Are You In Love, Part 2

by Mike Reed, Director Student Ministries @ MBC Loudoun

A lot of times when you hear someone (like myself) talking about loving God you say to yourself “well Mike, I don’t love God as much as I want to, so what do I do? Do I try harder? What do I do to love him more?” And yet the truth is we can’t just muster up love out of ourselves. Like you can’t make someone fall in love with someone else! You can’t force it. So we actually have to PRAY to God that he would HELP us love him! I have to pray to God that he would help me LOVE ANYONE!  Because I’m not a naturally loving person. I don’t wake up every morning going “I love people!” I wake up every morning going “I really love myself. How can I please myself and bring pleasure to ME.” So in order to have affections and desires for God and for my wife and ANY one else, I have to PRAY! And that sounds so unromantic right? But we have to PRAY and say God I need your help to love you!

This kind of dependency on God brings us to our knees in desperate need of him every day.

If you continue on this passage in Deuteronomy 6 about this love for God, it’s interesting because he says in the next verse Deut 6:6-9 “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

Ok so this is Moses talking to the people of Israel before they enter the promised land, and he has just given them the 10 commandments, and he’s about to give them a bunch more, but in the middle of it all he says “ok these commands I give you today, they are not just something to hear one time and forget about it, before you move on I want to talk to your kids about it, I want them on your hands, on your heads, I want you to hear all of these commands and keep talking about them. But in the midst of explaining all the commands he puts that verse “love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength,” because he doesn’t just want us to be people who just obey his commands, he wants us to obey them out of a heart of love. Things don’t change in the NT, Jesus doesn’t change things! He doesn’t say “Ok I want you to obey these commands to get to heaven,” no again Jesus emphasizes in John 14:15 he says “no if you LOVE ME, you’ll obey these commands.” See that’s why everything we do has to come from love. This is why we always have to ask ourselves “am I in love with God right now? Is this why I am obeying him?” When we are in love we don’t want to do what the other person hates. And so God goes “here are a bunch of things I don’t want you to do because they offend me, they break my heart, but you love me right?! You love me with all your heart? So because you love me you’ll obey these commands?”

Take a minute and pray wherever you are, and ask God to help you to love Him.  May God make us people who are truly in love with Him as His bride.