How to Love God

Dale O'Shields: Thank you for joining us for today's Practical Living broadcast, and I pray that through this message that you will learn how to apply God's word and truths to any situation in your life. Stay with us as we discover God's truths that will transform us. Would you join me this morning in welcoming our Frederick Campus and our Clarksburg Campus, give them a good, strong round of applause this morning. Welcome to church, and of course, we always welcome those that are joining us online as well, so glad to have all of you joining us today. Just a couple of things that I do want to draw to your attention before we actually get into today's message. Next weekend, we're going to begin a brand-new series of messages for the rest of the summer called, "Let Us Pray." We're going to be talking about the importance and the power of prayer and equipping you to be a better prayer person, learning how to pray more effectively in your lives and see God respond to you. So, don't miss that; it starts again next weekend, "Let Us Pray." Also, tomorrow is the 13th of July, 2026, and that day is a very important day because exactly 40 years ago, the 13th of July landed on a Sunday that year, 1986, was the very first service of Church of the Redeemer. So, we are actually celebrating our 40th anniversary. That first service, we met at what was then called Gaithersburg Junior High. I think it has a different name now, I can't recall exactly. It's over down Old Town Gaithersburg area. And we had a little classroom back in the way back in the back of the school. We had to put up all signs along the hallways: "Keep going, you'll eventually find us." And so, that first service, we actually had one family from the community that came to that very first service. So, that was my first challenge of faith. Would I preach to one family? And I preached my heart out to one family that day. If they weren't saved, they were going to be saved by the end of the service. God met us. And so, it's incredible to see what the Lord has done over these years. We just want to take a moment, give thanks to God for His goodness to us, His faithfulness over all these 40 years, four decades that my wife and I have been privileged to be a part of leading the life here, the congregation called Church of the Redeemer. And of course, so many of you that are part of that as well have been a part for many, many years, and those that are freshly a part, we welcome you to be a part of the vision God has for our future. Well, today I want to give you a standalone message, one that was on my heart, actually was going to preach it last weekend, but you might recall that I made a little change in my plans last weekend and preached a different message. I felt like it was an important message for us to hear, and I trust it was something that ministered to you. But I'm going to bring the message that I had planned for last weekend this week as a transitional point for the new series we'll start next weekend together. I want to talk to you for a few moments this morning about how to love God. How do you and I actually love God? How do we show Him that we love Him? As soon as I mention the topic of love, obviously it's something that most of us think about at least fairly regularly, perhaps even at some point in time every day you think about love, consciously or unconsciously. You may be listening to a radio or music and you're hearing themes of love. In fact, there have been millions and millions of songs that have been recorded all around the world throughout the centuries, and about 40 to 60 percent of the songs that are recorded are recorded about love. Think about that, about four to six out of every ten songs written have to do with something relative to love. Many of the movies that people watch and the themes that they are aware of are all themes of what it means to experience love. And so, I would start this morning by asking you, who do you love? When you think about love in your life, what person comes to mind? Beyond just the who do you love, how do you know that you love them? How do you know that you love someone? What are the characteristics or the representations in our life that show us that we're actually really in love with or care for someone else? And another important question is, how do they know that you love them? How do they know that you actually have that sense of commitment to them? This is about love because love is something that's not just spoken in words because we all know that words can be very cheap and words can be said one day that are different than the next. Real love is always demonstrated by action. So, I thought I would start today by giving you biblical definitions of love, especially from the New Testament, and then we'll zero in on one particular aspect of love and how it relates to God. In the Greek New Testament, you'll find three words that are translated in our English Bible as love. The reason this is important is because in our vernacular, in our vocabulary, we only have one word for love that we use over a variety of things. I can say I love my wife, and the next sentence say I love ice cream. There's a big difference between loving my wife and loving ice cream, but I use the very same word. We attach it to all kind of things, some very deep and meaningful, some very superficial and shallow. It's vital that we understand what the Bible means when it uses the word love because when you read your English Bibles, you'll read words like love and words like affection, and you wonder what these words really mean to me and how do they apply to our lives. In the Greek language, there are three basic words in the New Testament that you find for love. Number one is the top