To love and obey

As a somewhat famous lyric goes " I want to know what love is" they must have never got around to reading 1 John or Romans for that matter because in first John we are told not only that "we know love by this, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" but that "God is love" if we flip over to Romans 5 we are told in verse eight "But God demonstrated His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" And just because we all like the Chapter we can throw in 1 Corinthians 13 "Love is patient, love is kind......". So from these verses we can say that we know God loves us because he sent his Son to die for us (John 3:16) and that Jesus on the cross is a manifestation of "God is love". He makes in invisible visible by displaying the love of God in such a deep way we will spend many years singing "Worthy is the lamb because he was slain" So if it is Jesus death that shows us the love of God what does this mean for us showing our love to God and to others?

Jesus, in his "final message" in John 14 tells us that those who keep his commandments are the ones who love him. So, to love God is to obey God. People may ask what does it mean to obey God. It means do everything He tells you to do, and I'm not talking about which job to take, or car to buy but actually do what the Bible says. For example, take Matthew 5-7 and do it. Ouch. When there are policies in place for your work, follow them. Say what you mean, forgive people, don't complain, all those things that are quite frankly really hard and in fact impossible to do without God, so we go back to 1 John, we love because he first loved us, and having a revelation of God is what enpowers us to obey him.

I have been reading and outlining Fire Within by Thomas Dubuy, which is a great book on the contemplative life that we are all invited into, if I was to summarise the book I would say one of the main points is that our obedience to the Lord, and to those over us has a direct co relation to our prayer life, it's hard to pray if we are not obedient and it's hard to obey if we don't pray. Amazing.

I think I'll leave it there, but this will be a subject matter that you will find me pondering on a lot. How can I love Jesus to the fullest right now? Not tomorrow and not yesterday, because really all I can do is love Jesus in the present!

Grace and Peace
Wendy