Do You Love God?

 Before you read any further into this post, answer this question with a simple "yes" or "no": Do you love God?

Okay, now that you've answered the question, let's talk about what it means to love someone.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 describes some of the primary characteristics of love. And before we go into the verses, I need to make sure we are all on the same page here. We are NOT talking about romantic love, dating relationships, or marriage (although this passage is often read at weddings). We are talking about the attitude and behaviors that God calls us to have for others, whether we are particularly fond of them or not. Okay, so here are the verses:

        “4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not                 dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6                 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always          hopes, always perseveres.”

Patient, kind, protecting, trusting, persevering. None of these describe a gushy feeling toward someone. Instead, they are all practical and, dare I say, quantifiable. Someone can look at how you are treating someone else and determine if these things are present in that relationship. People can tell when you are patient or kind. They can also usually tell when you are envious, boastful, prideful, dishonoring, self-seeking, easily angered, etc. Do you see where I am going with this? When Paul (the author of 1 Corinthians) describes love, he describes in a very practical way. In one of his other letters, Paul gives us some more direct insight into what it means to love someone else:

        Philippians 2:3-4 - “3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility                 value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests          of the others.”

Selfish ambition is when we are willing to hurt others and throw them to the side in order to get ahead. The business world is full of selfish ambition - some describe it as cutthroat. It happens when you decide to put yourself first and everyone else last. Only you matter, and you will do whatever it takes to get ahead - that's selfish ambition. Vain conceit is similar, because it also elevates you above others. It is this idea that you are more important than anyone else and you deserve more than anyone else. Love cannot co-exist with these two mentalities. A selfishly ambitious person cannot truly love others, and here is why: to love someone, based on Paul's letters here, means that you put others first. It's not emotional, but rather a choice that you make to humble yourself and value others above yourself. They come first, not you. That is what it means to love someone.

This is how love works in friendships, with brothers/sisters/parents/children, in dating relationships and marriages, and in general in our interactions with people on the street. When we choose to put the needs or desires of someone else ahead of our own, we are demonstrating love for that person. On the flipside, if we claim to love someone, but only ever put ourselves first, then our "love" for them is just empty words. If I say "I love you" but then spread rumors about you around the church, I don't really love you, do I? Paul says that love is demonstrated by action.

Okay, so that's an overview of what it means to love others, but what about God? What does it mean to love God?

In Mark 12:29-31, Jesus shares the first and greatest commandment:

        “29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.             30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all             your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as                 yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

There is so much to unpack from these verses and we do not have the space to do it in this post. Basically, Jesus has taken all of the laws of the Old Testament and boiled them down to two main points: Love God above literally everything else, and love others. I mean, think about it, if you are loving God (putting Him first) with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, what's left? Nothing. That's everything that you have and covers every aspect of your life. So, in everything, God comes first. These commandments create a bit of an awkward hierarchy of priorities for us, because according to this, our priorities should be structured as: God, literally everyone else, and then us at the bottom. God is first, then everyone else, then me. I'm last. It doesn't sound right, but this what the Bible tells us. In fact, this is the exact set of priorities Jesus demonstrated in His life here on Earth. Paul shares about it in Philippians 2:5-8:

        “5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in         very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7         rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human                likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to         death—even death on a cross!”

God came to the Earth in the form of a man (Jesus) out of love for us, so in coming, Jesus put God first (it was the will of God that He come). Then, in becoming obedient to death (and paying for our sins), Jesus put literally everyone else above Himself. He gave His life for ours. His example for us was: God, everyone else, Him. This is the mentality that we, as Christians, need to have. God, everyone else, me.

So, how do we love God?

Jesus tells us exactly how to love God in John 14:23-24 and John himself elaborates in 1 John 5:3:

        23 Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we         will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Anyone who does not love me will not obey         my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.”

        “3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not            burdensome.”

Anyone who truly loves God will obey Him. That's it. That's how we do it. We obey Him. We already talked about the fact that love is an action, and really, it is a choice that we make to put others first. When it comes to loving God, we have to choose to obey what He has told us to do. Love for God is characterized by obedience. So then, if we say that we love God then there ought to be evidence in our lives. People ought to be able to look at the things I do and say, "Yeah, Mike definitely loves God." After all, how do we know that God loves us? Because He put it into action. He sent Jesus and died to save us from our sins. We can look at what God has done and say with confidence, "Yeah, God definitely loves us."

What does that look like?

What does God want us to do? What has He commanded? Well, we have Jesus' summary of the OT Law: Love God and love others. But what else? For the Christian, Jesus has given some very specific commands which can be found in Matthew 28. Right before He ascends into Heaven Jesus commands His disciples to go and make disciples of all nations, to baptize those disciples, and to teach them everything Jesus had taught. This means that every Christian is commanded to be baptized, to make disciples, to baptize those disciples, and to help them learn God's Word (the Bible). If you are reading this and you claim to be a Christian (or you answered "yes" at the beginning of this post), have you been baptized? Have you shared the Gospel with anyone? Have you participated in someone else's baptism? Have you helped someone study the Bible?

These are just some of the things God has commanded us to do, and as Jesus said, those who love Him will obey His commands. These are the things which demonstrate our love for God. If we are not doing these things, not obeying God's commands, then how can we honestly claim to love Him?

If you read those things and you felt unqualified to do them, what can you do to prepare?

 - Read and study the Bible (by yourself and with other believers)

 - Spend time in prayer talking to God and asking Him to equip you

 - Find ways to serve others, both in the church and outside it

When we serve, especially alongside other Christians, we learn how to do it better and we learn from their example. Reading the Bible and praying puts God first and choosing to serve puts others above ourselves. These choices put us in line with God's totem pole of priorities: God, others, me.