tier of love, and that's called agape. This agape love is the God kind of love. It is fully sacrificial in nature, it is the top tier of love, it is all the other kind of loves multiplied hundreds and thousands of times over. It's the greatest love that you and I could imagine. It's defined for us in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, as Paul defines what agape love is. But there's another love spoken of in the New Testament, the word phileo. Phileo is a friendship kind of love. It's where you have a sense of affection for another person, a kindred kind of connection with them. It's something that we translate with words in our English language like philanthropic, that when you do something to benefit humanity, there's the idea of being brotherly or in some way having care about other people. Just north of us here is the city of Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Phileo is a key word, but it's not as deep as agape. Then in the New Testament, you also find the word storge, and it is pronounced storge. The word storge really is about your family. It's the love you have that's just a natural kind of instinctual love primarily in family relationships. So agape and phileo and storge, you're going to find these Greek words often translated the same English word love in our New Testament. The Greeks also had one other word for love, another word that you may be familiar with. It comes from the Greek root called eros, and that's where we get erotic love from. Erotic is a word that speaks of something of the body, something of the passions of the body that people experience as we often think of in the romantic dimension of love. That word is not actually found in the Bible. It's not a bad thing. In fact, erotic love is something that needs to be properly demonstrated between a man and a woman in the holy bonds of matrimony, and that's certainly appropriate in that regard. God gives boundaries for erotic love. Our primary focus today is on the very first of these because the first defines for us the love of God. It is the agape of God. We're not talking today about phileo, and we're not talking about storge family fondness, as valuable as those are. Our focus is on agape. We're called to receive the agape of God and to also agape God. To receive the love of God, but to also love God at the highest level in return. Do you really love God? How do you know that you love God? How do you show God that you agape Him? Just as God has shown to us that He agapes us, how do we agape God in return? What are the benefits and what are the blessings when you and I learn to increase our love for God? Let's look at four lessons together that will help us to learn how to love God. Lesson number one is to understand that loving God starts with God loving us. It's important to realize that love doesn't start with us, love always starts with God. God is the source, God is the initiator, God is the sustainer of love. If it were not for the agape love of God, there would be no love in our world. The love that exists in our world emanates from the love that comes from God Himself. Love is, and love is what God is by nature. 1 John chapter 4, verse 16 says, "We know how much God loves us, agapes us, and we have put our trust in His agape. God is agape," that's the Greek word that's used there. "And all who live in agape live in love, live in God, and God lives in them." This scripture tells us that God agapes us because of who He is. It's not just something God does, God cannot not love because by His very nature, the essence of who God is is that God indeed is love. Love is the very nature of God. Ephesians chapter 2, 4 and 5 describes it for us this way, "But God is so rich in mercy and He agaped us, He loved us so much that even though we were dead because of our sins, He gave His life when He raised Christ from the dead. It is only by God's grace that you've been saved." Paul defines for us this love that was demonstrated from God to us by sending His very own son. Romans 5, verse 8 says, "But God showed His great agape, His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners." Love would not be in our world if it were not for God. God is the source, the initiator, and the sustainer of love. Love starts with God, it is found in God, and it is sustained in us by God. You can't really know love apart from God. This is important to understand. A lot of people think that they understand what love is, but they don't know God, and you don't really understand love until you know God because God is perfection when it comes to love. Lesson number two is to understand that loving God is the right response to God's love for us. Any love that we have for God is always a response of God's love to us. Love starts with God and it comes to us, but then God says, "Now I want that love to be reciprocated." In any relationship, if love is unilateral, if it's only coming from one side, it is never complete. The only way love really works is when there's a reciprocation of love. God loved us, proved it by sending His own Son into our world, and so love is directed toward us. But then God says, "Now I want to see if you'll respond back and reciprocate that love to Me." 1 John 4, verse 19 says, "We love Him because He first loved us." What God wants from us is a return of the love that He's extended to us. Although love starts with God, His love for us should prompt us to love Him in return. Jesus taught us the importance of this Himself. Jesus was asked a question one day about the most important commandment. Matthew chapter 22, verses 35 through 38 says, "One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap Him with this question: 'Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?' Jesus