In Deuteronomy 6:5, we’re commanded, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”
This is a challenging command. We’re called to love God with every fiber of our being. With all our heart, soul, and might. We can’t be half-hearted about our love for God. It’s not enough to love God with some of our heart.
God wants all of us. He wants all of our love and affection and delight. He wants our deepest passion and our highest praise.
God doesn’t do half-measures.
But how can we possibly do this? How can we possibly love God this much? How can we sustain such a deep affection for God?
First John 4:19 gives us a powerful clue.
It says, “We love Him because He first loved us.”
This is the secret to loving God. We love God in response to His overwhelming, overflowing, never-ceasing love for us. Our love for God flows out of and is motivated by God’s love for us.
This means that if we want to grow in our love for God, we must constantly and consistently meditate upon all the ways that God has loved us.
We must call to mind the many ways that He has poured out His love upon us and let them motivate us to love God in response.
So with that in mind, here are four profound ways that God has loved us.
Have you ever considered the fact that God wanted you to be created? He put you on this earth for a purpose and because He created you, He loves you very much. Just as an artist loves his creation, God loves you so very much. You are not here by accident. You are not a mistake. You are the creation of a loving God who has a good purpose for you.
Each of us has sinned against God, and the Bible says that our sins separate us from God. Because God is holy and righteous, He cannot allow any sin into His presence, and on our own, we are too sinful to come into the presence of God. But God was not content to live without us!
John 3:16 famously says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
God loves us so deeply and so intensely that He gave up His precious Son for us. The Eternal One submitted to death so that we could have eternal life. Is there any greater love than this?
When we turn the fruit of the Spirit into a checklist of moral to-dos, we drain them of their beauty and their power. Instead, a different approach is needed.
Ephesians 1:4-5 says, “Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will…”
It would be more than enough if God simply forgave our sins, but because He loves us He goes far beyond that. He also adopted us as His beloved children!
We are children of the living God, and we will receive a glorious inheritance from God. We don’t deserve any of these things, but because God is so loving, He gives them to us.
In addition to creating us, dying for us, and adopting us, God also graciously provides for us every single day. Because He loves us, He generously, and abundantly meets all our needs.
Philippians 4:19 puts it this way: “And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
God is not stingy with His children. He loves to bless us. He loves to meet all of our needs, both physical and spiritual. He is not tightfisted, not a Scrooge of some sort. He is abundantly, overwhelmingly, incredibly generous toward us. Think of all the ways that God has met your needs. Isn’t He good to us?
If we want to grow in our love for God, we must meditate upon the ways that God loves us. The more we consider all the ways God loves us, the more we’ll be filled with love for Him.
Many think love is just a feeling—oceans of emotions. We get confused because English has only one word for love. But there are several kinds of love, and Scripture uses a different Greek word for each kind.
Do you want to learn how to keep the honey in honeymoon? There’s no better advice I can give couples than to submit to the Lordship of Christ in their lives.
It’s a sad fact of life today: vast numbers of people have throw-away marriages. When things don’t work out, they just throw it away. Will you go against the trend? In your family, will you remain faithful? Will you be able to keep love alive?
