Don's Devotionals: Learning to love God

I Kings 18:27  At noon Elijah began to taunt them. “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.”

I’ve wondered why this verse always brings a smile to my face.  I’m grinning even as I write this.  And now I am laughing.  Really!  I am sitting here typing and laughing.  It’s not laughing at the prophets of Baal shouting and dancing trying to get the attention of their god.  This verse just taps into such a wellspring of joy within me that comes from Him.

Think of it.  This verse paints such a perfect picture of who our God isn’t!  Our God isn’t deaf!  He isn’t distracted or busy or traveling.  He’s never asleep.  He doesn’t put out a “Do Not Disturb” sign.  He never says, come back later I’m too busy now.

Our God never has an “Oops”!  He doesn’t miss anything.  Nothing catches Him by surprise.  Nothing catches Him off guard.  There is never the need for Him to apologize to us because He was too busy elsewhere or distracted and just missed what happened to us.  He’ll never say, “Oh, how did that happen?”  He’ll never ask, “What do we do now?”

This reality must become bedrock in us.  Once it does, nothing will shake us.  No matter what happens, our first thoughts are of Him.  He knows what we’re facing.  He knows what’s coming.  If it happens, He allowed it and will get us through it.  Our God is always with us!  His grace and mercy and strength are there for us.  There’s nothing He can’t redeem.  We are never alone, even when we think He is no where around!

The more this wonderful reality of our God dawns on us, the greater is our joy and gratitude.  I guess that is the source of my smile – my overwhelming gratitude over who God is (and isn’t!) and that He made me His own.

Matthew 5:16  Let your light so shine before men that they may see your moral excellence and your praiseworthy, noble, and good deeds and recognize and honor and praise and glorify your Father Who is in heaven. (Amplified)

Think of it!  We have the opportunity to live our lives in such way as to bring praise and honor to God.  We get to live lives of righteousness and do good works that bless others and honor Him.  We get to be extensions of Him.  We don’t do it out of obligation – but out of love and gratitude for the amazing life that He has given us in Jesus.

Think of the attributes of people you interact with in normal situations.  Those attributes that you like – patience, kindness, goodness, love, truthfulness, helpfulness, honesty, humility, gratitude to name a few.  Isn’t it refreshing to interact with people whose lives are characterized by such qualities?  Whether you’re at work, or in a store or wherever – how noticeable it is when those around us demonstrate such positive traits.

Unfortunately, all too often, we experience the negative attributes of people, particularly in difficult situations, or when they are rushed or simply preoccupied.  More difficult still is when the ones acting negatively are Christians – or claiming to be.  The question then becomes how are we going to respond? Will it be as they are treating us?  Or will we treat them the way we wished they were treating us – in the way Scripture instructs us to?

It’s amazing what kindness can do when it’s offered in response to unkindness; – or patience to impatience – helpfulness to selfishness – honesty to dishonesty – courtesy to rudeness.  Sometimes the only affect will be within the conscience of the ill-mannered person as they walk away thinking about your positive behavior.  Other times, it can produce an immediate change where they respond positively.

But the issue isn’t really them and their behavior.  The issue is us and the attributes we demonstrate to those around us – day in and day out.  What kind of co-worker, friend, relative, spouse, parent, child, neighbor, teammate, classmate, lab partner are we?  The more our lives are characterized by Godly attributes, the greater the positive impact on those around us will be.

These Godly attributes are the praiseworthy, noble, and good deeds we all can do. They are vital components of the light we are to shine forth.  They bring honor and glory to our God and blessing to all those around us.

1 Corinthians 8:3  But the man who loves God is known by God.

In these past few days we’ve seen that we love God by obeying His commands.  If we want to love Him, He has given us a very precise answer on the way it is done – the only way it is done.  And it is something that we can grow in.  Our ability to love Him is not static – He intends for it to grow all the days of our lives!  When Jesus said to walk in His ways, this is what He meant.  Think of the intimacy reflected in today’s verse for the ones who do.

I would like to offer a different perspective on commands for your consideration.   January 21, 2005 while in Brazil with our son and family, I was struggling with this whole issue of truly loving God.  That evening, in a wonderful experience with the Lord and His presence, He brought to mind a movie that has been a favorite of our family.  The movie contains something that He just opened to me that night that continues to bless me to this day.  (I love to reread my journal entry where this is all recorded)

Have you seen the movie Princess Bride?  Peter Falk is a grandpa reading a love story to his grandson – the story of Princess Buttercup and her servant Wesley.  Every time she gives Wesley a command to do something he utters the phrase, “As you wish.”  Her “wish” is his command.

