How Do I Show God That I Love Him?
How Do I Show God That I love Him?
Another way to ask this question would be, how can a person be sure that their professed love for God is real? The answer is very, very simple. John 14:15 “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” And in John 14:21 “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” 14:23 “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”
This of course begs the question, what are His Commandments? I John 3:23 “And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment.” Jesus summed it up this way in Matthew 22:37-40 “37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
To learn more about the Biblical role of the Old Testament law, see the study linked below. http://d.hatena.ne.jp/nicholighkun/20120727/1343415433
And to learn more about the New Covenant law, see this link. http://d.hatena.ne.jp/nicholighkun/20120829/1346260564
This is also related to repentance. The word repentance means to change your mind. In terms of this discussion, repentance means to change your mind about your sin and about God’s law. A part of repentance is to begin to see your sin as a cause of division between you and God, and to recognize that God hates sin because He loves you, and He wants to fellowship with you. God hates anything that keeps you from His presence, because He loves you, and He wants to fellowship with you.
Christians still struggle with sin so long as they inhabit their fleshly bodies. You can read of the Apostle Paul’s own struggles in the second half of Romans 7. The difference is that it is now a struggle, whereas before there was an eagerness to run to sin and please the flesh. The old way is to bow to sin, but the new reborn man or woman will bow to Christ, and know that His laws are for our own good. This will naturally give way to a desire to do right according to God’s Word, because we recognize that He loves us, and that His laws are for our own good, and not in order to keep us from some great pleasure. I always liken it to this; parents do not warn their children about the dangers of fire in order to keep the child from some great pleasure, but in order to keep the child from self-harm. God’s laws are the same.
So, if you or someone you know, find God’s New Covenant commands; love God, and love your neighbor as yourself, to be grievous things, then there is good Scriptural reason to believe that this person is not truly saved, because there is no evidence of true repentance in their actions. If you harbor animosity toward people who think differently from you, or who challenge your beliefs, you might want to re-evaluate your salvation, because you are not demonstrating love, which is a token, or a sign of genuine repentance and salvation
And if you want God to manifest Himself to you, which means to become so tangible in your life that there will be no question as to His existence or His love for you, then you need to strive to keep these two commands, and this can only begin with a change of heart concerning His laws and your sin. He has promised that He will manifest Himself to those who have and keep His Commandments.
If you are not a believer, and you want to know if God is real, then consider this information, because I can tell you first hand, He is telling the truth about His manifest presence. If life is a constant struggle with no inner peace or joy, the answer absolutely does not come from within, it comes from God. Your sin is what separates you from God. Redefining sin, or making excuses for it, has no part in true repentance. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, left His throne of glory, where angles worshiped Him day and night, so that He might come to earth in order to live the life of a humble servant, and walk willingly to the cross of Calvary, where He endured humiliation and brutality that you and I cannot even begin to understand, and all that paled in comparison to the Father’s wrath that fell on Him for our sins. All this was done so that you and I might be redeemed, purchased by His Blood, bought back from our slavery to sin, that we might escape that very punishment that He took on our behalves, and also that we might become heirs to the Kingdom of God through Him. Rejecting Him means that the punishment for your sins rests squarely upon you, and that punishment is fully justified. Think of it as a legal matter, because it is. If you murder someone in cold blood, and you are not caught for some time, can you stand before the judge after being caught, claim to have changed, even if it is true, and expect not to be made to pay for your crimes? And can you bribe the judge by listing all the good you’ve done in your life? Of course that would not work in a court of law, and it will also not work when your life is through and you stand before the One appointed to be The Judge of all. Repent, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Have and keep His commands to love God above all, and love your neighbor as yourself; in doing so you will demonstrate to others that your professed love for Him is genuine, and if that love is real then He will manifest Himself to you.
And please don’t be deceived by the claimed oppositions of science, because that same science has done so much more to substantiate the claims of Scripture, and throw down the claims of evolution than people would have you believe. Don’t reject the Truth because a man with a fancy title told you it was a lie. Peek behind the curtain, and see for yourself.
For abounding scientific evidence look for Ian Juby on youtube, (he goes by the name Wazooloo there), and subscribe to his program Genesis Week. Here's a great episode to start out with - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mPl6Jhf9Xg
Some scientific subjects to study individually would be:
(1) Earth’s gravitational pull as it pertains to the past.
(2) The interdependent mechanisms in even the “simplest” of cells, and how those complex interdependent systems could not have evolved one part at a time. The respiratory and reproductive systems are two examples on a larger scale than the molecular one.
(3) The science behind Biblical circumcision -http://d.hatena.ne.jp/nicholighkun/20111028/1319845490
(4) Typology. Here’s my 2 part study on that subject.
Typology Part I - http://d.hatena.ne.jp/nicholighkun/20120822/1345634931
Typology Part II - http://d.hatena.ne.jp/nicholighkun/20120820/1345482065
And rest assured there is a plethora of other information that you will absolutely not hear about unless you research it yourself. Please do not allow ignorance to cause you to reject the truth.
