All About GOD - Growing Relationships with Jesus and Others
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- Gender
- Male
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- Australia
- Occupation:
- varied
- I'm here to...
- meet and encourage others
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- Family, serving God, boating, gardening, etc
- I'm passionate about...
- Serving God
- My story with God
- The other day I read in the Bible where it says that the two greatest commandments are that we should love our neighbor as ourselves and love the Lord God with our whole heart, soul, mind and with all our strength. We have all read that passage so often, and its such a nice passage to read. I also had read it many times, but I thought I should ask myself some serious questions. “Do I love my neighbor more than myself?” “Do I love God with my whole heart with all my strength? I found them hard questions to answer. I first had to ask, “What is Love?”
After some serious thinking I had to come to the conclusion that unfortunately honestly I loved myself more than my neighbor, and God. This came as a shock and a realization that I need to make some changes in my attitude towards life.
I came to the conclusion that I needed to find out what love is, how it is express, and what makes us love.
I have been blessed to have a sweet and faithful wife whom I love more than myself, she is so precious to me and is the sunshine of my life. I began to think about our love, what makes our love so special, and what causes us to be so deeply in love with each other.
I also read 1 Corinthians 13 the chapter of love, again trying to understand what the apostal Paul is saying and asking myself if I understand what love really is? It says that love is not self seeking, love is patient, love is kind etc, I had to ask, “am I being selfish or self seeking?”
My wife and I had talked about love many times before and I thank God that my wife is selfless and had understood how there must be selflessness for there to be love. So I have been working on that, and always falling far short of where I know I should be sadly. I knew that there had to be selflessness for love in marriage, but its easy to forget that the whole purpose of God is that we should love God and our neighbor more than ourselves, and prefer the brethren, or lay down our lives for the brethren, so I realize I have to make a lot of changes.
“What makes me love my wife?” I asked myself, for I thought its essential to know what is driving us to do things in life. The conclusion was a mixture of things. I have to admit that yes one factor was lust, I guess that was a bigger factor earlier on in our relationship, a certain amount of lust or attraction is alright, and something that God has caused to be in a mans makeup since Adam, but that is a very shallow emotion. That is not love, there is much more to my love for my wife. I think that the three main factors that give me that warm close loving, giving feeling of love in my heart towards my wife are. 1. Her love for me. 2. Her faithfulness, and loyalty to me. 3.Her overcoming of test,trials,and temptations. We have had some big obstacles in the path of our love, with outside influences making it emotionally and physically hard for us to actually get married in the first place, and we have had to make big changes in our lives since we have known each other. It is the going through good times and hard times together, always being faithful to each other that makes any relationship special and strong. It is the overcoming that makes love what it is. If we did not have hard times, trials, tests, temptations to overcome then the emotion of true love could not exist. There could be lust,and many other emotions, but not true love. If you think about your life and anyone that you love with a deep love I feel sure that the more trials and problems that you have gone through together the greater the love you have. I am sure that many marriages involve attraction, convenience, lust, or some other selfish gain and that there is not a feeling of real selfless love.
In the end I guess the key to love is to do good things for the one you want to love without thinking of selfish gain and to overcome and go through the good times and the tough times together overcoming all trials test and temptations. The feelings of trust and love are such special feelings or emotions which can only exist if there, are trials test and temptations to overcome. It is impossible for love to exist without having to overcome temptations!
I pray God forgive me for my short comings in these area as I work to be more pleasing to God
- Other stuff about me:
- The Big Picture
After thinking about these things I began to ask other big questions like: “What is God's overall purpose in life?” “Why did God give us free will?” “Why did God allow the Devil to exist?” “Why didn't God give everyone from Adam and Eve on the Holy Spirit?” “Why is God going to punish some people and reward other people?”
I'll go through the answers I think are true for the questions one by one.
“What is God's overall purpose in life?”
I think that the answer is Love. I believe that man was made in the image of God and it is clear in scripture that man has similar emotions to God. It therefore makes perfect sense that the parabled of Christ and the Church be very accurate and is explaining exactly the love that God has, and desires.
“Why did God give us free will?”
We need to have free will or we cant love or be loved! It is a bit hard to love a computer or a robot! We need to have a choice to do good and kind things for someone to show love. If we are forced to do nice kind things without having an option then we cant be seen to be loving and we cant feel like we are loving.
“Why did God allow the Devil to exist?”
Again there needs to be a temptations, tests and trials for us to overcome. I guess in a courtship or marriage situation if our lover is tempted, or seduced by a third party, when we see the faithfulness and loyalty to ourselves then our heart brims with love for our beloved. Love for God could not exist if there was no Devil he needs to test our faithfulness to God, so that God can see who on earth will be faithful and loyal to Him for eternity in his coming Kingdom.
“Why didn't God give everyone from Adam and Eve on the Holy Spirit?”
