So…picking up where I left off in yesterday’s post…Love for God leads to loving others and that leads to making disciples. How do we nurture and mature our love for God?
You can’t love who you don’t know, so you need to be in the Word. If your love for God is low, or weak, or struggling the first question you should ask yourself is, “Have I been spending regular time in Scripture?” If you only know God a little, you will only love Him a little. That only makes sense right? The people we love the best are the people we know the best. The number one reason Christians struggle with love for God is simply because they don’t know Him well. And the reason they don’t know Him well is because they don’t know the Bible well.
Fortunately, there is an easy fix for this. If you don’t know Him, start reading. If you do know Him, you don’t know Him enough. You will never know Him enough. Jonathan Edwards said it better than I ever could so I will share with you what he spoke to his own congregation:
Consider yourselves as scholars or disciples, put into the school of Christ; and therefore be diligent to make proficiency in Christian knowledge. Content not yourselves with this, that you have been taught your catechism in your childhood, and that you know as much of the principles of religion as is necessary to salvation…
You all have by you a large treasure of divine knowledge, in that you have the Bible in your hands; therefore be not contented in possessing but little of this treasure. God hath spoken much to you in the Scripture; labor to understand as much of what he says as you can. God hath made you all reasonable creatures; therefore let not the noble faculty of reason or understanding lie neglected. Content not yourselves with having so much knowledge as is thrown in your way, and as you receive in some sense unavoidably by the frequent inculcation of divine truth in the preaching of the word, of which you are obliged to be hearers, or as you accidentally gain in conversation; but let it be very much your business to search for it, and that with the same diligence and labor with which men are wont to dig in mines of silver and gold (WJE, 22:97-98).
Second, remember that knowing the Bible isn’t enough, if you rest in what you know in your head you will always be disappointed, because love is not a matter of understanding but of the heart. You need the Spirit to give you that heart knowledge: the conviction that what you know is true, the assurance that you can trust God, the attraction to Christ’s character, and the love for who He is and what He has done. This is something that only God can give you. It is a kind of knowledge that only He can impart. No amount of effort or study we can do will ever come to it.
So how do you get it? You need to pray for it. Come to the Father and ask for it. I would go so far as to say we should repent that we have not been willing to ask for it. We ask for help for this or that, or that He would give us one thing and take away another, but how often do we ask Him to increase our love for Him? I’m not saying we don’t ever do it. But that I have been learning that it should be one of the things we ask for most often in our prayers. It is a prayer God loves to answer.
Another thing we need to pray for is that we accept the love that God has for us. John 17:22-23 is one of my favorite passages in the Bible,
I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
If you are in Christ, if you are His disciple, you have been given the glory that the Father gave the Son. What is that? That is the Holy Spirit. The Father came up with the plan of redemption and accepted the price of it. Jesus mediates the plan and was the price. The Holy Spirit applies was what was purchased and was what was purchaced. The Holy Spirit is the glory of Christ, and He is yours. The Spirit unites our life to Christ’s and so we are brought into the love and unity of God, and the love the Father has for the Son is the same love He has for you. You are loved that much, that deeply, that completely!
And it has nothing to do with what you have done or what you will do, be it every so good or ever so bad. It all has to do with what Jesus did.
Do you know you are loved like that? Do you know that in Christ you have His glory, that you are one with Him? Because when you know that, not just in your head but in your heart, you will not be able to hold back from loving Him! And it will be the most natural thing in the world to love God and love your neighbor.
If we have a problem with accepting God’s love for us, we are going to struggle with loving God. If we are struggling with that we need to dig into those portions of Scripture that clearly teach that and repent that we have been too proud or too afraid to accept such one-way love. Pride makes us think we have earned it. Fear makes us think we can’t keep it.
Billy Graham’s success as an evangelist and near spotless public record doesn’t make God love him one iota more; and the fact that his grandson, Tullian Tchividjian had an affair and has stepped down from his ministry at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church hasn’t made God love him one bit less. In God’s eyes they are both spotless, beautiful, and loved with a perfect love.
You need to know you can’t make God love you, and you can’t make Him stop either. You can’t earn it and you can’t lose it. Pray that God will drive that truth into your heart that you are known by God, loved by God, and united with God. When you accept that, your love for God will immediately start to increase.
Get to know God by being a student of the Bible, prayerfully repent that you have not sought to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind and ask Him to give you that love, and third, practice what you know.
Love for God is shown in loving others. The knowledge we gain in the study of Scripture is meant to be lived out and practiced in relationship. Love is learned not by knowing it but by living it. The best gauge for discerning how well you love God is not what you know or how religious you are but how loving you are. That is what Jesus was teaching when He quoted Hosea 6:6 in Matthew 12:7, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. It is what He was teaching when he said in Matthew 5:23-24 (NIV), if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.
If you want to increase your love to God, work on loving your wife/husband, your kids, your neighbors…and if you really want to get serious about it, start working on your love for that person that drives you nuts. Smile when they come by. Buy them a coffee. Pray for them—not that God would fix them or give them what is coming to them—but that God would bless them. Repent for your own lack of love for them and ask that God would show you how to incarnate the love of Christ for them. That is another prayer God loves to answer.
Remember this love for God and neighbor is what Jesus is praying for, working for, and empowering us for. When we live in that love with the Father, we will naturally live out that love with one another and in so doing experience the unity of love between God and neighbor that will make it clear to the world that the Father sent Jesus and loves them as He loves Jesus (John 17:23).
Learning To Be Full Of Grace And Truth. 