Monday, August 4, 2008
Loving God
I love this scripture in Hosea 6:6 in the Living Bible. It says "I don't want your sacrifices, I want your love. I don't want you offerings, I want you to know me." Wow, that's all that God really wants from us. He wants our love. More than doing things or giving things, God really just wants us to love Him and know Him more intimately. Doing and giving comes out of a heart of loving. If I really love someone then I will want to do for them and give to them. That is what God wants from us. More than he wants our time or energy or money, He really wants our hearts. When He truely has our hearts then He will have the other things as well. Lets focus today on just loving God, lets work to give Him our whole hearts without even thinking about what He can give us in return.
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4 comments:
I actually read this passage last Thursday (Hos. 6:6). I have to continually remind myself that I can't just go through the motions. Doing so will eventually lead to lifeless spirituality, which Paul warned about and John also wrote about in Revelations. The more I concentrate on just loving Him and praising Him, the less attached I feel to the everyday things of this world. Whether He decides to bless me or not is irrelevant as long as my only focus is loving Him. Yesterday during praise and worship we sang: "The more I seek You, the more I find You; The more I find You, the more I LOVE You." We can't love Him without seeking Him, and the more we know Him, the closer we get to Him; the closer we get to Him, the more we fall in love with everything ABOUT Him.
Lord, help me to always seek You; to truly want more of You and less of me each and every day!
Great stuff as usual, Padre....
God said above all other commandments, we are to love God with all of our heart and love our neighbors as though they were us. As Kurt said, the more we know Him the more we love Him. It got me to thinking (uh oh). It is like lifegroups. The more we seek out relationships, the more we get to know people, and the more we know people the more we love them and want to give to them and show them our affections. So it is with God. If we only talk with Him or seek Him on Sundays, we will not know Him like we need to and we will not love Him as much, and we will have a much harder time walking in faith or trusting in Him.
During my lunch I usually try to do some good ol' B-I-B-L-E, yes that's the book fo me, reading. Today I was continuing in Hosea and in 10:12 he states: "Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing LOVE (emphasis mine), and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to SEEK (emphasis also mine) the Lord, until He comes and showers righteousness on you."
Breaking that down, if we WORK towards a righteous life pleasing to Him (sowing; breaking up our unplowed ground), we will reap the sweet fruit of His unfailing love. Whether our spirituality has atrophied or it's never existed, we will only reap the promised benefits once we've worked diligently at continually striving for righteousness.
Seeking Him, doing what He's called us to do and continuing to do it (even when we're "tired") will result in the by-products of not only loving Him more, but understanding His love more fully and also becoming more like Him (righteous).
That jumped out at me during my reading and I just wanted to share it with everyone.....
Thats awesome. Great stuff guys! I think I'm gonna have to use you guys as guest bloggers every now and then!
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