To Love God – Part 2

To love God is to seek Him, right? To love God is to desire to please Him, too. Isn’t that so?

We tend to think about loving God in the context of what we do for Him, but it’s more than just that. To love God is also to love God the way He loves us.

We get so wrapped up in what we do for God that we sometimes forget to apply the qualities of love in our response to Him working in our hearts. This is true when we deal with other believers, but it’s especially true in how we deal with God’s activity in our lives.

Love Is A Verb

This is a different aspect about what it means to love God because it falls outside conventional Christian thinking. It means that we respond to Him the same way He responds to us.

An example of this is when we are faced with difficult circumstances. When things aren’t ‘going our way,’ how do we respond to other believers? More importantly, how do we respond to the Lord? Do we criticize or question Him and His motives? Do we get resentful of what He is doing in our lives?

Our responses to these situations go a long way toward proving – or disproving – our claim to love God.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (NKJV)

When things go bad for us, do we suffer long with what God is doing in and through us? Are we kind to others, even though we’re hurting?

Do we envy those around us who seem to have it better off than we do, or do we complain about how unfair God is behaving toward us?

When things are going well, do we parade our successes and allow those successes to get us puffed up?

Do we behave rudely because we are annoyed with the apparent lack of understanding of others? Do we become self-serving?

How about when tragedy strikes? Do we get provoked against the One Who claims to love us because we ‘don’t deserve’ what happened? Do we start to think evil of His motivation in dealing with us?

I have done all these things, and more. And if you want to be honest about it, I’m pretty sure you have dabbled in these things, too.

It’s easy to get distracted from the purpose of God working in our hearts when these temptations come up. It can happen when we interact with other believers, and it can happen when we interact with God.

When faced with tough times we are called to love God!

When faced with good times we are called to love God!

We don’t’ rejoice in iniquity  and the sin around us, but we rejoice in the truth of His Word. He loves us, and is always with us.

To love God means that we bear all things, which is suffering long through the tough times because we understand they are just random happenings.

To love God means we believe all [good] things, hope for the best in every situation, and endure the  problems we face, because we know that He is in control. Nothing takes Him by surprise.

To love God is to treat other believers, and Him as well, the same way He treats us – with love.