There are Powerful scriptures often overlooked. Jesus speaking to His believers, wanting us to understand what the LOVE of God is, since as Christians we love to talk about how WE LOVE GOD… but do we really? I really need to be mindful of this. We simply CANNOT have hate in our hearts and then call ourselves followers of Christ. Christ calls us out in this circumstance as LIARS who walk in darkness and are deceived. OUCH!!! Jesus why did you have to step on my toes like that?

On my journey, God is dealing with me about LOVE FOR HIM.
He has revealed to me how much He loves me in spite of myself. After understanding why He has so much love for mankind including myself, I began to see how loosely I have been using the words “I Love you Lord”, because quite honestly I realize that I truly DO NOT love God as much as I think and say I do. And this is very sad. But now my eyes are opened.

I begged Him to teach me how to LOVE Him. I don’t want to any longer be deceived and to walk in darkness. You would then think He would reach out and touch my head or something and then some warm fuzzy lovey-dovey feeling would come sweeping over me… NOT GONNA HAPPEN! That is NOT how God works. Instead, everyday I am being taken through practical lessons that could draw my heart closer to Him. Practical lessons where I must play a part, because LOVE is not something you feel alone, it is something you DO and then feelings such as desire and longing and adoration, will result from those actions. We cannot love God without loving mankind, and we cannot love mankind or even ourselves without loving God. And we cannot love God without following his commands, following his will and spending intimate moments with Him. Yikes!

Loving God means pretty much the same way you could love someone you already love.  You get to KNOW him, you spend time with him so much you long to be with him all the time, you love him so much you always want to please him and you ride or die for him.  You also love those whom he love… his creation… including the ones who disgusts or wrong you… again… YIKES!

But how can I love someone who has hurt me, or irritates me? It is simple. Loving someone does not mean you float around and stick a flower in your hair and talk about how much you love mother earth and the Universe like the hypocrisy and the teachings of darkness of the New Age doctrine.  For we are NOT called to love and worship things as the Universe or the stars or the sun, moon, animals, and the love of self and self-power. Such things are a practice of divination and the occult, and leads mankind away from the heart of God to destruction.

Love does not mean you leave your senses behind to keep giving your heart and the capacity to love to someone who could hurt you. Love does not mean you are gullible, or giddy, or have lost your mind. Love is a conscious effort that ALWAYS act in the best interest of someone else’s life! It means we love anyone enough to want the best for them, so whenever someone does wrong or wrongs you, you call them out immediately on their behavior FROM THE POSITION OF LOVE. You don’t wait for it to sit on your heart and allow it to stew and build up into resentment and hate, you say to them quickly, I love you and want the best for you and know you can do great things, that is why I want you to consider that what you have done is wrong and would encourage you to fix it. THAT is a genuine way to show love. If they fix it, you have great joy, but until they do, you would feel, NOT ANGER, but sadness to see someone you love going down a wrong path while refusing wise council. You also do not become an enabler that encourages someone’s bad behavior.

We love our brothers as God loves us. God does not spoil us as His children and let us get away with wrongdoings, it is BECAUSE He loves us He will call us out when we do wrong. Hebrews 12:6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his children.” So when He calls us out for wrongdoing, He steps back and allow us to fix it, if we don’t His heart hurts, we are given free will, and so the consequences of our actions becomes a lesson we may learn from, but we will certainly have to endure it to develop a better character, and He allows this.

So God averted my attention to these scriptures. He’s literally saying to me, “In order to Love me, you must have love for your brothers”

1 John 4:20-21
If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, HE IS A LIAR; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? 21 And we have this commandment from Him: Whoever loves God MUST love his brother as well.…

1 John 1:6
If we say we have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

1 John 2:9
If anyone claims to be in the light but hates his brother, he is still in the darkness.

1 John 2:11
But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness. He does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

1 John 4:12
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us.

When you consider how much God loves us so that he sacrificed his very own child so that we could have a direct pathway back to him, a pathway that does not require us to encounter death like Christ did to prove our love or worth to him.  That is mind-blowing! To consider how we take that for granted every time.  It is sad.  So with that said…

… Do we really and truly love God?