replied, 'You must love, you must agape the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.'" Jesus said if you want to know what's most important to God, it is that you love Him in return. He's extended love to you and now what God is looking for from you and from me is for us to actually agape Him, to love Him in return. Loving God should be our response to God's love for us. If you want to know how to please God, I will simply tell you this morning from the Bible, the way to please God is to love Him. Love for God will cure all kind of things in your life. This is exactly where Adam and Eve went wrong. God created Adam and Eve and placed them in this beautiful environment called the Garden of Eden. God says, "Hey, I placed you, I love you, I've created you in My image, I've given you this beautiful, perfect environment. You just rule over everything here, you're in charge of the Garden of Eden. But there's one rule that I'm going to give you, one requirement to see if you love Me or not. The requirement is there's one tree that you're not to eat of. Just one tree to see if My love is reciprocated." Of course, we know the story in Genesis chapter 3 of how the serpent beguiles Adam and Eve and they eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that God had told them not to eat from. In that moment, they fell from their relationship with God and they became aware of their own spiritual and physical nakedness and they began to run from God and hide from God. The relationship was broken because they had broken the love relationship. What God wants from you and me is very simple because God has poured out an incredibly great love on us. John the Apostle, who's known as the Apostle of Love, writes in 1 John 3, verse 1 and describes this incredibly great love. He says, "See what great love, what great agape, what amazing, incredible agape the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God and that is what we are." God lavished us with His great love and He called us His children, and as His children, all the Father wants is to be loved by His kids. The third lesson for us today is to understand that loving God is very practical. Showing God that you love Him is not mystical, it's not weird, it's not strange, and it's not hard. It's challenging at times to do the right thing, but it's not something that is hard to figure out because real love is practical. Real love is not mystical, it's not something you just sort of feel inside, it's something that translates into doing. A lot of people are confused by this because a lot of people think to love God means that they feel certain things. I know that I love God because I feel warm and fuzzy when I think about God. Or there are times I get into God's presence and I get the goosebumps on my goosebumps. Sometimes it's just because you're cold. But sometimes there are those moments when the Holy Spirit will touch you in such a way that you feel something and everything's just like, "Ooh, I feel God." A lot of people measure their love for God in something that they feel, and this is very dangerous. This is why I try to encourage us as a church to certainly express our emotion to God, but you shouldn't live God on the basis of your emotion. You should live God on something that's much deeper than your emotions because your emotions are going to be extremely fickle along the line. If you only praise God when you feel like it, you're missing the mark. Any real love, not just with God, is never based on warm, fuzzy feelings. There's not a single married couple in this room that always feels warm and fuzzy toward each other. Sometimes you feel cold and prickly, true? But you're married and you know that you love the person, you know that there's something deeper there called a commitment. Real love is not a feeling, real love is something you demonstrate through your actions, through your attitudes, and through your words. When it comes to God, you can't fake love for God because God knows when you're faking. Just like in any long-term relationship, you have to demonstrate it over the long haul. God looks at us and says, "Let me see, do you love Me? Because all I want from you is your love." How does God know if you love Him or not? I'm going to give you seven objective, critical, important checkpoints in your journey with God to show whether you really love Him or not. Number one, you know that you love God if you obey His Word. If you live in disobedience to God's Word, you are not loving Him because if a child consistently rebels against a parent, they're rebelling against the relationship. They're saying to the parent, "I don't really love you." Obeying God is one way we say, "God, I love You and I'm going to obey You, not because it's a religious rule, but because I love You so much that I want to do what You're asking me to do." John 14, verse 15 says, "If you love Me, keep My commandments." Second, you know you love God by faith and trust in God's promises. When trouble comes and challenges come, where do you lean? Does God know that you trust Him? Are you able to superintend trust for God over the worries and cares of your life? When difficulties come your way, who's your first point of appeal, and who is the rock of your life? In Mark chapter 4, Jesus was with His disciples on the Sea of Galilee and a storm came up. Jesus was in the boat with them and the disciples awakened Him and asked Him to do something about the storm. The Bible says Jesus got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the waves, "Quiet! Be still!" Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to His disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?" I've read that in the past as a kind of rebuke, but I read it differently recently, as though Jesus were saying, "Why are you so afraid? Don't you trust in Me? Don't you know I love you and can't you love Me in return by trusting in Me and knowing that I'm there with you?" You know that you love God when you are willing and committed to trusting in Him. Lack of faith is a statement of not loving God because if you love God, you will trust God. Love is based in trust. Third, you know you love God by gratitude and praise for God's faithfulness and God's goodness in your life. Do you have a spirit of gratitude or are you a grumbler? Genuine gratitude to God for the blessings He has brought shows love for God. Lack of gratitude shows a lack of love because if you love God, you will be appreciative of all that He has done. In Luke chapter 7, Jesus had gone to the house of a man by the name of Simon, a Pharisee. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating there. She came with an alabaster jar of perfume and stood behind Jesus at His feet, weeping. She wet His feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfume on them. This was expression of praise and worship. Jesus turned toward the woman and said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I came into your house and you did not give Me any water for My feet, but she wet My feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give Me a kiss, but this woman from the time I entered has not stopped kissing My feet. You did not put oil on My head, but she has poured perfume on My feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little." Jesus says all that she's been doing is a sign of her gratitude to Me for the fact that her sins have been forgiven. So I would ask you as I ask myself today, how grateful are you to God? How often do you stop and say, "Lord, I just want to thank You for being so very good to me." I think we ought to stop for a moment right now and just say, "Thank You, Lord Jesus, for everything You've done in my life." Loving God is being grateful to God, appreciative, and accepting the blessing that God has given you and remembering on a regular basis that God is good to you. Amen? God is gracious to you, and He is rich in mercy toward us. So, Lord, we again today say thank You. The fourth way that we know that we love God is becoming more like Jesus. When you love someone, you emulate them because part of love is respect, and to respect is a desire to emulate. Learning from someone and letting their characteristics become a part of your life is a power of love. The same should be true in your relationship with God. If you love God, you should really want to be more like Him. I want the nature of Jesus to be formed and expressed in and through me. I want to change and be different. I want my life to be reflective of the nature of Jesus. I want the fruit of the Spirit to be born in my life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Galatians 5:22 and 23 says these are the godly characteristics. So if you love God, you should be becoming more like God, more like Jesus. In 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 18, Paul says, "And we all with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory." As we're contemplating who He is, notice the result: we are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Paul says part of the characteristic of our life needs to be that we're always admiring and adoring the glory of God and allowing who He is to impact who we're becoming. Number five, you know that you love God when you invest your resources in the kingdom of God. Every person in this room today has resources. God's blessed you with time. You have material resources and treasure that He's given you, and He's also given you talent and abilities to do something. God gives you time and treasure and talents so that He can use those things in your life to advance His kingdom. Material resources provide a future for your life and future generations, but first and foremost, the time we've been given and the resources we've been given should be used to the glory of God. Matthew 6:33 says to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and everything else will be added. Yes, these things serve good purposes for other aspects of life, but the first portion of these areas need to go to God. God needs to be able to look at your life and see that you're giving Him time, treasure, and talents. Jesus said it this way in Matthew 6:19 through 21: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moths and vermin destroy and where thieves break in and steal." He says to store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moths and vermin do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. Please read verse 21 together with me aloud: "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." How does God know where your heart is? God knows exactly where your heart is by what you treasure, by where you put your time, and where you put your material resources. Do you invest in the kingdom of God? One of the best ways to know what's important to someone is to look at their calendar and look at what they do with their time. Then look at their accounting of how they spend their money. Those two things will always tell you what's really important to someone. If God is not in your time, you're not telling Him that you love Him. If God's not in your accounting, do you love Him? If you're not using your talents for the purpose of God by serving His purpose, then what you're saying to God is, "God, I don't really treasure You." Sixth, we know that we love God by loving and forgiving other people. You can't say you love God and hate people. You can't say you love God and refuse to forgive other people. If you really love God, you're going