In this issue
Why can you not love?
God said, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates."(Deuteronomy 6:4-9)
If you love someone with all of your heart, your heart will be filled with that person and there will be no room for anyone else. If you love half-heartedly, there is still room for someone else. Because of that, some people actually have more than one lover. If you love God with all your heart, you will not be able to love anyone else. God commanded his people the Israelites to love him with all their hearts.
Loving with all strength is also related to loving with all heart. If you love someone with all your heart, it is not difficult to give the person all your strength. This means that you could go any distance to meet with the person you love; You would not feel tired; You feel instead be energetic for your lover. Because of that love, even weak-hearted girl is not afraid to run away with her lover by going against the objections of the parents. You could give up everything for the one you love so much. God also wanted the Israelites to love him with all their strength. If They had loved God like that, there would not have been any difficulties doing anything for God.
Loved someone more than God
Although God asked them to love him with all their heart, their soul and with all their strength, the Israelites did not love God with all their hearts. If you look at their history, they did not show that kind of love. They loved idols more than God. Therefore, they did not listen to what the Lord had asked them to do. Truth is, you would not want to do anything for someone you don't really love.
Christ most loved?
Just as God wanted himself to be the most beloved of the Israelites, Christ also said that he wanted love from those who believed in him. "Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:37). Jesus wanted to be loved more than one would love his parents or children. A young man loves his parents the most before he has his own children. When he has his own, he loves his children the most. It should be that way. But Jesus asks that you love him more than your parents or your children. Is he asking too much? Is that even possible? The thing is, just because you love Jesus doesn't mean you have to hate your parents or your children. He said you must love him more than them. Why did he ask to be the most beloved?
God loves you with his life
The reason why Christ wants believers to love him more than their parents or children is because he also loves the believers with his life. "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." (John 15:12-13). If you love Jesus more than your parents and children, it is very easy to follow him. But believers today love other things than Christ. They say they show their love through music, but their love through the music does not come from the heart. They simply sing they love Jesus because that's what the song writer wrote. Because they don't have love in their heart, they cannot offer anything to Christ.
How can you love?
Is love something you can demand from someone? God demanded the Israelites to love him with all their heart and all their strength. God the Son also asked believers to love him more than their parents and their children. How is it that possible? Is it possible to demand to be loved? It must be possible since believers are asked to love. Even so, how can you love?
Loving someone is possible if the following conditions are met:
Ability to love
You can love a person when you see his or her talent, beauty, power and riches. If that's the case, in order to love God, you must know His abilities, riches and powers. We all know that God is very powerful and he loves people. There is nothing he cannot do. But people don't love him because they don't know his qualities and his power. Since people don't know him well, they don't have the ability to love God.
Proximity
You might not fall in love someone just by being close the person, but closeness can trigger love. If that is the case, to be able to love God, you must be close to him. How can you be close to God? You can be close to God by reading the Bible, praying, listening to the word of God, fellowshipping with God's people, and by thinking about what God has done.
Surrendering
When you receive Christ and let him rule your life, your love toward him can grow. For the fruit of the Spirit is love. "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." (1 John 4:8). When Christ or the Spirit or God reigns in your life, love becomes spontaneous. There's no need to try to love.
Attracted to heaven
Believers' understanding about going to heaven is too superficial. To rise with Christ is to set our eyes on the things above, which is Christ, who is our life. But it is very sad to be obsessed with worldly things like nonbelievers and nominal Christians. For some believers, the kingdom of heaven is not even as fascinating as going to the greatest country on earth, whichever that may be.
"By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” (Heb 11:8-10)
When God called Abraham, he went out by faith without knowing where he was going. There are so many believers today who do not want to go when God calls them. During the days of Abraham traveling would not have been easy. Security may also be a concern. However, Abraham's daring to follow God's call was a great faith. When he came to the land of Canaan, there was nothing to be desired. On top of that, Abraham's arrival coincided with famine in the land (Genesis 13). Because he was unable to settle in the land of Canaan, Abraham had to live in a tent as a stranger. But he said that he hoped for a city with foundations, which is better than the land of Canaan, whose architect and builder is God. There was no one else before him to look upon as an inspiration. There was no Bible to read. Yet he believed in God. But for believers today, there is a Bible we can study that has many lessons to learn from. However, believers today are more obsessed with houses built by man than the golden city that is built by God on a firm foundation.
"All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” (Hebrews 11:13-16)
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did not receive the benefit of the promise. They only saw it from afar, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. They had faith, and they die with faith. Believers today don't seem like they are strangers in this temporal world. They are acting like they are the hosts. If they wanted to, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob could have gone back to the place of Ur, where they first came from. Ur was a fertile land along the river basin. However, they did not think about going back to the land. They only longed for a better place built by God. For that reason, God is not ashamed to be called the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Does God want to be the God of believers of today? Would God instead be ashamed to be called their God? Let us take a moment to think about it.
"There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground." (Hebrews 11:35-38)
For believers in the past, this world was considered unworthy for them to live. Because of their faith, they were severely persecuted. They did not want to live in luxury in this world. Instead, they would rather take the beating, binding, imprisonment, stoning, sawing and cutting their body into pieces. They would rather walk dressed in goatskins and sheepskin. Today's believers are the complete opposite of the believers of old. They want to live in luxury in this world and cannot even bear being criticized for the sake of Christ, let alone being killed, beaten, or imprisoned for faith in Christ. Living in that kind of situation hardly cross their mind. Therefore, the Bible says, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8).
The apostle John said, "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever."(1 John 2:15-17). Why should we not love the world? We should not love the world because he who loves the world does not love the Father. In addition, the things of the world will last for just a little while and then disappear into thin air.
James, the brother of Jesus, strongly condemned those who loved the world. He said, "You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." (James 4:4) Why the one who loves the world is an adulterous person? It is because this world is owned by Satan (Luke 4:5). For that reason, he who loves this world loves Satan. A person who loves Satan is worshiping another god in God's eyes. Thus, he is essentially committing fornication or adultery. For that reason, a person who loves the world is the enemy of God.
