Life Connections chapter 2

Life connection #1 chapter 2

First Things First

         Several years ago something happened in my devotional time with God that has forever changed the course of my life. This experience and the revelation in Gods Word that followed have helped me to be a better Christian, a better husband and a better father. In fact I am still discovering ways that it has effected my life in a powerful and positive way.



         I was in a time of worship and prayer. I had one of my favorite worship tapes playing and I had been singing to the Lord for about 40 minutes. My devotional time had changed over the last couple of weeks from prayer and reading the Bible to just worshipping Him. Every day God honored me with His presence, and every day that went by, my life seemed to get clearer and less complicated. I began to see everything differently, God, people, myself.



         There is something about worship that purifies you and puts life into its proper perspective. It’s like getting into a vehicle that takes you into the presence of the Almighty God. In His presence there is a wonderful exchange that takes place, and we always get the better of that exchange. You honor God with your love and devotion, and He transforms you, and you become more like Him. What a powerful thing worship is. Worship is also anther vital life connection which we will discuss in a later chapter.



         As I was enjoying the sweetness of His presence the tape had ended and I just sat there in a holy silence. The joy that I felt was overwhelming. You can’t worship God for more than a few minutes without it bringing some kind of joy in your life.

         I wasn’t sure what to do, I really didn’t want to move but I wanted to bless Him, so I said “Lord I love you SO MUCH!” Then I heard this still small voice on the inside, “Jack, how much do you love me?”  Without thinking I burst out with my reply, a phrase that we all have used or at least heard. I said “Lord I love you with all of my heart!”  The Lord then replied in that same small voice “That's not enough”. With those words I became very still.

         The entire atmosphere in that room had just changed. I was very aware that God had just asked me a question and I gave Him the wrong answer. I also realized that the Lord doesn’t ask us questions because He is looking for information. I could still sense His presence, but it was the presence of a Father bringing correction and instruction to His child in a loving and tender way. He was trying to teach me something and I was intently listening on the inside. He immediately brought to my remembrance this scripture:



Mark 12:30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.



         It didn’t take my little brain long to do the math on that one. Loving God with all your heart is only one fourth of what we are commanded to do. 25%! I thought to myself, “that's pretty weak”.

         I began to meditate on what it meant to love God with your soul, to love Him with your mind, and to love Him with strength. I had to admit that I really didn’t know what that meant. I was intrigued by this new line of thought, and at the same time, I was appalled to think that those three major areas were either weak or non existent in my walk with God.

         I was doing my best to show the Lord how much I loved Him, but my best is only my best until I can do better, I saw areas of my life that I could improve on. God was showing me that I could do better and I realized that I should have been looking for ways to do better all along.

         From that point I began to take a long hard look at my life and my relationship with God. A relationship that I thought was pretty strong. I knew God was about to redefine my definition of “strong relationship”. The first thing I did was ask God to teach me about His love. He was obviously trying to show me something and I wanted to get everything He was trying to give me.

         The second thing I did was get a concordance and look up the meaning for the Greek word Love. I thought I knew what it meant but after that kind of correction from God I did not want to take any thing for granted. To know how to love I first needed to make sure that I knew exactly what love was. The word for love that is used in Mark 12:30 is the Greek verb agapeo.

                Now, I knew that “agape” was the Greek noun for the God kind of love and I had read 1 Corinthians 13 more times than I could count, but this word was new to me. It was far more powerful in its explanation. The definition in short is simply this:



agapeo = Love,  a verb.  “the commitment of devotion that is directed by the will...and can be commanded as a duty”.



         It has been said that love can only be known by the actions that it prompts. In other words, love gives of itself and expresses itself in action or it is not love. Love is as love does. Its not enough to just say you love someone, love is active and  alive, an aggressive force, to love is to give. In fact love is the highest and most honorable form of giving, while giving is the chief expression of love.

         Look at the language that is used in the definition, words like commitment and devotion. If you have ever been committed or devoted to something or someone, you know full well that it takes some effort and some work.

         Love is tied to your will. We must make a choice to love. By choosing love we have automatically chosen to give something of ourselves. Love is an act of your will, without action it is not love.

