Day 2 - Testing your love

It is always almost impossible to conjure up emotions on the say-so of other people, unless of course we are trained actors, but we are commanded to love God. But yet it is the first and greatest commandment.

But it becomes and easier concept when we realise that love is much more than an emotion; it is an act of our will. A mother will love her children continuously, although she may well not always experience love's emotions! It is the way that she takes care of her children, well or badly, which is the evidence of her love or neglect.

In the same way we may not always experience feelings of love towards God, every moment of every day, but we can always love him.

As our love for our children can be seen in the way we take care of them, so it is that our love for God can be seen in the way that we are obedient to, and serve, his will, as shown to us in the life of Christ.

When we work hard for the people we love, it is the love that makes the hard work light. It is not an onerous thing to obey God when we love him.

It is perfectly possible to make a confession of faith, a proclamation of belief in the Almighty, without really loving him. It may be that too many of us have been deceived at this point.

The journey that follows Jesus is not circumscribed by an original confession of faith, it is a question of actually stepping through life in his footprints in terms of his attitudes, his words and works.

The Scripture says,

"But the man who loves God is known by God" 1 Corinthians 8:3
"You are my friends if you do what I command." - John 15:14

Love is a great deal more than a few words. There is no point in confessing that you love Jesus and then not doing what he says you should do. A husband might never wholly convince his wife of his love for her simply by telling her that he loves her, but he could convince her through his behaviour, by what he does.

So there is a divine test of love being applied to us, too; if you will not obey the words and commands of God, he knows that you do not love him, despite all your protestations and proclamations to the contrary.

So again and again the Bible reminds us that, in order to live this brief life of ours as we ought to , we have to keep the commandments of God. There is simply no other way of life that will find God's acceptance. Nothing else will please him.

You are the object of eternal, unconditional love. He most certainly longs for your love in return, but he needs a love from you that will constantly provoke you to obey him by imitating his Son. We none of us can afford to measure the righteousness and truth of our own Christian experience by the quality and quantity of our feelings; we must measure it by our obedience to him, driven by motives deep in our hearts. When you find something in your heart that galvanises obedience, no matter how you are feeling at the time, you will then have good reason to believe that you are a Christian.