Would you believe? I was on amazon.com this morning, and I read this in a book review of all places…there was no name given, so I have no idea who wrote it, but it blessed me today.
“The more you love God, the more you will want to be free from sin to please Him. The important part of that statement is that love comes first. The goal of a Christian should NOT be to eliminate sin from one’s life. Rather, it is to learn to love Christ more and more, and seek out his transforming power in your life. In doing so, sin becomes less desirable as your desires begin to match His; and your strength to resist sin becomes greater, as He lends you more and more of His own.
If you focus on your sin, you succeed neither in eliminating it nor truly feeling God’s love. If you focus on the love, you will succeed in both with abundance. We will never be free from all sin, and yes, there are times when we must take active steps to change our lifestyle, our habits, our actions, our words, our thoughts—but again, the question you must ask is, “Where is my focus? Is it on God or on my performance?”
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So, how do we develop our love for God? Any love we feel toward Him is a gift FROM HIM. 1 John 4:19 says, “We love Him, because HE FIRST LOVED US.” So even in our loving Him, HE gets the glory, we can’t, in our own strength, conjure it up for ourselves, it has to come from Him first……. so it makes sense that I have found in my own personal walk as a believer, that the more I meditate on His love for me, the more I love Him back. That means prayerfully looking into my Bible and searching for those verses that reassure and teach me of His love and meditating on those verses (meditating is like “chewing the cud”…. getting every bit of soul benefit from those healthful verses as possible). Seek and find those Bible truths about His great love, drink them in, eat them up, over and over and over again, and enjoy!……….God supplies everlasting food for the soul. Yummy and filling.
“God is love” 1 John 4:8
Good to be Home 
“God Is Love” -Amen
Amen. Very good and thought provoking statement. It has blessed me as well. Thanks for sharing it!Hope you are having a good day. Blessings
Great words and challenges I will take with me today. Thanks so much for your ~still thinking thoughts~. I love the way your share your heart.
Thank you so so much for sharing this. It really makes sense.
Kelly
I love that! It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Loving is so much easier than trying and failing and trying and failing to be perfect.
I absolutely believe the Scripture that says, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks,” but I also believe out of the abundance of our hearts, we act.
Well yes…..but there are numerous verses exhorting us to obidience, cleansing, sanctification etc as well!!! It goes hand in hand and I think a lot of Christians water that down until there is nothing left but “love” and they develop an “oh well” attitude toward sin because “God loves me and forgives me anyway right?”
Just thought I’d pass that along………….
@celebratinglifeandmotherhood – Of course I agree with you!! I hope that I didn’t anywhere imply that those verses should be ignored, we must obey, but only out of love for Christ. When we love God, we can’t help but want to please Him. That’s why I put the emphasis on our motive/focus…is it on myself and my performance? Love must come first, and then obedience! You can’t have love and only love, the Bible says, “if you love me, you will keep my commandments” (((HUGS)))
exactly:)
God must really want me to pay attention to this because it’s the second time I’ve heard it this week. 🙂
very encouraging and uplifting and true – thank you for posting it – it’s where we find life in Christ, in who He is – not in what we are doing… and out of discovering more and more of the love of God, our hearts desire all the more to show love to Him – it flows freely to do things as unto the Lord for His glory – 🙂
So true, Shan! Thanks for the reminder and encouragment!
Reminds me so much of John 15, abiding in Him. “Without Me, ye can do nothing.” I go back to that chapter over and over, chewing it and ruminating on it … life in the Spirit gives such comfort, power, and love.
~whatever!
i am so glad about what you have been posting. It is not striving but so often we make character a Christian competition without totally realizing it is not with in our strength anyway. blessings
What a blessing! If I may ask, what book was this for?
Thanks for sharing these good “lessons” lately…..something I’ve needed to be reminded/encouraged in too. And I agree, the more we keep our focus on Him, the rest will follow. As someone commented above that sometimes peeple want to just “love the whole world” and accept sin, but then I wonder, are we really focused on Christ? I’m struggling with some of this in my training at CPC, where’s the balance in showing Godly compassion without condoning sin….
Thanks for these posts. You’ve got me thinking too, and it’s great! I do tend to focus on MY shortcomings instead of HIS love for me. Love ya!
Great post, Shanda. I’ve been learning that it’s a circular process — we love, we obey, we know Him…. we love more, obey more, know more…
I love this verse: “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”
Oops… forgot the reference. John 14:21. 🙂
So true