, you can’t judge my love for Him?” And my answer to that continually is yes I can and I will take you to the word of God to prove it. Jesus said in John 14:15 “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Very plain and simple. If you love God soooooooooooooooo much, than why is it you (we) have such a hard time keeping His commandments. Why is it we worship ourselves as God and don’t even recognize that we have put ourselves above God? Oh sure we don’t do the what we call big sins but please understand there is no such thing as a big sin in the eyes of God. Also please understand that all sin is disobedience. Either God told you not to do something and you did it or God told you to do something and you didn’t do it. Disobedience. You can dress it up however you want to but it is still just that. And as you see if you are disobedient than you obviously don’t love God like you say that you do. This entry isn’t to condemn anyone because God knows I am far from perfect myself, but it is intended to help us see how far off the mark we really are.

One of the first and most important areas we fail in, is the subject that has been taught at my church all year long……love. We don’t love God’s way therefore we don’t really show love as commanded so we are being disobedient. I Corinthians 13 outlines what love is and how without true and real love everything we do is in vain. Let’s take verse 5 of chapter 13, “Love is not rude.” Think about how many times you’ve been rude to others even your own spouse. Remembering that Jesus said the 2^nd greatest commandment was to love your neighbor you’ll find that in 3 of the 4 gospels (Matt 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27). But if you have behaved rudely to others you haven’t shown them God’s love because His love isn’t rude. Love is the greatest key to obeying God as the greatest 2 commandments instruct you to love.

Another area we fail in is forgiveness. Man this is another tough one. It’s tough because forgiveness doesn’t ask how you feel about the situation. Forgiveness doesn’t ask if you like the situation. Forgiveness simply says you release the person of the burden of the aught they have committed against you, while releasing yourself from remembering it. Forgiveness Jesus said we ought to do continually. I know people will be like no it’s 70 x 7 which is 490. That number is true however that number is a day per person and if you have the patience and time to count how many times a day you forgive each individual person than you need to go back to the previous paragraph and deal with love again because when you love someone as yourself you will treat them as you would like to be.  Forgiveness is on top of love. I love you enough to forgive you for the wrong you have done to me whether directly or indirectly. Forgiveness is defined to grant pardon for or remission of (an offense, debt, etc.); absolve.  Which means it’s as if it never happened. But yet we don’t forgive and many of us won’t touch the issue at all in order to walk through forgiveness. Past hurts from parent for punishment we got for things they said we did wrong we really didn’t do, old boyfriends or girlfriends that broke up with you or cheated on you, husbands or wives that have offended you at some point. Whatever it is you have to deal with the situation and forgive the person. The worst part of that is without forgiving you can’t be forgiven by God. That means you are walking around saying you are saved and born again but really aren’t because your sins aren’t covered under the forgiving blood of Jesus Christ. You are hell bound, sorry to tell you but you are hell bound. Understand forgiveness isn’t so much for them as it is for you. Forgiveness allows you the peace of being forgiven and the freedom from carrying the burden of hate (opposite of love so we are back to the first paragraph) and bitterness. You must forgive it is essential to this Christian walk.

There are so many others that I could name but I think that you get the point. And the point is this, we need to re-examine daily our true love and commitment to God and how we keep His commandments. Because it is impossible to be a Christian a true lover of God and you are busy sleeping and cheating with the devil by doing things the wordly way.  I pray that this has been a help to someone and encourages us to love God as we are supposed to by keeping His commandments no matter how hard they may seem. Remember, Grow in God’s Grace and Abide in His Love!