All tagged loving
Hungering after righteousness and longing for God. Today I am contemplating the intense desire for the Lord's presence in our lives, and what better place to go for an understanding of such a longing than to the Psalms, and the words of a more recent pastor… Charles Spurgeon.
Once again we are exploring the topic of devotion, but today we are asking ourselves what it means to be devout. For this purpose we will use a verse from Acts 12, the story of Saul becoming Paul, and the devotion of Ananias. The Jews who surrounded Ananias praised the devotion he showed to God by his obedience to the law, but do those who know us today look at our lives and call us devout? Ananias was given a good report because he obeyed the law, will we be called devout Christians because of the way we obey God’s commandments, follow Jesus, and love one another?
This morning I am examining my life to determine if I am presuming to know when and how God will enter into my affairs. I am trying to decide if I am attempting to control my circumstances, or if I am trusting in God. Have I been limiting His access to my life without fully realizing that He will interact with me at His good pleasure?
It is far easier to love God who always loves us so perfectly, and who is good to us in every way, than it is to love those around us. Are we able to love one another as He loves us? Can we accept the world’s fallen creatures that we call brothers and sisters, and love them enough that we will get into the cesspool of life, hold them to us, and honestly care about their wellbeing and salvation? Can we look past their imperfection, and ignore the stench of sin on them as we not only forgive them from afar, but embrace them, and lead them step by step into a righteous relationship with God? Can we love each other as Jesus is loves us?
We live in a country, and a world, that is divided against itself; not by God, or by Jesus Christ, but by man. Somehow we have become convinced that we are meant to separate ourselves into camps, so we do this by race, color, culture, religion, short, tall, large, small, and in too many other ways to list. There never seems to be an end to it, and the final result is always the same… the more we divide ourselves, the greater we find it has become an impediment to the commandment that we love one another as ourselves. We forget that Jesus is all in all, and that He joins us together.
Loving God, and Jesus, is easy because they love us so completely, and they want nothing but goodness, and the best for us; loving other believers can be a bit harder, because their love for us is human, and often flawed, but it is still relatively easy; however, when it comes to loving those who aren’t believers it can be quite a different thing, because these, who we are also told to love, may hate us, find our beliefs intolerable, and want every terrible thing to befall us. So today let’s ask ourselves… are we loving one another as we should, and as we are commanded to do?
Do we love God, and Jesus Christ, as we should, like we did when we first believed? Or, have we allowed the mechanics of our religion to become the focus of our spirit’s efforts, and lost sight of loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength? We say we love, but do we truly love our Father, or just the things we believe that we are doing for Him? Do we say the repetitive words in worship that we believe will honor Him, but find that we have abandoned our walks with Him in the cool of the evening? Have we allowed ourselves to become as the Ephesians?
Do we love Jesus? This appears to be a very straight forward question, but people view love in different ways. To some it is incredibly complex as they try to hold a relationship together by performing a long list of deeds, or expressions of emotion. To others, like the saying in the movie ‘The Love Story’, it is boiled down to one simple thought, like “Love is never having to say you’re sorry.” But Jesus tells us how we determine if we love Him... we reveal our love by keeping His commandments.
Does our Soul thirst for Jesus? Do we love God with a desire that is so strong we feel as though we would die if it were not satisfied? Do we pant for prayer, or long for our need for God to be quenched by immersion in His presence, like the desperate need for water causes desert wanderers to throw themselves into it; gulping mouths full like each might be their last? Can we smell the sweet fragrance of Christ as if we are a desert animal... catching the slightest scent of water from miles away? Does the faint fragrance of Jesus lead us across the parched expanse of life’s deserts as we seek His living water? This is how we should love God, and come to find Jesus.