Love God

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' (Mark 12:30 NIV)

I was grateful for the people who helped me move from encounters with God that were based on fear and obedience to a relationship with God where I approached Him more freely. Loving God, however, would still take time. The whole idea of loving a God who I couldn't see still escaped me. More than that, applying the word "love" to that relationship really created problems for me. Do I love God the same way I love my wife or the way I love a good cup of coffee?

Over time, I learned that the New Testament was originally written in Greek. This helped me because I found out that the Greek language of that time actually had four different words for love. Eros, the word for romantic love (like with my wife), was never used in the New Testament - not at all. So, I don't need to love God in a romantic way. (That's a relief.) Storge, the natural affection a parent would have for a child (for instance), is not used either.

The two Greek words that are used in the Bible are phileo, where we get the word Philadelphia (the city of brotherly love), and agape, a self-sacrificing love where we care about the interest of the other. When Jesus quoted the Old Testament command to Love God, he used the Greek word agapao - love God by caring what is in His best interest, knowing that He already loves us and cares about our best interest.


Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:8-10 NIV)

You're going through tough times? He loves you and wants to help. You've turned away from Him? He loves you and will even lay down His life to get you back. He loves us first. He loves us perfectly. Our response can be nothing less than to love Him back.

We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19 NIV)

I'm so glad that I don't worship a god who demands obedience with threats that produce fear. I'm glad I don't worship a god who simply acts like a friend just to send me down a bad path. I worship a God who reaches out to me, befriends me, and directs my steps perfectly...because He loves me. I love Him, too.

Love Relationship

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5 NIV)

I had heard these words and even said them many times as I grew up. Every time I said them, though, I didn't really think about love of God as anything more than obeying His commands. It couldn't possibly be talking about love the way we use the word love today, could it?

In trying to love God, I found myself struggling with this concept in many ways. How can you love someone that you cannot see? How can I treat God as a "someone" when God is "Holy, Holy, Holy"? How can I think about God in the same way that I think about my wife, my children, my best friend, and my love for Cincinnati chili and Mountain Dew? Loving God just didn't make sense, except in the idea of obeying His commands.

A little later in my life, I started meeting people who seemed to have something more in their lives. Following God wasn't about following rules. There was more depth to them. I wondered why. They would explain the difference by saying, "It's not about Religion. It's about relationship." They claimed to have a relationship with God. I was impressed...and confused.

I still wasn't sure how they built a "relationship" with an awesome, overwhelming, king of kings God; but I was willing to learn. So I began going to Church services, Bible studies, and serving in ministry with them. I began building a relationship with God as I built relationships with them. I learned to love the idea of a relationship with our Almighty God. And our relationship started to grow.

Love Obedience

These commandments that I give you today are to be on 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. (Deuteronomy 6:6-9 NIV)

God told us the greatest of His commands is to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength.  Jesus said if we love him, we will obey his commands.  The most basic love we can give is the act of obedience.  We show our parents that we love them by obeying them.  We show love to God in the same way.

Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land. (Deuteronomy 6:13-15 NIV)

Now, to be sure, love may not be our primary motivator for obedience.  Fear may be at the top of the list.  In the early years, we avoid what our parents say "no" to because they smack our hand or give us a spanking when they say the word.  We don't want the punishment, so we listen to the "no."  The same is true with God.

Be sure to keep the commands of the LORD your God and the stipulations and decrees he has given you. Do what is right and good in the LORD's sight, so that it may go well with you and you may go in and take over the good land the LORD promised on oath to your ancestors, thrusting out all your enemies before you, as the LORD said. (Deuteronomy 6:17-19 NIV)

With time, though, the fear of punishment doesn't become as strong a motivator.  We want to see some positive reason for following the rules.  We start to look for the WIIFM (what's in it for me).  God gives great promises to people who will follow Him.  Just like the promises He gave to the Israelites.

The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness." (Deuteronomy 6:24-25 NIV)

The beautiful thing about obedience with God is the result: righteousness.  This may not seem like a great thing if you are working out of fear or even WIIFM all the time, but it is a great result.  Being right with God means you have an open channel of communication for a good relationship with God.  Loving obedience, to be sure, is a very basic level of love for God...but it's a start.  It sets us up to experience even greater kinds of love.

When You're In Love

Two weeks of discussion about lukewarm living can really start to get me down.  I don't know about you, but constant focus on my weaknesses, shortcomings and/or sin starts to make me wonder if I can really be a Christian.  Am I going to have to memorize the whole Bible now?  Worse yet, will I need to do everything I says in order to stay saved?  Forget the effort, will I ever be able to accomplish all this?

The response to the discussion of the past couple weeks isn't supposed to be "trying harder."  The response He wants us to have is to "love more."

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. (Deuteronomy 6:5 NIV)

When we love God, we make Him our highest priority.  We look for opportunities to spend time with Him.  We want to get to know Him.  We want to hear His voice because we know that His words are worth hearing, valuable, and true.  We enjoy being in His presence and we hurt when we sense He is away.  Our love for God is more important than anything else in our lives.

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:8 NIV)

When we love God above anyone or anything else, we find ourselves doing strange things like talking to Him all the time (1 Thessalonians 5:17), listening to Him and putting it into practice(1 John 5:3), and even loving every person we meet (1 John 4:21, Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 5:43-48).  You even find yourself at peace, not fearing anything because perfect love drives out all fear (1 John 4:18). Love really does conquer all.

Do you love God with everything or do you hold some things back?  
Are you in love with God or in love with the idea of a God who will be on your side?  
What does your life look like when you're in love?