February.
The month of love.
While we usually focus on our love for our spouses or friends around the Valentine holiday, there’s Someone who calls us to love Him more than anyone or anything else. Someone who said if we love our father, mother, children, and even spouse more than we love Him, we’re not even worthy of Him.
That’s pretty strong language, but Jesus made it clear that He wants our love.
As we celebrate love this month, I believe it’s a great time to do a quick spiritual check-in on a love that matters most of all.
Do you love Him?
It’s easy to say that we love Him.
It’s easy to sing to the songs of love in church on Sunday morning.
But, we all know that our actions speak louder than words.
It’s more than what we say, it’s what we do.
While reading through the gospels recently, a couple of scriptures on this topic stood out to me:
In John 14:15, Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”
That shouldn’t be so hard to do, and yet so many of us experience the struggle between our flesh and spirit that Paul describes in Romans 7: “For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do...when I would do good, evil is present with me.”
The question then becomes, what wins: Good or evil?
The answer reveals the state of the heart.
Do you love Him?
Keep His commandments.
Do what is good, or right, in the eyes of the Lord.
His commandments aren’t a mystery. David said in Psalm 119:11, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.”
He gave a book, full of valuable instruction in righteousness.
Jesus even gave us the first two greatest commandments, on which “hang all the law and the prophets,” in Matthew 22:36-40:
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
Here we find again the command to love God with all our hearts, souls, and minds. He’s serious about it. And the second command is to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Do you love Him?
In 1 John 4:20-21, John dives a little deeper into the second commandment:
“If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.”
Our brothers, or sisters, referenced in this passage are not simply blood relatives. We are commanded to love all men and women, including those we would label our enemies, according to Matthew 5:44:
“If ye love me, keep my commandments.”
Do you love Him?
I hope you do.
Because He loves you so much, and He's coming back soon for a bride who's made herself pure for the One she loves more than her own life.
