To Love God

I am going to discuss my thoughts on what it means to love God. We say we love God and even claim to obey the commandment to love God. However, do we really know what it means to love God and how to love God. Look at the following scriptures for example.

(Deuteronomy 6:5 NKJV) "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

(Matthew 22:37-40 NKJV) Jesus said to him, " 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' {38} "This is the first and great commandment. {39} "And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' {40} "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

What does the word love mean in these two scriptures. Also how do we actively love God. I began to think about these questions some time ago. What I have attempted to do here is to write down the results of pondering, meditation, and examining the Bible for clues.

Early Ideal of Love

To me love was simply to be intimately concerned about someone. There are many forms of this love. For example, my love for a friend would be different then my love for my wife. My love for my wife is different then my love for God. My love for God is different then my love for my parents or my brother. Do you see the difference. Love manifests itself based on the type of relationship. My relationship with my parents is different then that with my brother, wife, friends, and even God. All in all, my perception of love was generally that of caring for someone. Love also implied a personal relationship with the person loved. Therefore, I couldn't say I love someone unless there was a personal relationship established. This eliminated any concept of loving at first sight. To me that was and is impossible.

I used to say that I love God all of the time. I recall telling God that I love him while walking home from school. I would simply say something like "God. I love you with a passion." I didn't wonder what I meant at that time. I knew what I was saying to God. For the most part I was simply expressing my adoration for Him. I was telling Him how I felt about Him and what He meant to me.

I spent a lot of time with God. I used to make appointments with Him and sit down late at night in the back yard or at my bedroom window and just talk to him. Those where great times--just me and the Lord. God meant a great deal to me and I was very conscious of Him. I expressed all of that by saying I love Him.

This brings up another important component of my concept of love. Togetherness was crucial to love in my mind. There could be no love without togetherness, as I described previously about relationships. For example, a love relationship in a marriage could not exist without togetherness. Togetherness is sometimes indigenous such as the relationship between siblings or parents and children. Some are not and must be developed as in the relationship of friends or a married couple. However, togetherness was crucial for love to exist.

Love, a New Perspective

Love began to take on a whole new meaning after I was married. It became apparent that my wife did not share the same concept of love. In my mind a married couple had to be together in order to claim a love relationship. Togetherness included such things as playing together, exercising together, washing the car together and the like. Of course togetherness manifests itself in sex, going to church together, grocery shopping together, and the like. However I realized that my wife didn't operate in this mode of togetherness. So I began to have a problem with the concept of love and how can I claim to love my wife when it didn't look like we were "together?" Likewise, I began to wonder what it really means to love God since my concept of love didn't appear to hold up or so I thought.

Therefore, either my concept of love was totally off base or there was more to it then simple togetherness and sex (in a married relationship). If this was true then perhaps there is more to loving God then just adoring him or feeling real good about Him. Therefore, I began to pursue love to find the truth of it. What is love? I needed to develop a new or more complete concept of love.

Love Defined

On the surface this looks great. After all, if I love someone then I am concerned about him or her. Again we see the cause of love and not necessarily love itself. How can I be concerned about the well being of God though? It is silly for me to think that I can be concerned about God's well being. So though this definition may apply to people loving people, it doesn't give us much insight into people loving God. Therefore, I again suspect that there is something deeper to love.

Love People	Love Things	Love God
Care about Important to you Emotional expression	Care about it Important to you	God is important to you Emotional expression

Enlightenment

One day during a Bible study on my job, Lanee' Daniels gave a very enlightening insight of the word love. I asked what it means when you say you love someone? What is meant when you say you love your husband for example? She, referring to her husband, said that he was important to her. Voila! Light bulbs and fireworks went off in my head. The application of this is that we love someone because he or she is important to us. This is a state and not an emotion or thought. It is because it is. I remember a long time ago Pastor Effie Blumentoe asking the Bible study class if we love her. I said yes. She said why? I said I don't know, I just do. I was telling the truth. There was a seed for my understanding love. Look at the following chart. Each column lists some things that you do when you love people, things, and God respectively.

