One of the most foundational concepts of the gospel is the concept of love. Almost every believer can quote the great commandment of Jesus Christ: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind…you shall love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37, 39 ESV). Loving God and loving others are two of the most essential fruits of being Christian. What I mean by this is that once a person is truly saved one of the first things the Holy Spirit begins to do is teach that person how to truly love. The object of the Christian’s love is two-fold: God and others. This means that true believers will continually learn and change to give up more of their own desires for the sake of demonstrating their love for Christ and others.

 

The etymology of the word “love” is always a verb in the Greek language, not a noun. This means that God is not commanding us to have something (i.e., a feeling or emotion), but instead is calling us to action. True love is completely self-less and focused outward. In Scripture the concept of love is not a single action. Love is always presented as requiring two separate, but simultaneous actions: sacrifice and commitment. Love usually, even if in a small way, requires that I sacrifice something (i.e., desires, time, money, priority, self-interests, needs, etc.) for the sake of being able to commit myself to fulfilling these things for someone else.

 

To love God more than anything or anyone then, means every person, priority, object and project in our lives must be subjected to our obedience to the will of God and the commands of Christ. After all, Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). In Scripture God proclaims himself to be a jealous God, meaning he will not settle for anything less than all of your love. He wants to be the greatest desire of your heart. He wants to be the object of your greatest love. In fact, this is what you and I were designed for, but because our hearts are corrupted by sin, we tend to love the objects and people in this world more than God. You may still love God, but the battle is not usually about loving God, it’s about loving God at the expense of other things. Remember the following: If you are going to love God as he has commanded, then you will have to surrender your heart’s desires to make it happen.

 

Let’s think about some practical examples of this. Loving God with my whole heart means that I will have to surrender part of my day to communion with him. Scripture is adamant that in order to walk with God one must daily immerse themselves in the study of Scripture and spend adequate time in prayer. Scripture and prayer are the essential elements of worship and therefore, are the primary means by which God works in your life. Loving God means that you will have to stop trying to fit this time into the leftovers of your daily schedule and instead will have to sacrifice something daily. Most of us probably burn hours a week scrolling through Facebook, Pinterest, etc., but only a few minutes a week engaging the Word of God. In fact, many believers are guilty of only opening their Bible’s when they’re at church. They have no intimate relationship with the Word of God.

 

Another practical example, and probably the most painful, is giving up things and relationships for sake of Christ. Hebrews 12:1 commands us to “…lay aside every weight…” It commands this in the context of getting rid of those things that prevent us from serving Christ with all of our being. You will discover that there are things in your life that are not healthy for your relationship with God. Some of these things are sin, but many of them are not. It may be time to delete the Facebook or Pinterest app, sacrifice entertainment mediums such as television, video games, sacrifice sleep by getting up earlier, etc. and then invest more time and more of your heart to be a better servant of the Lord. Maybe you need to spend more time in the Word, or maybe you need to spend more time investing in the relationship with your spouse or children. It could be you need to do a better job of serving God through your church or engaging in evangelistic efforts. But this will only happen when you choose to endure the pain of sacrifice and commit your way unto the Lord.

 

As a final word of exhortation, what I have proposed above is straight from the Bible (i.e., God himself). For the believer this is not negotiable. The greatest command is to love God will ALL of your heart, ALL your soul (being), and ALL your mind. The peace and rest that are found in Christ will only come to you when you commit to loving God above everything and everyone else. It has been my observation that people who have a displaced love for God are usually more miserable and insecure. I believe this to be because they cannot protect and control the objects of their greatest love. For example, if a parent loves their child more than God himself, then that parent must bear the responsibility of controlling every situation to secure the life, health, and prosperity of the child and then make the child be exactly how the parent needs them to be. But since this is impossible, and since the parent cannot control life’s situations, they consistently live in fear and insecurity. If the parent would learn to love and trust God (who is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-wise, and all-good) then they themselves would be able to accept the peace that God offers. This application can be made to a variety of situations. The point is that for us to be able to experience the joys of love in our earthly relationships, we must put them in their proper place—in subjection to our love for God and our obedience to him.