Day 7
TOPIC: GOD PURSUES A LOVE RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU
He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with
all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most
important commandment.” (Matt.22:37-38)
God created you for intimate fellowship with Him. A life spent walking
closely with the Lord is both exciting and rewarding. God does not want
you to miss out on what He has intended for you from eternity. Sin causes
us to follow our own selfish desires, but in doing so we reject God’s best for
our lives. So God takes the initiative to draw us closer to Himself.
This love relationship, however, is not one-sided. As you accept His love and forgiveness, He wants you to know and worship Him. Most of all,
He wants you to love Him. Jesus said, “The one who has My commands and keeps them is the one who loves Me. And the one who loves Me will be
loved by My Father. I also will love him and will reveal Myself to him”
(John 14:21).
Your love for God and your obedience to His commands go hand in
hand. Jesus declared, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments”
(John 14:15). When you obey Jesus, you demonstrate that you trust Him. Obedience is the outward expression of your love for God.
Jesus set an example in His life. He said, “I am going away so that the
world may know that I love the Father. Just as the Father commanded Me,
so I do” (John 14:31). Jesus demonstrated His love for the Father by
obedience. Obeying God out of love does not merely mean following the
letter of the law; it also includes obedience to the spirit of God’s command .
If you have an obedience problem, you have a love problem. Focus your
attention on God’s love. Could you stand before God and describe your relationship to Him by saying, “I love You with all my heart and all my soul
and all my mind and all my strength”? Jesus said He would take those who
respond to His love into an ever-deepening experience of love and
fellowship with Him.
Do you realize that the Lord does not just give you life—He is your
life? He does not grant you things and comforts so you have a “good” life.
He brings you into a relationship with Him so out of that relationship you
have everything you could possibly need. You did not initiate a love
relationship with God; He initiated a love relationship with you. Long
before you began your life on earth, God demonstrated His love for you on
the cross of Christ.
Because God loves you, He wants you to love Him in return. The
preceding Scriptures indicate some of the ways you can express your
devotion to Him: you can choose life, listen to His voice, hold fast to Him,
believe in His only Son, obey His commands and teachings, and be willing
to lay down your life for your Christian brothers and sisters.
When you love God, He promises to respond with His blessings. You
and your children will live under His favor. By trusting in Jesus, you have
eternal life. God’s Spirit will reside within you. He will make you more than
a conqueror over every difficulty you face. Nothing will separate you from
God’s love.
What is the foremost thing God wants from you? He wants you to love
Him with all your being. Your experiencing God depends on your love for
Him .
God did not create you for time; He created you for eternity. Your
lifetime on earth provides the opportunity for you to become acquainted
with Him and to choose to enter a relationship with Him. Time is a period
during which God wants to develop your character into His likeness. Then
eternity will have its fullest dimensions for you.
If you merely live for time, you will miss the ultimate purpose of
creation. If you live for time, you will allow your past to control and limit
your life today. Your life as a child of God ought to be shaped by the future
(what you will ultimately be). God uses your present to mold and shape
your future here on earth and throughout eternity.
You may have experienced things in your past that have a strong,
limiting influence on your life. These may include handicaps, a troubled
family background, failures, shame, poverty, pride, success, fame, excessive
wealth, and so forth. You may realize you’re being shaped primarily by your
past rather than your future. You may also fear that because of past failures, you have little hope for the future.
People do not seek God on their own initiative. God always takes the
lead in pursuing a love relationship with you. This love relationship is real, personal, and extremely practical. More than anything else you might do,
God wants you to love Him with your total being. He created you for that
purpose. If your love relationship with Him is not close, everything else
related to knowing and doing the will of God will be out of focus. When
you find God is not working through your life to accomplish His purposes, focus on your love relationship with Him. God may be waiting until you
respond to His loving invitation to a relationship before He works through
your life to bless others.