Note that they all have this concept of importance in common. We tend to love those things that are important to us. I could say something like "I just love that car." What am I really saying? I could be expressing the way I feel at the time or I could be expressing how much that car has been dependable and therefore important to me. We care about our spouse because he or she is important to us. Real love should not be confused with emotions (feelings), which is based on satisfaction of the flesh and the associated excitement. For example, a person may express love for someone when in fact they are expressing a sexual attraction and/or infatuation for someone.

Let's look at this word "important." Something is important to you because you have identified a meaning or worth to it. For example, a gold necklace may be important to you because of its value whether monetary or sentimental. The importance of that necklace may manifest itself into such things as keeping it secure, wearing it whenever you have the chance, or keeping it in tip top condition. You may also express the worth of that necklace by stating that you love it. The point is that we tend to "love" the things that are important to us and this "love" is expressed in a variety of ways. I should also add that there is an emotional aspect to love such that the things that are important to us are not necessarily the things that we love. For example, your job may be important to you but you may not love it. However, you still may love your job but your love is based on the value of enjoyment or satisfaction the job gives you and not the value it has for paying the bills.

An Example In Marriage

I asked a question in Bible class one-day on my job as I stated previously. Lanee' Daniels said that loving her husband and doing things for him is due to the fact that he is important to her. So a wife loves a husband because a personal importance has developed. This is not the same as saying that your car or your job is important. I am talking about importance on a personal life operating sense. One spouse is important to the other spouse personally

How does this value or importance develop in a marriage or any other relationship? I believe that a key ingredient is the concept of togetherness. Let me give you my adjusted definition of togetherness so as not to induce trivia.

Togetherness is a fusing of one person's life with another. It is to be personally and agreeably involved with the activities of another in both normal everyday experiences and in special occasions. It is to be with someone as far as life experiences are concerned. The two shall become one is the prime example of true togetherness in marriage.

This togetherness may be expressed in many ways in a marriage relationship. Of course there is the sexual expression but this is very limiting. I should add that sexuality is a powerful thing that can be used and abused like any other thing. Sex does not necessarily imply an expression of love. It can very well imply a satisfaction of lust, an addiction, or simple physical pleasure. Well anyway back to the point. Togetherness can also be expressed by actions of caring for each other, working together on projects, playing together, planning together, and more. All of these things are expressions or manifestations of togetherness as well as seeds of more togetherness. This togetherness is an integral part of love in my opinion.

Please note that togetherness is not simply being together in body or location. For example, a football player may spend a lot of time with teammates but that doesn't mean that he and his teammates are together. Again, there is something deeper to love then its expression.

From this togetherness worth develops. Your spouse becomes increasingly more important to you. Your boyfriend or girlfriend becomes more involved with you and a personal worth develops. He or she means more to you as time goes on. This worth is not the same as you would have for a piece of jewelry. It is an infusion of his or her life into your life. Your life includes your spouse and vice versa. To live means to live together with your spouse. You are no longer just you. You have been joined together with a spouse and you share a life together. That is true togetherness and that is where true love comes from in my opinion. Obtaining this is a whole different matter.

I recall Pastor Blumentoe telling my wife and I before we were married that we were already married. Of course she explained that. She said that God had put us together. Our lives were fused together already. All that was necessary was to make it official according to the rules of the land. The wedding day is simply an expression of this love between man and wife. It is simply the declaration of the two becoming one. The two are already one. The wedding just makes it official in a way.

So love develops between a husband and a wife as well as other relationships such as a friend and parents and children. Love can mean many other things as I alluded to earlier. It can express a lust for the opposite sex, an emotional state towards someone, or just the fact that you really like someone or care about someone. However, true love is very different or deeper I should say. What then is this love? What is the force that causes us to care, be concerned about others, commit a life together with a spouse, sacrifice for your children, and defend a friend? What is the force that fuels the togetherness we discussed earlier?