It becomes clear in the movie that “As you wish” means “I love you”.  They go through all manner of adventures and the movie has a wonderful ending.  For the sake of this illustration, don’t think of God’s commands as commands, but think of them as His wishes.  So, we are responding to wishes instead of commands.

Then think of being in love. You want your loved one to share with you their wishes – to which you respond, “As you wish.”  (Remember the expression ‘Your wish is my command!’)  You then go and do what they wish to bless them and please them and be overwhelmed with joy as you do.  God shares His “wishes” with us in His word.

All of His  “wishes” become opportunities for you to lovingly say to Him, “As you wish.”  “As you wish.”  “As you wish.”  Each and every time is your opportunity to love Him by what you do, and to say “I love you” to Him.  Your heart will be filled with the desire to learn and embrace all of His “wishes” so that you can do more and more of them.

Then, there are the times when we sin, and with painful remorse we come to the Lord and say, “Father – forgive me.”  To which He replies, “As you wish.”

(*Note: A few months later John Ortberg, my favorite author, came out with a book titled, God Is Closer Than You Think.  It has a chapter titled “As You Wish”)

1 John 5:3  This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,

One evening I was really moved by Jesus’ question to Peter: “Do you love me?”  The more I thought about it, the question became alive to me – Do I love Him?  If so, how do I know for sure that I truly do love Him?  What if I’m deceiving myself?  The Bible has many examples of His people thinking they loved Him but their lives didn’t give any evidence of it – in fact their lives demonstrated that they didn’t!   Does He leave us to our own devices to determine if we love Him?

As I was crying out to Him about this, a sudden thought shot through my mind, “The answers are in the back of the book.”  This really spoke to me because I’m good at math.  All the math books I used had the answers to the odd numbered problems in the back of the book.  Sometimes I had to start with the answers in order to figure out how to work the problems.  God was saying the answers to my question were in His book!

Loving God is defined by God as obeying His commands.  Scripture is filled with commands on how we should or should not live.  Culturally we have the unfortunate tendency to think of them as instructions or suggestions, but they are commands none-the-less, and every day we have nearly unlimited opportunities to obey them.

Every time we obey a command in Scripture, or respond to His Spirit, it is an objective, concrete expression of our love for Him.  (Think be kind, be gentle, don’t gossip, seek humility not pride, love one another, forgive, etc…)  We don’t have to wonder if we are really loving Him.  We just have to live His word. (Note: As a helpful aid, I have identified 25 different portions of Scripture in the NT that contain such lists and have them written in the back of my Bible under a title of ‘Loving God’.)

God also transforms our motivation.  Obedience (holding fast to His teachings and living in accordance with them) becomes something we don’t “have to” do, but we “get to” do!  It becomes a joy to do what Scripture says because His Spirit confirms in our hearts that we are expressing genuine love for Him.   The more we obey Scripture and the promptings of His Spirit, the more we love Him.  It’s like a dream coming true!

Tomorrow – A different perspective on commands.

John 14:15 “If you love Me, you will obey what I command.”

In our culture we tend to have an allergic reaction to certain words – obey and command are two in particular that Christians tend to react to.  Typical responses are to immediately think of such words as part of legalism or to counter with a ‘grace not law’ type of argument.

Picture yourself in a quiet time and suddenly Jesus is there with you – just you and Jesus – face to face.  With a loving yet serious look, eye to eye, he says to you, “If you love Me, you will obey what I command.”  I imagine that would catch your attention.  Afterward those words would likely burn within you.

“If you love Me…”  One of the problems we have in English is that there is one word for love.  That word love applies to everything around us.  We love our sports team.  We love fried chicken.  We love beautiful sunsets.  We love walks in the woods. It goes on and on.  We love potato chips.  We love God.  What does the word “love” really mean – particularly since we use it so frequently to describe such a wide variety of things.

“If you love Me…”  With these words comes the realization that God wants us to love Him.  In fact it’s more serious than that because there is an implication in this verse that is truly shocking.  At face value, the verse says if we love Him, we will obey what He commands.  But consider the implication of the reverse: If we don’t do what He commands, we don’t love Him.

It’s imperative that we understand this is not talking about earning our salvation.  It is coming to grips with the fact that the God of the Universe – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ – wants, and expects, His people to love Him.

Let that sink in.  Loving God is not optional, nor something to be approached casually.  It is at the very heart of our faith.  It is what defines us as Christians – the people of God.  The wonderful news is that He does not leave us to our own devices to figure out what loving Him means.  He gives us the answer!