Loving God is something that seems so obvious, but does that mean that we somehow forget about it?  It doesn’t seem possible that we could forget about doing this, but does it really happen?

What Does Loving God Mean?

We use the word “love” in a lot of different ways.  I love my spouse.  I love my dog.  I love pizza.  I love my favorite sports team.  I love my favorite movie or book or tv show.  Surely all of these “loves” are not the same, or at least I hope not.  I might enjoy pizza, a sports team, book, movie or tv show, but that should not rise to the level of the love I have for my spouse(or my dog?).

Think about everything you do for your spouse.  Would you do those same things for some pizza or a sports team?  Hopefully not.  Your spouse should be someone who is WAY more important than any of those other things.  And God should be even more important than your spouse(Luke 14:26).

Loving anyone means that you want what is best for another person.  Although this works fine in our dealings with other people, it likely falls short when thinking about God.  He already has the best of everything; my wanting something good for God probably doesn’t do much of anything.  Thankfully, the Bible helps us to understand what loving God entails.

I John 5:3 states that if we love God, we will keep His commandments, and furthermore, those commandments are not a burden.  This lets us know, in no uncertain terms, what it means to love God.  This love is not just some warm, fuzzy feeling, but rather it is a love that finds it expression in action, or inaction, as the case may be.  This love DOES.  It looks to God, asks what He wants us to do, then does it.  Doing something contrary to His commands(what He wants us to do) should be the farthest thing from our minds!  If you consider all that He has done for us, how could we do anything less that what He wants us to do?

Everything

It can be really easy to “cherry-pick” the Bible.  Let’s face it, the Bible is pretty long, as books go.  I would be really easy to find some things that we are told to do, and then do those.  Yes, we should do those things, but not just some things.  We need to do everything.  I am not suggesting that we do things that are not directed at us.  For example, the Law of Moses(in the Old Testament) was to be followed by the nation of Israel.  When Jesus came in the first century AD, preaching salvation, He ushered in a new covenant – a new agreement between God and His people(Heb. 8:13).  The new covenant meant the old covenant did not need to be followed any longer.  There are also statements in the New Testament that are directed to specific individuals(e.g. the book of Philemon is directed, in part, to a person whose runaway slave is returning, and I hope none of us find ourselves in that situation).  However, in general, we follow everything that God tells us to do, or refrain from doing.

Believing

We need to believe God.  When He says something, we believe it, even when the world says it’s wrong.  God demonstrates how the universe came into existence in the first chapter of Genesis.  The scientific community says that the universe came about as a result of a large explosion(the big bang theory).  Many people professing faith in God attempt to meld the two together, stating that God’s version in Genesis 1 is only part of the story, but the two options appear to be mutually exclusive.  Culture and society also ebb and flow with regard to what is deemed good or bad.  God does not change.  He tells us what is bad, and we need to believe Him.   We need to trust Him.

Thankful

Being thankful might not sound like it is part of loving God, but it is.  The Psalms are full of writers expressing their thankfulness to God for everything He does for them(Ps. 7:17; 35:18; 50:14; 56:12; 95:2; 100:4, etc.).  When you consider all that God has done for us, it only seems to be a natural response to thank Him . . . often.

Conclusion

We need to love God, and not just in thought, but in deed.  Loving God in thought is essential, but it can’t end there.  It needs to continue.  It needs to seep out of our pores.  We should reek of loving God.  People should look at us and say, “That person loves God.”  Admittedly, that will not happen very often, as most people would not understand seeing our love for God in much of what we do.  But we still do it, not to be seen by other people(Matt. 6:1-18), but because it’s how we feel . . . it’s who we are.  Let’s be how we were meant to be.  Let’s BE God’s people.