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I was just thinking!
Roy Monis:
Hi! Everybody
We all say we love God. So I got thinking about this for quite a long time. "Do we really love God as we say we do?" The easiest thing in the world is to say, "Yes! I do, I love Him more than life itself." But do we really and truly love God? How can we prove that we love Him? Because if we don't then we cannot expect to be admitted into the kingdom of God, that's for sure.
Well God says " If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen." (1Jn.4:20). This means that if we don't love our neighbour as much as we love ourselves it proves that we don't love God regardless of what we may say to the contrary.
We can deceive our friends, neighbours and fellow men into believing that we love them but we will never be able to deceive either ourselves or God that we truly love them. So how do we find out whether we are genuinely loving our neighbour the way we are commanded to?
It reminds me of the gardener who pruned his plants regularly and fed them with the best fertilizers but yet the leaves kept withering and dying. Then he realized that the problem lay not with the pruning and fertilizers but with the roots which were diseased. Now the problem was diagnosing the disease. Once that was found the problem was solved.
Now in this spiritual environment we must find the disease that is concealing itself under a blanket of deception. Ray teaches us about a certain enemy within that is enmity with God and he calls it “The beast within.” Now we can name quite a few but we need to locate and identify the beast in our opinion that's causing the greatest damage.
I have my opinion of who or what that particular beast is, but I'd like to have the opinion of some other members so as to be able to say in all honesty that we love God, or have we been deceiving ourselves by complacently believing that we do. Now we are at the root of the tree, the pruning and fertilizing must come later when its health is restored. Presently we are pruning which is putting it the wrong way round, more in keeping with what the Babylonians believe, that the spiritual comes before the physical.
God bless you brothers and sisters in our joint walk in Christ.
Love in Christ Jesus.
Roy UK
EKnight:
I guess you could say "actions speak louder than words". I sometimes feel that I am using God to help me become a better me. There are so many things about myself that I hate and so I lean on God to help me change. I know that the anger in me, the judgmental side of me, the envious side of me etc etc, cannot be changes without God's help. So, I feel that if I truly loved God more than anything, I would not do things that he does not want me to do. I love God but if he were THE MOST IMPORTANT aspect of my life, I would not have that beast eating away at me. So I guess he is not the center of my existence yet. Does this make any sense?
Eileen
OBrenda:
Funny,
I've been thinking along these lines myself recently. I may know intellectually what I am suppose to feel, and how a "Loving & God Fearing" person should react. And most of the time I pull it off. I heard a Pastor once preach that "Love is a decision...Not a Feeling"....not sure if that is entirely true for me right now!
Has my heart been circumcised, or am I just role playing??
Beloved:
Great topic Roy Here are the scriptures where God tells us how we love Him
(Deu 6:5) And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
(Deu 6:6) And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
(Deu 7:9) Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations;
(Joh 14:21) He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
(Joh 15:12) This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
(Joh 15:13) Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Love is not a decision that we are capable of . Loving God is impossible unless He works in you. We are incapable of obeying his commandments on our own. He has to give us faith (faith is the ability to die to self and it also is strong confirmation that God himself is Faithful)
We need to stop seeing ourselves as the center the the universe and see only God on the throne. When our eyes have been totally opened then only can we see that he loves all the people he created and then we can begin to love them in the same way.
Before this our love was always conditional. We love our love my parents because they provide for us. Later we love others for what they give to us. Sometimes the love is stronger than other time but it usually is conditional.
God frees us from this and through chastisement an He works on all those obstacles to love that are in us. Since we are in the flesh still we cannot reach perfection. Our heart and our soul and our strength are weak.
The first three of the ten comamandments deal with our relationship to him and the rest with our relationship to his creation.
He has to work on our selfishness and anger and greed and lust and covetnous etc and burn these out and replace them with mercy patience and kindness and love. It is a very slow and very painful process isn't it.
Every day and in every thing we do it reminds us our weaknesses. With the help of the Holy Spirit we take the first step and repent of our failures, but then we have to wait as he works on us so we can turn the 180 degrees and do the right thing the next time we are presented with the same issue.
beloved
hillsbororiver:
Hi Roy,
This is a great question and some very good answers as well, the proof certainly would be in the fruits we are displaying and also in the spiritual growth we experience as we journey forward, these things would be evident to ourselves as well as others and I firmly believe we cannot claim a godly love until we manifest the other spiritual gifts too.
Can one claim to love God and man as they gossip and spread malicious rumors? Can anyone truly claim to love God and man as they are impatient with the blind and deaf and lame? Can one really claim to love God and man if they are miserly with their time or money or patient instruction? I really like what Peter wrote in regard to this progression to godly love and charity (agape: a benevolent, affectionate, love feast).
2 Peter 1
1Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:
2Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,
3According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
4Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
5And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;
6And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;
7And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.
8For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.
10Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:
11For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Peace,
Joe
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