1) Loving God is primarily a decision rather than an emotion, as God commands believers to love Him with all their heart, soul, strength and mind. 2) While feelings of love for God may accompany this decision, they are not the basis of love for God, which stems from His love for humanity as demonstrated through sending Jesus. 3) Believers can grow in their love for God by spending time with Him through prayer and studying who He is, as revealed in the Bible, which allows them to appreciate His attributes like wisdom, truth and righteousness.

1. Loving God:Is it an emotion,feeling,ora decision?" – 24th
November2016
“Andso we know and rely on the love Godhas forus. Godis love. Whoeverlives inlove livesin God,
and Godinthem”(1 John4:16).
Jesus said the greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heartand with all your soul and
with all your strength and with all your mind”as we can learn from passages found in Luke10:27; Mark 12:30;
Matthew 22:27.When we study the bible,we can note that repeatedly throughout the Bible,God commands His
people to love Him with all their hearts and serve Him alone We can read this from Deuteronomy 6:5, “Love the
LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength; It is stated again in
Deuteronomy 11:1,“Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands
always”; We can learn of an advicein Joshua 23:11,“So be very careful to love the LORD your God”.
An important question would be: Can lovebe commanded? How can we make ourselves lovesomeone?
Sincelove is commanded, then it must be within our power, in Christ,to love. Therefore, Love, is a decision we
make. Yes, love will often be accompanied by feelings,but emotion is notthe basis of love. We can understand
that in any given situation,we can choose to love, regardless of how we feel. If one is sad for some reason, itdoes
it mean that he or she would stop lovingtheir children?
The Greek word for “love” used in reference to God is agape,which means “benevolence, delight, preference, or
good will.”This is the kind of loveGod has for us as we can understand when we read Zephaniah 3:17, “The LORD
your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no
longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” Also from an important teaching that we find in John
3:16,“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not
perish but have eternal life.” We can understand from above as to why God loves us…but an important question
would be: Why does one Love God? We find an answer in 1 John 4:19 says,“We lovebecause He firstloved us.”
SinceGod is loveand we arecreated in His image, we can love as He does as defined in 1 John 4:16,“And so we
know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them”. He
has placed His capacity to love within our hearts. He then teaches us how to love by demonstrating what real love
looks likeas we read John 15:13,“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”.
Loving God begins with a decision thatone need to make. It is a purposeful settingof our affections as we can
learn from Colossians 3:2,“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” We cannottruly loveGod
until we know Him. Even the faith to believe in God is a gift from Him as we can learn from Ephesians 2:8–9,“For it
is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by
works, so that no one can boast.” When we accept His giftof eternal lifethrough Christ,God gives us His Holy
Spiritand we need to ask this from Him as we can learn from Luke 11:13, “If you then, though you are evil, know
how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those
who ask him!” We can also learn from1 Corinthians 6:19,“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the
Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own:” . The Spiritof God dwelling
within a believingheart begins to produce the traits of God, the firstof which is love which is one of the gifts of the
Holy Spirit.We can learn this from Galatians 5:22, But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness…”. Buy givingus Gods holy spirit HeHimself enables us to love Him as He
deserves to be loved: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has
been born of God and knows God. (1 John 4:7).
As we grow in knowledge and understandingof who God is,we begin to love the characteristicsthatdefine Him,
such as wisdom,truth, righteousness,and purity.And we begin to find the oppositeof those traits as repulsive
Proverbs 8:13,“To fear the LORD is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech”.
Spending time with God causes our hearts to hunger for holiness,and we find satisfaction only in moreof Him,

2. because He is the perfect embodiment of everything we long for. We learn to worship Him“in spiritand in truth”
as we can read from John 4:24,“God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” This
intern allows us to experience the pleasurableemotions of God’s love. Emotion does not create love, but, when we
choose to love, the emotion comes with itbecause there cannot be “emotion less”love. A. W. Tozer said,“Flowers
and bird songs do not make spring;but when springcomes, they come with it.”
One obstacleto lovingGod is love of this world’s sinful ways.Wecannotserve two masters as we can learn from
Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be
devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money”. Furthermore, neither can we
love God and the world at the same time as we can learn from 1 John 2:15, “Do not love the world or anything in
the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.” Many believers today need to heed the
word given to the Ephesian church:“You have forsaken the love you had at first” (Revelation 2:4). The call is for a
conscious returningof the affections to God alone.
Another obstacleto lovingGod is the mind. Our minds continually setthemselves up againstthe knowledge of God
and challengethe faith that has made its home within our spirits.Wecan read this in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “We
demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive
every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” As Christianswe must know that doubt, anger, misunderstanding,
and falsedoctrinecan all rob us of life’s highestpleasure, which is our intimacy relationship with God: We can
learn from Philippians 3:8, “What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of
knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain
Christ”
As Christiansweneed to steadfastly believethat these obstacles can beovercome through Faith in Jesus Christas
one’s saviour, repentance for sins and a determination to seek God above all else.Becausewe can learn from
Matthew 6:33, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as
well.” We can learn from the biblewhen God advices us thatwe need to seek and find God because although God
can do ‘anything’ He will never force anyone because, to come to Him ithas to be our decision and our own
accord.Therefore we learn from in Jeremiah 29:13, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all
your heart.”
In order to truly love God, we must stop insistingthatGod explain Himself to our satisfaction.Wehave to crucify
our prideand our right to approve of His ways.On the contrary we need to allowHimto be God in our lives.When
we humbly recognize that He aloneis worthy of our loveand worship,we can abandon ourselves to lovingHimfor
who He is.We can learn from a strong teaching where Jesus said: “Anyone who loves their father or mother more
than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”
(Matthew 10:37).