IF you LOVE ME

Keep My Commands

John 14:15 NET

“If you love me, you will obey my commandments.

As men, whether we know it or not, LOVE is crucial to our wellbeing and wholeness. We were created to be loved and to show love.

Created for it, but rarely taught how to operate in it.

When the topic of LOVE comes up for most men, the images that come to mind, especially as it relates to loving another man, are not inspiring for the typical male.

BUT, If you are going to be in a REAL, FUNCTIONAL relationship with Jesus, then you must operate in LOVE. It is FOUNDATIONAL.

We are Commanded to LOVE GOD with ALL of our Heart, All of our Soul and with All of our Strength.

Today, I want to invite you to take a journey with me, as I seek to understand and learn How to Love Jesus in way that he receives Loved.

IF you love me he said, You will keep my Commands.

I’ve decided that I personal don’t truly know what all Jesus has commanded. I could guess and probably get a few right. but if really want to love and honor my King, is that good enough?

It seems like a half-hearted effort on my part and this series of teaching is my effort to remedy that in my own life and hopefully inspire you to do the same.

Welcome to the ReMan Initiative.

I once heard it said that we don’t always invest in the things that we say we love, but we ALWAYS love the things we INVEST ourselves into.

I’ve put this idea to the test several times in my journey and have found it to be a worthy statement.

It’s very easy to ignore things or people that we say we love, simply taking for granted that they will always be there only to find out later that we have suffered loss because we failed to engage or invest in these.

Then, there are times when we may not love a person or thing at all and yet find ourselves in the position where we must invest time, money and effort into these.

After some time of investment, we then find that our hearts have somehow changed towards the object of our investment and now we genuinely love it. It has become a part of us.

In today’s culture, we struggle with a warped sense of love and when someone mentions the idea of loving God or Loving Jesus, rarely does the person claiming a love for Jesus actually know how they love him. We love Jesus on our Terms, but that isn’t how Jesus said we were to love him is it?

Have you ever caught yourself doing this..loving someone else on your terms instead of how they want to be loved?

I have…and I have the brokenness, the scars and the collateral damage of those around me to prove it.

If we don’t care enough for another to learn how to love them, then are our efforts really loving or just selfishness that masquerades itself as love so we can justify our actions and delude ourselves into thinking we are Loving.

Good thing Jesus told us how to love him. That we, we don’t have to guess.

Have you ever stopped to think that Jesus desires to be loved by you?

I mean if Jesus is the express image of the Father

Heb 1:3 “The Son is the radiance of his glory and the representation of his essence, and he sustains all things by his powerful word, and so when he had accomplished cleansing for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”

And, The Father is the very Essence of Love.

1 John 4:16 “And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him.”

Then it makes sense that He wants to be in a Loving relationship with US! Which requires a two-way street and mutual exchange of love.

Him Loving Us, and We loving Him, NOT on our Terms BUT On His.

That leads to the next logical thought.. How does Jesus want to be loved?

John 14:15 NET

“If you love me, you will obey my commandments.

The Apostle John, who was sitting right there when Jesus said this later expounds on this teaching by saying in 1 John 5:3

1 John 5:3 NET

For this is the love of God: that we keep his commandments. And his commandments do not weigh us down,

Anybody can grit their teeth and white-knuckle their way through something that a Boss or Leader has asked of you and not love the person that issued the request.

That’s is not what Jesus is after at all.

If we are in Christ, then we are his children and he wants to be in a relationship that is ROOTED and Ground in the LOVE. We were create in Love and we are designed to thrive in.

He desires a relationship that is so close, that the very thought of ever disobeying Him; grieves us deeply.

We love him so much that we would never purposely do anything to cause him grief or sorrow.

And yes, God’s heart can be made to Grieve just like any other Good parent grieves for child who has lost his way.

These Commands that Jesus says we would be diligent to keep IF we loved him?...I don’t think we truly know them or even think about them.

Have they taken a place of honor and priority in our lives?

Are they part of our Creed? Are we intentional about knowing them and guarding them in our hearts?

In the weeks to come, I want us to make a sincere effort to learn how we can love Jesus on his terms and not on ours.

I know that there will be some guys listening to this podcast today and they will TUNE OUT and not listen to the rest of the series.

Perhaps because the idea of loving God doesn’t appeal to the masculine heart.

This sort of love is foreign to most men and we have no idea the power is has to produce life in a man.

A true Warrior, doesn’t fight because he hates the enemy before him, He fights because he loves those who are beside and behind him.

You can call yourself a Warrior all day long, wear the T-shirts that proclaim it and get it tattooed on your arms, but if you aren’t operating in God-like, God-empowered love that is feed from a true relationship with Jesus ..you’re more like a mercenary than a Warrior, capable of violence but only fighting for your own selfish causes.

I pity the men who souls are trapped in that sort of emptiness because I still remember what that feels like.

I pray you all have the courage to walk in this with me. I’m on journey to discover how to love Jesus with my whole heart and I’m inviting you to travel with me.

I don’t know all the answers to these question, but I know if I don’t take action and make the effort to seek God for the answers, I will never know them.

I have no idea what next weeks podcast will even look like at this point.

I’m simply trusting Jesus to shepherd me in this journey of discovery and then I will share with you what I’ve found.

Until next Week

6:24 “The Lord bless you and protect you;

6:25 The Lord make his face to shine upon you,

and be gracious to you;

6:26 The Lord lift up his countenance upon you

and give you peace.” 

God is the very essence of love and the reason we get to experience such a force in our lives is because He IS.

Where there is No God, No Jesus, there would be No LOVE.

That might not resonate with people or at least be hard to imagine, but love, like the breath in our lungs would not be a reality for any of us if there was No God.

Contrary to the teachings and beliefs of those whose gods are Science and Philosophy, love isn’t simply a desire or an emotion whipped up by a chemical cocktail in our brains.

It is an evidence of the spiritual side of humankind that was fashioned in the image of a Real God whose essence is LOVE.

All humans crave love and start with the potential to love because at our very core, we crave God.

In the creation story, God spoke to the Waters and Fish filled them. Take a fish from water, from what it was created from and it dies.

God spoke to the ground and it brought forth Trees and Plants. Take these from the the ground they were created from, uproot them and they die.

Humans were created by God and He breathed his LIFE and LOVE into us.

So where will we flourish? And what happens if we are separated from that which we were created from?

We all start with the potential to love but for many, the fires of love have been quenched by the traumas of lives touched by the curse of sin, uprooted from our very source of life and existence.

In Matthew 22:36-38 , when Jesus is asked which of all the commandments of God was the most important, Jesus responds with

Love the Lord your God

Not just a little bit but with ALL your Heart, With ALL your Soul and with ALL your MIND.

This Jesus, said was the First and the Greatest of all the Commands.

In John14:15

Jesus is preparing his followers to go forward WITHOUT him being physically present. He is explaining to them that if they truly love him and want to show him their love, then they will KEEP HIS COMMANDS.

The Apostle John, who was sitting close to Jesus when this was said, later taught the next generation of believers this same principle saying

1 John 5:3

5:3 For this is the love of God: that we keep his commandments. And his commandments do not weigh us down.