I am forced to ask this question when I see so many Christians believing that the Holy Spirit is guiding and directing them in everything like it is an auto pilot in a aircraft of a ship. I know that God does guide and direct us from time to time, but for a purpose, at specific times, and when it does happen we know about it! It is just not a logical thing to think that we just have to believe in Jesus and we are saved or we just have to do good deed and God will let us live in paradise! The overall purpose must be that God finds a people that are faithful and true to Him and who love Him with their whole heart soul and mind with all there strength so that he can love them more and more for eternity and that we can show our love for God for eternity. God deserves and no doubt desires to experience the same wonderful emotions of trust and love that we hold so precious to us. We can't show that love to God if He is holding the steering wheel of our life. It makes perfect sense if God tells us what He likes or dislikes in life so that we know what to do to make Him happy, and it makes sense that God will guide us from time to time for our good, but the purpose of our life here on earth is that as in a courtship relationship God can see that we will be a faithful 'bride' of Christ for eternity. If God is directing us so that we cannot sin, then it is not possible for us to have true love for God.
“Why is God going to punish some people and reward other people?”
It seems a bit illogical for a god to make all the earth and the life thereon then let people live and die, do good and bad things and then reward the good with paradise and send the evil to hell, unless there is more to it than just that. Unless there is love and emotions involved. “But couldn't God have just made us to be loving, and everything nice?” God has made the love between baby and parents so lovely, and the adoration we may have for cute little animals so nice, but the most precious and meaningful love is that between very close friends, between friends that have gone through trials together and show faithfulness to each other regardless of the circumstances with selfless motives. Only memories, and time can create tis rich feeling of love that we all desire or enjoy so much.
I started to think about the purpose of life again when I had gone through these questions, and thought about what I should do to show my love to my neighbor, and I realized that if I do anything for myself when my brother or sister is in a worse condition then I am loving myself more than my neighbor, or if I do some kind thing with thought of benefiting myself in any way I also am not obeying the Lord. The church today is so materialistic, and I think that this instruction has been so badly neglected. How many churches can you go to and you see a man dressed richly and another dressed poorly or one driving a expensive car and another no car, this is all wrong! We are to be one another's servants serving each other. Our time on earth is a blessing from God to be used in the right way. When the rich young ruler came to Jesus and asked what he need do to be saved Jesus said keep the commandments, an the man said I have since my youth. Why did Jesus say go and sell what you have? Because the rich young ruler was keeping the commandments thinking that it will benefit himself and had forgotten the purpose of the commandments, they are a guide to show us how we are to love God and our neighbor! I also thought about what I do to show my love for God. The only conclusion that can be reached is that God God wants us to be faithful and loyal to Him and do what he wants us to do in our lives. God has given told us His likes and dislikes in the instructions, commandments and laws in the entire Bible. They tell us how to love our neighbor and God! Without them we are just guessing! We can pray all we like, do anything we think God will like, or we can just believe as much as we like, but we need to read the Bible and see what God really wants his faithful and true to do in our lives. Let's not just lust for God blessings or salvation and just have 'cupboard love for God, but love him with sincerity and a true desire of Loving God selflessly. We will always fall short but there is a huge difference if one we love tries to do all nice and good things that we appreciate in our lives, but makes mistakes and is not perfect to another person who just does not really try to be doing good things, we cannot have the same love for them, so how can we expect God to have the same love for us? We need the blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to cover us for our genuine mistakes, just as we will forgive our loved ones who repent for doing something that makes us unhappy. God wants a people that truly love Him....do you? Do I? Let's always ask ourselves why we are doing this or that to ensure that we are not doing something selfishly or just loving ourselves or being distracted by the temptations of the tempter, but let us faithfully love and serve the Lord always unto the end.
Kind regards
Fellow Believer
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Greetings in the Lord! This is Bob, one of TheNET Moderators. Welcome! We're glad you are here!You have provided some insightful thoughts. What God is teaching you about love is so true, it is something we do. In the Word it says if you love me me to keep my comandments. Also that the the comandments are summed up in this; Love God, love others.
We know God's love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Wow! We have in us the ability to love God and others.
You are going to be a great blessing to this Net.
I have included some links to help you navigate around the site. You may want to check out the Footprints group, the Links for Growth forum for great tips on how to grow in Christ, and Miracle Grow to help you get closer to God every day.
Once again, thanks for joining TheNET. I hope you make lots of good friends here and keep growing in the wisdom and knowledge of the Lord.
Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions. I look forward to getting to know you.
In the love of Jesus.
Bob
Glad you joined our wonderful internet family, sharing the love of Christ, learning and growing in your spiritual life.And as a bonus making wonderful friends.
Thanks for sharing you story with us. YEs we must have a good lok into out hearts to see if our intentions is pure and in line with Gods word. It is so wonderful to hear about husband loving his wife like you do, I know God honor such a man!
May you experience a wonderful fellowship and growth with all the others by joining in the groups and forums and share the love of Christ.
Blessings Nienie