Now, let's go back to the original question. With all of this in mind, as you examine your day-to-day to life (not just your feelings, what the things you choose to do): Do you love God?

If your answer changed to a "no" (or remained as a "no"), that's okay. I'm not here to judge or condemn you. BUT, don't stay there. Remember that love is a choice that we make, not a feeling that comes and goes. We have to choose to read the Bible, choose to pray, choose to share the Gospel, and choose to serve others. Every time we choose these things we are demonstrating our love for God. My prayer for you is that you will take these things to heart and change the way you live so that your life demonstrates a love for God. Amen.

The First Commandment With a Promise

Raise your hand if you have, at one time or another, had parents.

Yup, that's what I thought. We've all had parents, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Last night we took a deep look at what the Bible has to say about our relationship with our parents. Some of you out there might have a great relationship with your parents, and I am sure that some of the rest of you are having a hard time remembering the last time you and your parents got along.

Before we jump into this, let me say this: you cannot control your parents' part in the relationship. They have a responsibility in raising you, and God has plenty of commands for them in doing that well. But you can't control that. Only they can. You can only control your part in the relationship, and that's what we're focusing on here.

Exodus 20:12, one of the 10 Commandments, says this: "Honor your father and mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you." I don't know about you, but I don't use the word honor so much these days. This is why I am so glad the apostle Paul gives us some insight to this command in Ephesians 6:1-4: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 'Honor your father and mother' - which is the first commandment with a promise - 'so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.' Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord."

I included that last part because that happens to be my mom's favorite verse to quote. Know why? It only mentions fathers. It says nothing about mothers exasperating their children. She loves that technicality. Anyway, this is one of those verses focused on the parents, so let's back up.

Paul says to obey your parents in the Lord before quoting the commandment. I think he anticipated us asking what it means to honor our parents, so he clarified it for us. Basically, "to honor" means "to obey". It is that simple. If we want to obey this commandment from God, it means we have to obey our parents. I like cookies, but that is a tough cookie to swallow. Chew on that for a bit. God wants us, no, commands us to obey our parents. What happens if we don't? Well, it's right there - it won't go well with you and even if you do manage to live a long life, you won't enjoy it. In the book of Romans Paul gives us some context for the severity of breaking this command (not obeying our parents). Romans 1:28-32: "Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."

This is an intense list of wickedness, and you notice something included in there? Disobeying parents is listed right alongside murder, slander, greed, and adultery (infidelity). And according to these verses, anyone who does any of these things deserves death - so we know God is serious when He commands us to obey our parents. According to the Bible (and there is no getting around this), Christians are commanded to obey their parents.

There's one more thing I want to highlight from Ephesians, and that is Paul's phrasing. He says to obey... in the Lord. We are called to obey our parents, however, God remains our first priority. What this means is that if at any point our parents (or any authority in our lives, for that matter) tell us to do something that goes against what God says is right (lie, steal, cheat, murder, etc.), obeying God comes before obeying our parents. Jesus said it this way in Luke 14:26: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters - yes, even their own life - such a person cannot be my disciple." Before you go too far down the hate trail let me explain this real quick. While the word "hate" carries a sense of strong dislike and even malice in our use of it today, back then it meant "turn away from". So what Jesus is saying here is that if we are to follow Him, to be Christians, we have to turn away from our parents, our children (if we have any), our siblings, and even our own lives and turn toward Him. He has to be our number one priority, He has to come first, or else we are only deceiving ourselves into thinking we are Christians. A true Christian follows and obeys Christ first, and that's what Paul means when he says we are to obey our parents "in the Lord".

Alright, so, the other half of having a good relationship with our parents comes down to our communication. If you are sitting there reading this and you would say that you don't have a good relationship with your parents, ask yourself this: "How well do we communicate?" My guess is that it's not well at all.

Proverbs 1:8-9 says this: "Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching. They are a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck." Proverbs is perhaps the largest collection of wisdom we have, and it has a lot to say about how to be wise and succeed in life. You want to know one of the main ingredients in getting wisdom? Listening. And right from the start the author talks about listening to your parents. Well, listening is also one of the key ingredients to good communication. James 1:19 puts it like this: "My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry."

If you want to have a better relationship with your parents, you MUST learn how to listen. And I don't mean just hearing the words that come out of their mouths, waiting for your chance to speak. I mean really listening. Hearing what they have to say and trying to understand where they are coming from. When you learn how to do this, to slow down and listen to what your parents are saying, it will radically change your relationship. As I said earlier, you can't control whether they will respond by listening to you, but just stopping and listening can prevent a lot of the arguing, anger, and slamming of doors that tends to happen in "conversations" with your parents.

So, from Scripture we have a very strong command to obey our parents, even when we don't want to or we'll miss out on something if we do. We also have advice on how to improve our communication with our parents, which is simply by listening first. Almost all of the tension between parents and children comes from a lack of good communication. If you can learn how to listen without being dismissive, I promise you your relationship will improve dramatically.

Sometimes the issues we have with our parents run deeper than a lack of communication or obedience. Sometimes there is serious hurt or trauma that has impacted the relationship you have with your parents, and in situations like this I advise you to seek out godly counsel. Find someone who can help you figure out what to do or how to go about repairing the relationship. I am here, if you need someone to talk to, as are the other youth group leaders. And even if what you're facing is beyond us, we can point you to someone who can help. Don't just give up and sit in a bad relationship with your parents, talk to God and look for help.

And finally, remember that every Christian has been adopted by God as His son or daughter. We are His children. So all of those things I said above, yeah, they apply to our relationship with God, too. What would happen in your life if you obeyed God, and listened to Him on a daily basis? I think some amazing things would happen. God bless.