Love (For God): January 4, 2011

TODAYS WORD FOR TUESDAY JANUARY 4, 2011

LOVE
(FOR GOD)

DEFINITION:

Affection for one another; devotion; an object of affection; any strong liking or affection.

SCRIPTURE:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment.” Matthew 22:37.

KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE:

As we begin a New Year, 2011, we want to encourage you to build your personal life and your family life around the Biblical concept of LOVE. So this week we will do a four day series on LOVE!

Today we will talk about loving God. And then the next three days we will talk about love among spouses, parents and children all from a Biblical perspective.

The “great commandment” that God has given to us is to love God. When we talk about loving God it demands that we have a relationship with Him. You cannot love someone without having a relationship with him or her.

Some people say they believe in God but they show no indication of having a relationship with God. There is a difference between being religious and saying you believe in God and having a personal relationship with God through His Son Jesus. Some people call Christianity a religion, but Christianity is a LOVE relationship that one has with God through His Son Jesus Christ.

Parents need to make their personal commitment to God and then teach their children how they can have their own personal relationship with God. Families that waver in their faith and love for God are the families that are struggling for existence today.

The religions of the world require a devotion and adherence to a set of beliefs, practices and rituals such as doing good deeds and penance in order to earn one’s way to heaven. The Bible is very clear in saying that there is absolutely nothing one can do to earn their way to heaven. It is not what we do that provides our way to heaven and an eternity with our Lord, but what God has done for us.

God sent His only Son to die on the cross to pay our penalty for our sins. This is how He showed His LOVE to us. What we must do is to accept Jesus Christ into our life to be our Lord and Savior and then begin a relationship with God that is built on true LOVE!

There is no greater LOVE than the LOVE that God has for us. God paid the highest price He could to provide us a way to eternal life with Him. He sacrificed His only Son to show His LOVE to us and to provide a way that we can have a relationship with Him. God took the initiative. He loved us before we ever entered this world. He created us because He desired to have fellowship with us. We can’t have fellowship with God until we seek a relationship with Him that is based on love. God does not force us to love Him because that would not be love. We get to choose to love God. That is what true Love is all about -- loving God because He loves us!

We love Him because He first loved us. (I John 4:19) God has revealed His love to us through the greatest “love letter” of all time -- THE BIBLE! God gave in love His Holy Word so that we had a guide book on how to live a Christ honoring life. What we believe is based on a LOVE RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD, not a religion.

So we urge you as individuals, parents and children to begin 2011 by making sure that you have a personal LOVE relationship with God. When you have this relationship you can look forward to a wonderful and exciting year.

LEARNING:

Our memory verse for this week is found in II Timothy 1:7.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of LOVE, and of a sound mind.

PRAYER:

Thank You dear Lord for the love that You have shown to me. Help me to learn more about You today and to build my relationship with You. May my friends and family see in me the love that I have for You and may it encourage them to want to love Jesus so that they may also know what it means to have a relationship with You.