         I come from a faith background and I knew that faith without works is dead according to James 2:26, but I just found out that love without works is dead also. That made perfect sense to me because Faith works by Love according to Galatians 5:6. I began to see why my faith was not working at the level I knew it could.

         We have all heard the old phrase “I’m falling in love” but you can’t fall in love, that is just infatuation. To fall into something indicates a mistake or something accidental. Love is far more purposeful than that. It takes concentrated effort and focus. Love is not defined until you have worked at it for a while and invested something in it.

         There are a lot of Christians today that are merely infatuated with God and they think that they really love Him. In fact if you told these folks that they really don’t love God they would be ready to fight you to defend their position.

         Those that are infatuated with God are the folks like this: They go to church on Sunday (most of the time) because they don’t want to make the spouse mad or they don‘t want to feel guilty. These people know in their heart that God is real and they may even believe that God has great things for them. Unfortunately they don’t serve Him in the church, they don’t give tithes and offerings and they don’t get involved with supporting the vision of the local church body, not even in prayer. Their bibles are dusty and all they do is play church. They always have an excuse why they can’t get involved in serving somewhere in the church and they will drop a few bucks in the offering plate as it goes by so it looks like they are givers and “doing their part” to those around them. These are the people that haven’t committed or devoted themselves to God.

                       Don’t be discouraged if I have just summarized your Christian life and walk with God. The good news is that it is very easy to move from being infatuated with God to truly loving Him. I have seen many people in my own church make this transition as their faith develops. It is a glorious thing to see.

         It is easy to tell if someone is really in love with God. You can see it in their expressions, their actions, and even the tone of their voice when they mention “The Lord”.

         As a church in these last days we must make this transition into truly loving God with everything that is in us. No more halfhearted, part time, milky toast Christianity. There is a world out there that is desperate to see this level of sold out commitment. The greatest witness that we have is our love for God and people. A lot of folks are searching for this and don’t even know it. The saved and lost alike.

         In the book of Genesis it says that we were created in the likeness and image of God. Just as God is a triune being, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we are triune beings, spirit, soul, and body. To truly love God we must learn how to commit and devote every aspect of our being to Him, spirit, soul and body, and then put some force and faith behind it.

         Before going into the specifics of each aspect of it, I’ll just say this. God has shown me, and is still showing me, ways to commit and devote my heart, my mind, my soul and my strength to Him. As I grow and develop in these areas I see all of my relationships, especially with my family, being strengthened and enriched.

         This book by no means contains everything you need to know to perfect your love walk, only one book does that and this isn't it. However I pray that this stirs you up and makes you more conscious of your love for God and brings light to some areas that you may be weak in. This will absolutely effect every area of your life.          

         You can search every different Christian denomination on the planet and you will find no one that will deny the importance of walking in love. However I have seen the emphasis put more on loving your neighbor and walking in love towards others than loving God the Father. Now, don’t get me wrong, loving people is a part of loving God and we will cover that in a later chapter. Look at what Jesus said in Mark’s Gospel.



Mark 12:28-32

28 Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, "Which is the first commandment of all?" 29 Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is’ Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.  30’and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. 31 And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."



Notice in verse 30 that it says “this is the first of all commandments”.  Not the second, not the third, the first. This is the divine order. Without doing the first thing first you are incapable of doing the rest properly. Loving God first and putting Him first is the foundation that we build our Christian lives on. It is what gives us the ability to love others.

         If you don’t have love as a solid foundation in your life, you are building your spiritual house on sand. If the devil comes along with a little windstorm, you are wiped out, in recovery mode. The time is short friends. We can’t afford to spend all of our time recovering from something.

         There are too many high maintenance Christians out there. The pastors are spending all of there time and energy counseling their high maintenance sheep and have no time or energy to add new converts to the flock. Here is a little free advice to pastors who spend a lot of time “counseling” STOP IT!

         You will find that the people who need counseling the most are the ones that only come to a few services a month. They miss the life changing Word that comes from the pulpit, the same Word that would solve their problems if they would just show up and listen. Then they want to receive in 30 minutes what they should have been getting for the last six months in the regular services. It doesn’t work that way.

         If someone were to ask me for counseling, I would tell him or her ok, but first you need to go to every service for the next three months. If you still need counseling, I’ll be glad to talk to you. I know of a pastor who did this, and it not only freed him up to give himself more to the Word and prayer, but the people were taught how to live victoriously for themselves. They no longer needed to be counseled all the time.

