Luke10:27 “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind..”
I heard a message about loving God in a new and passionate way end of last year and I was very convicted because for the past 5 years the focus has been loving others. Loving others, I think is as important, but it does not overthrow the other. I have seen myself really drift away from “God first to others first”. I have realized that this does not work very well. What usually happens is that people and relationships become an idol. I strongly believe that as we love God with everything and all we have it naturally happens that we love people because God loves everyone and so His nature is reflected in our lives as well.
Loving people to me is easy because I am as imperfect as they are and I can look into myself and see how gracious God has been and extend that same grace. Loving God is hard! I think so. The Bible asks us to love with all of us. I mean EVERYTHING!!! In our thoughts, deeds, relationships, what we put our efforts into, work, personality, finances, time…..this is hard for me because I am loving a perfect and Holy God.
Two things sometimes happen in my relationship with God as I am learning to love Him more: (1) I feel that God is so far away that I cannot reach Him. “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us –Tozer…… I want to know God as the God that is Emmanuel, the God that is near and the God who sees me. Intimacy….this is what I want with God. Ironically, the only way to develop this nearness is loving God with all of my mind, strength, soul and heart. I want to go to bed thinking about God more often than the cute guy who smiled at me in church or the tasks I have to accomplish in school. I want my mind to be meditating on Him ALL the time. I want my heart to melt and tender even more with each encounter with Him. I want my soul and strength to easily steer to the things of God and seek His face daily. I want to be able to say no to the many things of the world and spend hours in His presence.
(2) I will quickly settle for forgiveness than to actually make the effort to love God. This comes in many different ways. I will say “God knows I am busy, He understands “then I turn around and totally do something completely irrelevant. This past year, I fell completely in love with Korean drama and I will start to watch again soon. During that time, I could spend hours and hours watching different series….I even started to pick up their language and they had cute guys in these drama and well (LOL!!! Ladies????) If I am able to invest time into things like this then I am more than capable to give up time, emotions, and basically anything to be with God. To intentionally love on Him….not perfectly but with the help of the Holy Spirit, learn to give more of myself to the God who has given me EVERYTHING!. One of the gifts from the Holy Spirit is love…not just loving others but loving God as well. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you that desire. Eventually seeking God and loving Him becomes an addiction which is what we need. God loves and pursues us……He gives His best to me and so I can lso love Him the best way I can.
Psalm 27:4 “One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”
This is so true, we want to love others before we truly love God. Which as you say is hard because when you love others you don’t have to love them with all your heart, with all you mind, and with all our soul. As you say we are loving a perfect and holy God and this can either draw us closer to him or draw us closer to others. With him we don’t have to impress him he knows I every thought, deed and our heart which should make it easier, but truth be told it is not, because he knows our heart. With others we can choose to reveal what we want to and keep the rest to ourselves. Thank you for posting this it shows me, ME. And what I need to do.