Walking in Love

If you love[1] the Lord, and if you said the sinner’s prayer, you will want to please Our Heavenly Father. You will want to seek His face, His favor. You will want to follow His commandments, know Him better, and seek His Will for your life. You will want to seek righteousness.

The first step in this process of getting right with God is learning to love. 1st Corinthians Chapter 13 is called the Love Chapter. It illustrates quite explicitly that you can act like the most righteous person on the planet, but if you have no love for your neighbor, your Heavenly Father, or your fellow Christians, then your actions are like obnoxious noise: "sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal."

The Love Chapter also illustrates that we must have love in order for God to even hear you. Otherwise, without love, you have literally nothing. The type of love we, as Christians, should ascribe to is the same type of unconditional love that Our Heavenly Father has for us. 

Our Heavenly Father’s unconditional love is called ‘agape’ love. Agape love is the love that God has for His children. God created us. He is Our Heavenly Father. Our Heavenly Father wants a real relationship with each of us. He talks to us, but often we aren’t listening, or we don’t know how to listen. We must learn to hear from Him. And He wants to hear from us: what we think and feel. Even if God already knows, He still wants us to tell him, and then rely on Him for our best and highest outcome. 

God loves every single one of us, saved or not, chosen or not, Christian or Jewish or Buddhist or Islamic, sinner or saint, it literally doesn't matter, God loves all His children. The important point of this is that God does not want you to celebrate the death or destruction of your enemies nor God’s enemies! Let me explain. There should be no dancing on the graves of murderers; no parties for a big battle win; and certainly no toasting cheers in celebration of the fallen. These are all God's children, and He mourns those who do not reconcile and become His true friend. Likewise, God wants us to love all His children, even our enemies. 

“But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you,
do good to them that hate you, and
pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven:
for he make his sun to rise on the evil and on the good,
and send rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if you love them which love you, what reward have you?
do not even the publicans the same?”
Matthew 5:44-46

Yes. Our Heavenly Father loves you dearly. He loves you so much that He sent His only son to earth that we might be saved and reconciled to Him. God wants to walk closely with each one of His children. Let me give you an example that many of us can relate to, for those of us parents. When you have a child that shares their hopes, dreams, passions, burdens with you, do you feel closer to them? Or do you want them to keep silent and spare you from what is going on in their own lives? As a parent, I can tell you that my heart sings when my children open up to me. When I picked them up from school, those were the best times as they shared freely about their day as they reflected on it. God wants that same relationship with all of His Children. Talk to God. Share your hopes, your dreams, your passions, and your burdens. God loves it when you share, much more than you can know.

[1] If you aren’t feeling the love, repeat a simple and earnest prayer such as “Lord, I love you. Teach me to love you more.” Don’t give up until He answers you and you are satisfied and at peace with His answer. If you are not sure how to do this yet, then read the section on Walking with God, and learn to hear from Him, and the section on Walking in Holiness, and learn to confirm His Word to you.