Verses that keep me going - Mark 12:30

When someone asked
Jesus what the greatest commandment was,
He answered...

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

Mark 12:30

As I read that I was confident that I loved God. At the same time, I knew I could love Him more. And if I say I love God, how do I demonstrate it? I decided to look for some verses that tell me how God wants me to love him. Here are some I found and you'll notice they all say the same thing.

[Jesus said] “If you love me, keep my commands. John 14:15

In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome. 1 John 5:3

Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” John 14:21

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? Luke 6:46

It struck me that every time I was disobedient/sinned I was saying, "I don't love you Lord."

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. James 1:22

It is a great deterrent to sin if you can consciously counsel yourself by thinking, "If I do this, I'm saying, "I don't love you Lord."

We can become skilled at rationalizing our faults. It's like the man, who had a habit of stopping at the donut shop too often. His weight was getting out of hand. His wife made him promise that he wouldn't do that anymore. Yet it wasn't long before he came home with some crumbs on his face.

His wife was upset. He said, "I can explain. As I was driving home, I prayed. I asked the Lord for a sign. I said, 'if there's an open parking place right in front of the donut shop, then that would be a sign that I could get a donut. And... the seventh time around the shopping center, there it was!'"

Loving God involves sacrificing some of our personal desires. The problem often is not that we don't know what the right thing to do is, but that we lack the strength to do it. Jesus warned us that even though our spirit may be willing, our flesh was weak, and we need to always be in prayer for spiritual strength.

Even we do love God, we need the Holy Spirit's help not to betray that love.