Have you ever been in love? When your heart is devoted to someone; most of us have.  It all begins when we are very young. Little children normally love their parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends a lot.  Doing that makes them  happy.

Loving someone deeply as you know, makes us  happy.  We end up praising them by talking about them and stating how wonderful they are.  The process, begins by admiring their qualities, and then we get to know them by spending time with them, i.e. by talking and listening.  Subsequently, we end up doing what pleases them, by saying, ‘I love you’.  And eventually, we end up with a relationship which is based on submission (obedience).  Just like a loving relationship in a marriage between a husband and wife, where being faithful to each other is at heart.  According to the Bible, this is synonymous with the relationship between God and a believer in Christ.

Loving God, begins when we admire his qualities, and acknowledge who he is as the Creator.  Recognising the beauty of all his creations and how wonderfully we are made, makes us praise him.  God made it in a way, that we cannot escape him.  His creations are all around us, to help us  think about him.  This brings me to a saying, ‘a person can run away from anyone, but cannot run away from God’. The secret to happiness is to love God and Jesus.  How do we do it?  One may ask!  Jesus gave us  tips, when he said, ‘love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength’. (Do what pleases him).

When he mentions loving God with all your  mind and heart, I used to struggle to understand the difference. It is only recently when it all became clear to me.  For example, as you know, we put all kinds of thoughts in our minds.  For what we put in our minds affects the way we feel.  So the heart is where all our desires, and feelings are stored.  Jesus said, out of the overflow of the heart your mouth speaks.  And also what comes out of our thoughts will determine our actions.

He also explained, in John 14 &15.  And in John 14:21, he says, whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father in heaven, and I too will love him/her and show myself to them.

When Jesus says, love God with all your heart; it  means to be sincere and humble when it comes to obedience.  Also another way of putting it , we shouldn’t doubt our faith in God.  So in the end, we respect and honour him by putting his thoughts (Biblical scriptures) into our minds through faith.  Jesus says, we have to do what pleases him to show our love.  As mentioned in the Bible, to focus on God through Jesus and  do what is good.