to love people, and you're going to forgive them. Matthew 22, verse 37 says, "Jesus replied: 'You must agape the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: agape your neighbor as yourself.'" Do you love people or do you carry offense toward others? Are there people that you're unwilling to forgive? When you hold offense toward someone in your heart, what you're saying is that you want God's love, but you're not willing to love in return. God says you're making a statement that you really don't love Him if you're not willing to love other people and forgive them. Final checkpoint: you know you love God when you share the love of God through the gospel with other people. John 3:16 says that "God so loved the world." Not just you or me. If God loved everybody enough to send His own Son into the world for redemption, should we not be concerned about the same thing that God is concerned about? If you really love God, you should have a love for people who are far from God. It might be people in your family or in your workplace or your neighbors that don't know the Lord. But if you've met Jesus and experienced the love of God, then what God wants to produce in you is agape for the world to reach them with the gospel. Each one of us is called to go into all the world and share the gospel of Jesus. Jesus has a message that He wants to preach to the world around you through you. It's not a message of condemnation, it's a message of love. That love is demonstrated by reaching people, sharing the gospel with them, and showing the good deeds of God. Be concerned about the world around us that is on their way to an eternity without God. I want to say something very clearly: there are only two places when life is over with. There are only two places of eternity. Either people will go to an eternity with God through a relationship with Jesus Christ, or they will be eternally separated from the God that created you. You don't get to heaven by good works; you get to heaven because Jesus did it for you. When you put your faith in Jesus, you are given the gift of salvation. If you know Jesus, you get to go to heaven not because of what you've done, but because your faith is in the One who did it all for you. John Newton wrote "Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me." But there's another eternal destiny, and that is eternal separation. God doesn't send people to hell; people make the choice to go to hell by saying they don't want God in their lives. This is why we're here as the church, to say Jesus loves you, He died on the cross for your sins, and there's a free gift of salvation that you can have. Real love for God includes a love for the lost. Leading people to faith in Jesus is our mission. There's always room in this church for one more person because we exist not just to have a nice party ourselves. We started this church because we wanted to reach this community with the gospel of Jesus Christ. While we're down here, our main reason for being here is to share the good news of Jesus Christ with others. 2 Peter 3, verse 9 says, "The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. Instead He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." Love for God is demonstrated by obedience to Him, trust in Him, being grateful to Him, wanting to become more like Him, and what you do with your resources. Love for God is shown in the way that you demonstrate love and grace toward others. Love for God is shown by the fact that you care about those that are lost. Last point: loving God is always rewarded. Romans 8:38 and 39 says, "I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. Indeed nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the agape of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus." 1 Corinthians 8, verse 3 says, "But if anyone agapes God, he is known by Him as His very own and is greatly agaped." Would you bow your heads with me as we pray? Lord, we thank You so much this morning for the love that You've demonstrated to each one of us. We cannot thank You enough for the expression of Your love in Jesus. Thank You for Your love. Help us, Lord, by the grace and power of Your Spirit to fall in love with You. Most importantly, we want to demonstrate our love for You by our actions, our attitudes, and our words. Teach us, Lord, how to love You in return. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. I would like to close today by giving you an opportunity to ask Jesus to be the Lord of your life. Would you pray with me right now? Simply bow your head with me and call upon God. Start by simply whispering the name Jesus. Say, "Jesus, I know that I am a sinner. I'm sorry for all of my sins. Jesus, I believe in You. I believe that You are God's Son and the Savior of the world. I believe that You died on the cross for my sins, and I believe that You rose from the grave and that You are alive today." Now pray these words: "Lord Jesus, come into my heart, come into my life, forgive me of my sins, and give me a new start in You. I commit my life to You in Jesus' name. Amen." Now, if you prayed that prayer with me, I want to encourage you with a promise from God's Word that says that when we call upon God's name, there is salvation that comes to our lives. He changes us from the inside out and you become a new creation. Your next step really is to make sure that you get into a good Bible-believing church and begin to study God's Word. Spend some time every day in prayer, and check out the resources on our website that will help you to get going in your relationship with Jesus. You can find them at church-redeemer.org. Get started in your new life with Jesus Christ. Thanks again for joining us today, and we look forward to seeing you next time.