True Love

There seems to be one reasonable answer to the previous question. Love seems to transcend all of the expressions, feelings, emotions, and perceptions that we have of it. Therefore, I believe that love must come from God? God cares, provides, protects, and joins with us by His Holy Spirit. We love because God's love is in us. We are able to truly love because true love abides in us--those who are born again by the Spirit of God. Therefore, we can agree with John the Apostle when he wrote,

(1 John 4:16-19 KJV) And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. {17} Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. {18} There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. {19} We love him, because he first loved us.

See also 1 John 3:16-17, 4:10 and John 3:16. These are all expressions or the results of love. True love comes from what is within. These things are motivated by love. The force that causes these, if you allow me to say it that way, is the Spirit of God. True love is simply the abiding Spirit of God. John said that God is love. This implies that love is defined by the nature of God.

I can say that I must have value to God else he wouldn't care for me. We all have value to God because otherwise he would not have sent Jesus Christ. So His Spirit resides in me so that I am capable of love. However, I should add that I could reject God's love by rejecting His Spirit. So how do I express my love for God?

An Expression of Love to God

Now let's apply the concept described above to our relationship with God. Again togetherness is very important. This togetherness with God (we call it fellowship) develops a closeness with God and therefore a sense of worth with God. It's not the same type of worth as for an object but worth relative to your life. Our relationship with God can be expressed in similar terms as our relationship with our spouse or our best friend. God is important to us in that He is an integral and necessary part of our life. We begin to share with each other in experiences and become more conscious of God as we commune with Him and become more aware of Him. Our life's activities naturally include God. It isn't a special thing to pray or just have quiet time with God. He is an integral part of our life. His life is indeed in us enabling us to truly love. We have no life without Him because He has moved into our very existence and our very life activities. A man may express how he feels about a woman by saying, "I can't live without her." We can likewise express how we "feel" about God by saying, "I can't live without Him."

I love God because He is vital (important) to me. I am able to love God because His love is in me. I could say that my health is important to me for obvious reasons. I can also say that God is important to me because I need Him to live. My fellowship with Him has caused increased awareness of Him and an increased appreciation for Him. I need Him--I love Him. Our awareness of God and past experiences with Him tells us that regardless of who is with us or against us that God will always be there. I need Him--I love Him. It doesn't matter what the world thinks about us. God still will love us. Why? I dare say that I am important to Him as well. This is not because He needs me to live but because I am His creation—His child.

Worship

Worshiping God is one of the greatest expressions of our love for God. How is this so? First we need to understand what it means to worship. I am sure you have heard someone say something like "He just worships that car. He washes it every day." What was really said was that the person in question is expressing the personal value of his car by washing it every day. This doesn't mean that it needs to be cleaned every day. However, the car means so much to him that he wants it to look its best all of the time (at least this is one possible scenario. There could be other reasons why he wants the car spotless).

The word worship means worthiness, repute, reverence paid to a divine being; a person of importance (used as a title); extraordinary respect and honor given to someone. It is also the human response to the perceived presence of God. Worship is the expression of the worth of the one being worshipped.

Worship in our case is used as an activity. We worship God by doing something. We express something by worshipping God. What is the something that our worship of God expresses? It could express the reverence we have for Him, the great honor we have of Him and the love that we have For Him. Recall that our love for God is based on what He is to us--His importance. Worship (from its etymology) implies worth as in worthiness. Our worship expresses the place that God has in our lives. However, I should point out that it is possible to go through the motions of conducted worship in church services and yet not really worship God at all. True worship comes from within and is an expression from within. It cannot be orchestrated by anyone except to give time for worship. In essence, true worship originates from true love. I don't want to get into a discussion of worship at this time. Suffice it for me to say that worship is a way that we express our love for God, that is, His importance to us.