         We have to be rooted and grounded in love so that we have some stability in our lives. Paul prayed a beautiful prayer in Ephesians that addresses this. We need to make this prayer a part of our daily life.



Eph 3:14-21

14 For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height-- 19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, 21 to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.



         Notice the word “grounded” in verse17. It is the Greek word themelioo  (them-el-ee-o'-o) it means to erect, or lay the foundation.

         The reason I backslid early in my walk with God is because I didn’t have a good foundation in loving God. I was however, highly developed in loving me. I loved me and I loved my stuff and my girl friends and my consumptive life style and my little pet sins. I finally found out that God delivers us from our enemies, not our pets. I loved myself more than I loved God. That is just pure selfishness and it is a recipe for disaster concerning your spiritual growth.

         The nature of the flesh, the fallen sin nature, is selfishness, and it won’t change all by itself. You have to put forth some effort and make a conscious decision to renew your mind to the Word of God, committing yourself to the things of God.

         It is sad to say but most Christians don’t even pick up their bible unless they are going to church. Folks don’t realize that the bible is God speaking to them! Anytime you want God to speak to you all you have to do is pick up the bible and turn to any page. God speaks to His people through His Word.

         I heard a story of a minister who was lying on the floor crying out to God; “Speak to me Lord, speak to me, I am asking you to speak to me Lord, I want to hear your voice”. After praying this repeatedly for a while, he finally ran out of gas and got quiet, and the Lord did speak to him and said, “You don’t know what I have already said to you, I have said many things to you in my Word. Find out what I have already said, and if I want to say anything else, I will”.

         Those that hear from God the most, are the ones that stay in His Word the most. Without the Word in your heart, you probably won’t be able to discern when God speaks to you by His Spirit. Knowing the voice of His Word will help you to recognize the voice of his Spirit. If you know what the real thing sounds like, you won’t be fooled by a counterfeit.

         It is interesting the way that banks train people to recognize counterfeits. They have them handle the real money so much that when a fake bill comes along it is easily recognized. You need daily intake of, and exposure to, Gods Word. This will help you stay on the path that He has for you and not be led off track by a wrong voice. It’s kind of hard to love God when you are all the time listening to someone else.

         Ok, lets look at it this way; God is love according to the book of James. In John 1 it says that Jesus is the Word. Jesus said that if you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father. So it is safe to say that if you have seen the Word (Jesus) you have seen love (The Father). Love and the word of God are interconnected and inseparable. You have to know the word to know how to love Him



John 14:15

15 If you love Me, keep My commandments.

         This alone should be motivation enough for you to commit to reading His word every day. You can’t keep what you don’t have. You have to read the Bible to know His commandments. If you don’t know His commandments then you can’t keep His commandments and it is impossible to love Him like He is commanding us to.

         Don’t get me wrong, you are only required to walk in the light that you have. If you are a new Christian, God does not expect you to know the entire bible, but He does expect you to walk in the little light that you have and he expects you to get more light as time passes.

         I can look back at the first few years of my marriage when my wife and I were adjusting to each other. We had two baby boys that were both high maintenance. Neither one slept through the night until they were three years old. Since they were two years apart in age, that meant five years without a night of unbroken rest.

         Our schedules were thrown out the window on a daily basis. Sleep was a rare commodity and finding some extra time alone with God was a struggle.

         We noticed that when one or both of us would let our devotional time slip and not get in the word for a couple of days, the tension between us would increase. One of us would say or do things that were insensitive. Instead of acting in love we would act selfish. The more we would neglect the word the worse it would get. 

         I don’t know how people in the world make it under those circumstances. The word of God will visibly effect your life if you will commit and devote yourself to it. If you can’t make some kind of commitment to get some daily nourishment and life from the Word of God then the rest of this book won’t help you. However, if you take this first step the rest of this book will come alive to you. The Word of God alone will transform you into another person.

         The first step in loving God is to love His word.

The word of God will give life to your love for God. There is a common connecting thread that is woven through every aspect of loving God, and that is a commitment to His word.

              You must learn about Him so that you can be more like Him. That is really what the New Testament is all about. He is love. We need to be like Him. Give yourself to the Word!