Thursday, March 18, 2010

Loving God

At Trinity Church we talk a lot about loving God. The reason we talk about loving God so much is that it is the primary thing we were created for. The first and great commandment is to love God above everything else. In Crazy Love, Francis Chan writes, “Lukewarm people love God, but they do not love Him with all their heart, soul, and strength. They would be quick to assure you that they try to love God that much, but that sort of total devotion isn’t really possible for the average person; it’s only for pastors and missionaries and radicals.” (Crazy Love, p. 73)

In Matthew 22:37-38, Jesus emphasizes the primacy of loving God originally given to the children of Israel (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). Loving God is easy in theory, but becomes much more difficult in practice. After all, we are people with busy lives. We have families and jobs that we must make sure that we attend to. We end up justifying our lukewarm behavior by trading away the best things of God for the good things we choose for ourselves.

When it comes to priorities of love in our lives, we must be vigilant in assessing our own hearts in how much we really love God. When was the last time we made a choice to do something God asked us to do over something or someone else? When was the last time you took an hour to just get away and spend it with Jesus? We can say we are in love with God all we want but do our actions provide evidence that we actually do?

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