Loving the Lord: Not Easy in Today's World

 

                                                  By A. W. Tozer

 

 

Jesus replied, "Because I will only reveal myself to those who love me

and obey me. The Father will love them too, and we will come to them

and live with them.   John 14:23

 

        The gravest question any of us face is whether we do or do not love

the Lord!

 

        Too much hinges on the answer to pass the matter off lightly, and it

is a question that no one can answer for another.  Not even the Bible can

tell the individual man that he loves the Lord; it can only tell him how he

can know whether or not he does.

 

        It can and does tell us how to test our hearts for love as a man might

test ore for the presence of uranium, but we must do the testing.

 

        If we lived in a spiritual Utopia where every wind blew toward heaven

and every man was a friend of God, we Christians could take everything

for granted, counting on the new life within us to cause us to do the will

of God without effort and more or less unconsciously.

 

        Unfortunately, we have opposing us the lusts of the flesh, the

attraction of the world and the temptations of the devil.  These complicate

our lives and require us often to make determined moral decisions on the

side of Christ and His commandments.

 

        When with honesty and serious minds we ask our-selves,

"Do I love the Lord, or no?", there will likely be any number of personal

workers standing by to quote convenient texts to prove that we do.

 

        But our Lord told His disciples that love and obedience were

organically united, that the keeping of His sayings would prove that we

love Him. This is the true test of love and we will be wise to face up to it! 

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     Yours in Christ,

     Paul N. F.