What is Love?

Again love is God. Our expressions of love are many. However, true love comes from the inside and originates from the Spirit of God. Love results in togetherness and develops from togetherness. 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is an excellent dissertation on the subject of love. Note that Paul describes love as opposed to defining it.

How Do We Love God?

Let's discuss how we love God now that we have a better handle of what love is. Learning How to love God is simply a matter of expression. Recall that the love of God is already in those who are born again. In an example given earlier, we said that a man can express his love for his car by washing it everyday. A husband can express His love for His wife by caring for her. Let me magnify these examples so that the transition to God, in principle, will be easier.

How does a husband express his love for his wife? Here is a list of things that he may do.

His love for his wife is manifested or expressed through activities (action). Now again how do we love God? Simply by expressing it. We already talked about worshiping God as a means of expressing love for God. However, I believe that there is even a greater method of loving God. You might even call it true worship. The other method is simply obedience. Look at what Jesus Christ said.

(John 14:21 NCV) Those who know my commands and obey them are the ones who love me, and my Father will love those who love me. I will love them and will show myself to them."

Our love for God is directly proportionate to our obedience to Him. We therefore, according to these and similar scriptures, cannot say that we love God if we don't do what he says. This then seems to imply that there is another component of love when dealing with the love of God.

On the surface it may appear that love and obedience have nothing to do with each other. However, I would like to propose that we look at them from a different perspective. Let's assume that God does not want us to be His personal robots blindly doing all that He says to do. Let's assume that God wants us to freely love Him, that is, love Him from our own will. The Bible gives no indication whatsoever that God wants us to be thoughtless blind robots obeying His every command without a choice. We were created with the ability to choose.

Now let's ask ourselves a simple question. Why would I do what someone says? Why do you do what the doctor says? Why do you do what other professionals tell you to do? A few things are evident in these and similar situations. First you have a degree of trust for these people. You also assume or know that they know what they are talking about. That is, you have confidence in their knowledge and abilities. If you didn't trust your doctor then you would be reluctant to obey them. Now let's apply these thoughts to God.

Why would you obey God? You would obey God if you trusted Him, had confidence in His ability, and realized that He cares about you. Remember that we are talking about free choice beings. Therefore, we will do what God says if we trust Him. Let me highlight the above. I would obey God because:

The Bible gives us much information regarding the trustworthiness and faithfulness of God (see Deut. 7:9; 1 Sam. 26:23; Ps 9:10, 36:5, 89:1, 119:138; and 1 Cor. 1:9). The Bible also abundantly informs us of God's love for us (see Ro. 5:8; Titus 3:4-5; 1 Jn 4:9). So I should have no problem doing what he says especially since He knows all things. So a great expression of our love for God can be seen in our obedience to Him, which itself is fueled by our trust in Him.

Another reason that I love God is because he first loved me (1 John 4:19) and demonstrated that love through Jesus Christ (see John 3:16). We talked about this previously in this discussion. How do we love God? Know Him, Trust Him, Obey Him, and worship Him. These are all personal things that you must do. They don't necessarily happen in church services or church meetings. They happen between you and God regardless of where you are. Let me summarize these.

Live with God: Experience God and His love for you. A great part of this phase can be summarized by Proverbs 3:5-6. God is an integral part of your normal everyday life. He guides you and you commune with Him.

The Importance of God to Us

How important is God to you? Is he important enough for you to obey Him? Do you love Him enough to obey Him? This is where you can evaluate what is really in your heart. Do you want things exclusively your way or are you open and sensitive to the voice of God to obey Him. What do you do to demonstrate and live the love of God in you? Are your life and will more important than God? If you have more things that are important to you then God then you will not obey Him and therefore cannot say, according to scripture, that you really love Him. Consider what Jesus said.

(Matthew 4:4 NKJV) But He answered and said, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'"

Is the word of God important to you? Do you trust God enough to love Him and do what He says or do you trust others and self more to do what they say?

