Contemplating Loving God

The Main Thing God Wants from Us

Loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength is the main thing God wants from you and from me. I know, according to Westminster Catechism man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. That is well and good. However, that will never happen until we fall in love with Him.

Over the last four weeks we looked at the four Greek words for love. In consideration of those who may not have read the previous articles, the four loves are eros (romantic love), storge (family love), philia (warm fuzzy love), and agape (choosing to treat people as God would have us treat them—as per I Corinthians 13). Also, agape in its verb form is the word used for loving God with all our heart (Mark 12:30).

Give Me Such Love

But is loving God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength even possible? Yes, it is once we genuinely grasp the fullness of His love for us. In I John 4:19 we read that “we love Him because He first loved us.”

I was a believer for some time before I truly came to love the Lord. But there was a day when I literally got down on my knees and told the Lord that I believed in Him but did not love Him, and I prayed, “Lord, give me such a love!” Furthermore, I asked Him to pour His love into me that I might indeed love Him and love others. From there the hard stuff of life drove me to His heart. I thank God for those relentlessly difficult times. It is through love for Him that we are able to endure hardships. It is through facing those hardships in a God honoring way that we glorify Him. And as we love and glorify Him we also enjoy Him. Yes, loving God is the main thing!

Loving God or Loving Me

Do you love Him or are you wearing my old shoes—belief without real love. The problem for me back then was that my focus was on me, my life, my desires, my problems, etc. In II Timothy three Paul speaks of people being lovers of themselves and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. We tend to blind our eyes to that reality, but it was true of me at the time. My love was focused in the wrong direction. Instead of loving God, life was all about me! But today, loving God is the main thing. I am not claiming sainthood or anything, just that now my focus is where it belongs, loving Him, and too I know the meaning of true joy—Him!

Thanks for sharing a bit of my life and my heart by reading this. Where are you at in your relationship with Him? I would love to have you share some of your story with me. Just go to “comments” and start typing.

This Week’s Intriguing Book

The Blood Stream is a powerful Quick Read Book, an allegory that will take you on an extraordinary journey that will challenge your heart. This book is not an allegory in the same form as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The Blood Stream is only about eighty pages, but the development of its theme is has a subtle complexity to it that will grab you. It is a powerful story that will appeal to today’s reader. And the climax will likely leave you loving God even more than you do.

The story is a supremely intriguing tale about two brothers, Kandras and Kovan, who first appear in Terminus. The Blood Stream is in fact a spin-off tale within my Accidental Heroes series, and originally appeared as an addendum to Labyrinth, the fifth book in that series. This intriguing allegory will suck you in and give pause to contemplate issues of the heart.

And although the story is about two men, ladies, you will find the tale just as powerful and gripping as the men will find it. Here is a link: The Blood Stream

All of my books can be found at Amazon (available for kindle as well) and Barnes & Noble.

Again, please share your comments.