What do you love most in life? How you answer says a lot about your Christianity. The Bible teaches us to love, but it also teaches us not to love certain things. The world is something that we should not love (1 John 2:15). False ways are something else that we should not love (Psalm 119:104). There are other things that we can add to this list of things that we should not love, but that begs the question, what should be on the list of things we should love? This week let us look at a list of things (or persons) that we should love.
The proper place to begin is with God. Our heavenly Father should be on the top of our list, along with the other members of the Godhead. Do you love God? It is the greatest of all commandments.
Matthew 22:36-38 (ESV)
36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment.
All of us want to believe that we love God, but do we? There is much more to loving our Father than just saying that we do. We must prove it by the lives that we live. The first evidence of loving the Father is our obedience.
1 John 5:3 (ESV)
3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.
This cannot be faked. Either you obey God by keeping His commandments or you do not, and it does not matter what the commandment is. It does not matter how difficult it is or how much you do not like it, you will obey. It does not matter if you have to sacrifice a little bit, you will obey the command, and you will do it gladly, because you love God.
There is something else that you will do if you love the Father—you will speak of Him often. We speak frequently of the things that we love. A great example of this is how often the Psalmist spoke of the Word of God in Psalm 119. Check it for yourselves. There are 176 verses in this Psalm and in almost every one of them the Psalmist refers to God’s Word in various ways. He clearly loved the Word of God. If we love God we will speak of Him a lot because that love causes Him to always be on our minds. How often do you speak about God? Does He often find His way into your daily conversations? Do you speak of Him to other people? How often you speak of God says volumes about the level of affection you have for Him.
Finally, if you love God, you will speak to Him often as well. Do you ever wonder why Jesus prayed to the Father so often and for so long? There may be more than one reason for this, but His great love for His Father probably topped the list. Like any parent, God wants to hear from His children. He wants to know that we are dependent upon Him, and nothing demonstrates this more than our consistent prayer life. So, let us show our love for our Father by speaking to Him often.
Of everything we should love, our Heavenly Father should be primary. Let us make sure that we love God before everyone and everything else, and let us prove it by the way we live.
As you wind down for the night, think about these things.