Loving God and Obeying God Go Hand and Hand:

Recently where I work we were given these ugly shirts and told we had to wear them.   I mean these shirts were ugly no one wanted to obey the rule that we had to wear them.  But isn’t this really how we feel about most rules or being told what we must do, for some reason it doesn’t always set well with us.  I don’t know if it’s because as people we just don’t like being bossed around or what it is about being given rules that we don’t like about it.  Yet we live by rules all the time and don’t even realize it.  Let us take those that are married, within your marriage I can guarantee that you have all kinds of rules and don’t even realize it.  When you were first married you made all kinds of changes and never complained.  Within the first couple of months of being married I got in trouble.   I went golfing after work, knowing that Autumn got off work after I did I didn’t call to tell her that I went.  She got home before I finished my game and she called me frantic and worried, she thought I had been in accident on my way home from work.  Since then if I’m going to do something after work I let her know.  I don’t care about this, it doesn’t bother me that I have to check in with my wife.  Why is that?  Because I love her so it comes easy.

We read in 1^st John 5:1-5 “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves his children, too.  We know we love God’s children if we love God and obey his commandments.  Loving God means keeping his commandments, and really, that isn’t difficult.  For every child of God defeats this evil world by trusting Christ to give the victory.  And the ones who win this battle against the world are the ones who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.”  I underlined the part about Loving God, and keeping His commandments, because I hear so many people say I believe you can live however you want as long as you love God.  But here we see it says if you love God you are not only going to follow His commandants but it says it’s not that hard.  Let us just real quickly review the first two commandants because once we see them I think it could change how you think about a lot things in life.  Here is what Christ tells us about the first two commandants; ““The most important commandment is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. ³⁰ And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’^* ³¹ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”(Mark  12:27)

Take note that how Christ tells us the most important ones are love God with all you heart mind and soul, and also love you neighbor.  It sounds like God is telling us that the commandants are important also sounds like He telling us that love is really life changing.  Maybe you are not really ready to start tackling the second commandant yet, so lets us take the first step and say I really do want to love God I don’t want a fake relationship with Him but a real one.  Start by praying to Him.  It’s simple, start with this one.  “God I know you are God, you created all things.  The powers of this world must one day answer to You.  I desire to come and have a loving relationship with you.  Help me, teach me, show me how to do that.  Thank you so much for loving me God, I don’t deserve but your grace is great and you love is amazing.  Amen”