Bible Message, February 17, 2008, David E. Strope
Our Central Focus @Ankeny Baptist Church
If God is central, then our response to God must be our first priority. That response is "…to love God wholly."
What then does it mean to love God?
"To love God does not mean to meet his needs, but rather to delight in him and to be captivated by his glorious power and grace, and to value him above all other things on earth. All the rest of the commands are the kinds of things that we will do from our hearts, if our hearts are truly delighted with and resulting in the glory of God’s grace" (John Piper, Desiring God, p. 259).
"I call [love to God] the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for his own sake, and the enjoyment of one’s self and of one’s neighbor for the sake of God" (On Christian Doctrine, Augustine, iii, x, 16).
D. Martyn-Lloyd Jones wrote the following as ten indicators that that God loves us and we love God by…
1. A loss and absence of the sense that God is against us.
2. A loss of the fear of God while a sense of awe of God remains.
3. A sense that God is for us and that God loves us.
4. A sense of sins forgiven.
5. A sense of gratitude and thanksgiving to God.
6. An increasing hatred of sin.
7. A desire to please God and to live a good life because of what He has done for us.
8. A desire to know Him better and to draw closer to Him.
9. A conscious regret that our love to Him is so poor, along with a desire to love Him more.
10. A delight in hearing these things and in hearing about Him.
And what of the Second Command, to love our neighbor as ourselves, to seek for our neighbor what we seek for ourselves. Though later developed, this Second Command gives rise to the Great Commission, to bring others to follow Christ also, to lead the neighbor near and far to find in Jesus Christ "life, joy and peace." Loving our neighbor is not merely being nice to them or even meeting their temporary needs, but seeking their eternal good!
How then, do we love our neighbor?
1. In passionate, aggressive efforts to evangelize the lost near and far (Matthew 28:18-20).
2. In making disciples for Christ by teaching "all things" (Matthew 28:18-20).
3. By active involvement in God’s building program, the local church (Ephesians 4:11-17).
4. In "speaking the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15, "truthing in love").
5. In forbearing one another, forgiving one another (Ephesians 4:29-32).
6. In positive interaction where we provoke one another to love of God, involving loving confrontation of one another (Hebrews 10:24-25).
7. In bearing one another’s burdens, fulfilling the very law of Christ (Galatians 6:2).
