The Ultimate Love Of God

There is the story of a man who told his wife that he loved her more than anything else in the world, and he wanted to have a candlelight dinner with her. He said for her to hurry up and fix dinner and he would rush home just as soon as the poker game was over.

There are many types of love, but I seriously doubt if that is one of them. Too often, we utter the words of love, but forget to back them up with heart felt actions. But that is how we “do” love. Today, I want to talk about God’s love.

EPHESIANS 2:4-5 tells us –

‘But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved.’

So, right off the bat, we see that God loves us with a pure and total love. We cannot comprehend the enormity of His love, but we need respond to it with deliberate actions and not ignore it while taking it for granted.

God’s love is the greatest gift known to mankind, and we need to take pleasure in it. We need to honor and worship God. We need to obey every command He has given us. God cherishes our love. When we seek God with a submissive heart, His amazing love will abound in every area of our lives.

You say, “There’s a condition to it!” You are right. That condition is that before He can give you His great loving mercy, you must seek Him in your life through Jesus Christ. I personally consider that more of a privilege than a condition, however.

In GALATIANS 5:6b states,

‘… The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.’

In other words, the most important thing in your life is having total faith in God, and having that faith be seen in your love for God. Anything short of that doesn’t even count, according to the Apostle Paul. The stronger our faith in God is, the more we are able to show our love for Him in every thought and action we have.

You have a choice. You can have a life full of abundance; or one that is empty. The more you love God, the more abundance you have. The more you deny God, the emptier your life will be.

Let’s talk about the different steps involved in having a life that is full in God.

1. THE DECISION IN FAITH

Have you ever noticed how humans always look for the easy way out? We take the path of least resistance, don’t we? And we do that when it comes to feeling love, too. Contrary to popular belief, love is a choice we make. We choose to love, or we choose not to love. We even choose to love God or not. Do we love God and receive His abundance blessings, or do we choose to not love God and suffer the distress and anguish that a life without God offers?

The world is very good at what it does, and what it does is confuse man. Of course, we know the world us ruled by the devil, don’t we? He keeps us so busy we don’t know which end is up and he gives us so many temptations to choose from, we get confused and always seem to reach for the wrong choices.

The problem is that man is prideful and man doesn’t want to humble himself to anyone – even God. And without humbling ourselves, we are too prideful to listen to God tell us what He wants from us.

Man was made to associate with - and to love God. Man made a fatal mistake in the Garden of Eden and that mistake cast us away from God and into sin.

And throughout the generations since, rather than to follow the truth of what the Bible says, we conjure up everything our minds can think of to make God to fit our plans rather than our trying to fit into God’s plans.

We have denominations out there that believe in some parts of the Bible while discounting other parts. Why do they do this? Because they want to have salvation, but they want it on their own way, even if their way is wrong.

You have decisions to make during your lifetime. The decision you are making today will determine where your eternity will be spent tomorrow. Every one of us is going to live for eternity. And it is totally up to us as to where we want to live it.

We rationalize our actions to make them seem like they are okay with God - even if His word says it isn’t! That is how blind we are in our self-centered pride. I urge you to read His word daily and to meditate on what you have read. Learn what God is trying to tell you through His word and through His Holy Spirit.