What You Can Do?

We have discussed at least two things you do to express your love for God. They are:

However, these rest on the assumption that God is important to you and so much so that you do love Him. The Bible declares,

(Mark 12:30 NKJV) 'And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment.

A loose paraphrasing of the above scripture could be "to love God with all you got." But how do you do that? We said earlier that if we really do love God then we will obey Him and we will worship Him. However, how do you get God to be so important? Is it automatic? You and I know that the answer is no. What can I do so that God is the most important aspect of my life? Let's talk about that now.

Let me suggest at least two things that I believe are vital to increasing the importance of God in your life and thus enabling you to love Him. They are:

I would like to give you an illustration before we get deep into a discussion of God relative to the two above terms. Again let's take a man and women relationship leading to perhaps marriage. A man is attracted to a woman and then begins the process of building a relationship (note that not all men are interested in a genuine relationship--food for thought). During this process the man learns more about the women and vice versa. This is accomplished by a common activity called dating or courting. They go out to the movies, dinner, outdoor activities, discussions, and more. During this whole time the man is learning who this woman is and likewise the woman is learning who this man is and they fall in love. The man can say that he loves the woman and the woman can say that she loves the man. This love grew from the time spent together and the experiences that they share together. In general the two of them fellowship. They come together on common terms and the relationship grows.

After a while the man and woman begin to experience life together. They are no longer probing each other but just being a part of each other's life. They like each other and they begin to "grow" on each other. This may lead to engagement and then marriage or it could lead to a wonderful friendship. During this latter stage they experience each other. This is more true after marriage or a friendship has been established.

Now let's apply this to God. We must know God before we can say that we love Him. Knowing God implies personal knowledge of him based on your own fellowship with Him and experiences with Him. You may have your private fellowship times and prayer times. You will also have your personal Bible study times to learn more of His word and thus the governing factors for your life.

So the first thing you have to do is meet God. Somewhere along the line you have to discover that there is a God and who He is. This leads to the salvation process because before long you will run headfirst into Jesus Christ. We won't discuss the salvation process in this discussion.

Once you have been born again you begin to grow in your Christian faith. You learn more and more about God and His ways. The development of a close relationship with God begins. This is because you spend time with the Lord. You commune with Him--you fellowship. As you grow you become more and more aware of God in your life and you see how he operates. That is, you experience God.

Basically you have to develop a personal relationship with God knowing who He is and what He is to you. The importance of God in your life will become evident and the experience with God will become an integral part of your life.

False Measurements

I might as well tell you about some of the things that are erroneously used to measure your love for God. These are things that are normally heard in the religious community. Some teach that your love for God can be measured by:

Though your love for God can be expressed by your activities, namely obedience and worship, you should not feel obligated to abide by someone else's standards. Your love for God is in your heart and should not and cannot be dictated by anyone else. Therefore, do not allow yourself to become victimized by religious bondage imposed on you by others. I won't get into details on any of the list items but suffice it for me to say that the love you have for God is between you and God.

Freely love God without the extra baggage imposed on you by religion and religious organizations and churches. Freely experience the love of God in your life and let that love grow. Do what God says--this is our duty anyway (See Ecclesiastes 12:13).

Allow your passion to be for the Lord. This doesn't mean that life ends and that you will live in misery. It simply means that the life that is in God will illuminate you more and more as you grow in love--in God. There is power in love and there is strength in love. I strongly recommend that you read 1 Corinthians 13 for Paul's dissertation on love.

Here are some suggestions that can help you build a fruitful and loving relationship with God our heavenly father as well live a life of love.

Summary

So what have we said. Love is defined by pointing to God. To know what love is requires that you know who God is. Love is expressed in many ways based on the situation. For example we love our parents, children, friends, and spouse differently but the underlying force is from God’s love. Know God, trust God, obey God, and Worship God. True love then becomes second nature and the experiences beautiful.