Love God

I don’t have anything pithy this morning to exhort you with church. But I feel that I am in good company because when asked what the most important commandment of all of Scripture is, we get from the mouth of Jesus himself one of his most straightforward and direct answers in all of his interactions in the gospels: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. 

Do you love God? Is your heart thrilled by him? Does your mind seek out the unsearchable riches of his greatness? Does your strength get renewed when you give yourself in service to him? Does your soul actually sing for joy at the thought of him?

You see it might be easy to look at our lives and see many God-adjacent things—we go to church. We pray before meals. We might even read our Bibles, serve, or give money regularly. All good things. Jesus of course said that if you love God you will do these things, and more of course. But we must be careful and tend to our own hearts. Because it is possible to do these things, and have our love for God grow cold, or, worse, do these God-adjacent things out of love for something else, in pursuit of another goal—the praise of men, or a feeling of accomplishment or righteousness in ourselves, for example.

A Christian’s love for God is the most important thing about him. It’s the highest calling God could bestow on his creatures— love for their creator, their highest good. Jesus had no problem and no hesitation whatsoever in his answer to the question of what the most important command in Scripture is. Love God. Love the Lord your God with everything you are and everything you have. And so it’s always appropriate to ask ourselves, do I love God? Am I living my life out of a love for God?

Before we can diagnose sin and disobedience to God’s commands in our life, we must always first pay attention to this commandment. The most important command. God commands his people to love him, the source of all life and joy and peace and goodness and strength. And we have failed to do so. We have not loved God as we ought. Not because we lack love—we love many things it turns out when we really examine our lives.

And so as we go to God this morning in our prayer of confession, I want to give you a moment to confess your lack of love for God. The one who gives you life and breath and everything, the fountain of living water, the lover of your soul.  And with this, confess not only your lack of love for him, but also the many loves in your life that have overtaken and displaced him in your heart.