If you Love Then you Will Keep

“The one who has My commands and keeps them is the one who loves Me. And the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father. I also will love him and will reveal Myself to him.” “If anyone loves Me, he will keep my word. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. The one who doesn’t love Me will not keep My words. The word that you hear is not Mine but is from the Father who sent Me.” John 14:21,23-24

Through the Word of God the Holy Spirit has broken up the very depths of my heart. Soil that needed plowing has been plowed by means of this passage above. I have read this passage a 100 times but not until Sunday night has it ever arrested me in this way. A light was turned on and truth has been revealed.

For over a year now I have been asking God for greater illumination and revelation of the greatness of His love. Praying according to the example given by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 3:14-19, that I “may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you (I) may be filled with all the fullness of God.” This prayer is birthed in the revelation that “Love is not that I first loved God but that He first loved me (us).” I love God because He first loved me. His love fans into flame my love. Therefore when I encounter the love of God, when Holy Spirit opens my eyes afresh to the Father’s love, I can’t help to love him more. As I behold the God of Love I become more like love-Himself. And it is in this context, with the love of God in mind that 1st John tells us that the commandments of God are not burdensome (1 John 5:3).

Soon after, I began praying for a greater revelation of the Father’s love I began to ask Holy Spirit to help me become a better hearer and doer of the Word of God. The result of such a prayer is that Holy Spirit took me to John chapters 14-15, and Matthew 7:13-29. What He showed me would take days to unpack but in a nut shell He began to teach me what it really means to Abide in the Vine. I use the word “really” because He didn’t just show me in theory what that means but in practice. I came into the good of that truth not just intellectually but spiritually and physically.

Hearing and doing the Word, Commands, and Law of God is all connected to the love of God. Outside a really big revelation of God’s love (Jesus on the Cross for Me) it is an impossible thing to keep his commandments from the heart—which is the very means by which our love for God is measured. (For my theologically savvy readers, without the Holy Spirit Christianity is simply impossible.)

If when I was a child you would have asked me why I chose to love my parents, or when did I make the decision to love them, I would have not been able to give an answer. To ask when, why, how I chose to love my parents is mere nonsense. My love for them had less to do with me and a lot more to do with them. In the same way that a bullet in motion has more to do with the finger that squeezed it then it has to do with the bullet itself. Love was all I had ever been shown and given, thus my decision to love them was less of a decision and more of a reaction enabled by their loving action.

Consider with me the phrase to “fall in love.” Love is less of something that you choose and more of something you simply find yourself in—fallen into. I did not choose to be in love with my wife I simply found myself in love with her. True, the context and ingredients had to be there for it to happen but I did not just wake up one morning and say “I am going to love Andrea today.” No it was more like, “I’m in love with Andrea today.”

Now, while finding myself in “Love” did not involve the exercise of my will-per say. Staying, remaining, abiding in “Love” certainly does. Like Salvation, we don’t work our way to love but from love.

The two parties, persons in love must both work to keep that love alive. Otherwise, if one works, while the other plays, rests, sleeps and simply does not respond, then disappointment and bitterness soon step in. The whole thing goes sour. This needs to be understood loud and clear: God is the better lover and will always, always out-love us. In James 4:7 the Scriptures tell us to draw near to God and He will draw near to us. As I understand the Scriptures, this drawing near to God happens as we become doers of His Word. God draws near to us, we experience God even in the very doing of His Word.

When we the Body, Bride keep the Words of Christ—work to abide in Love, in Him—we can expect with all confidence that He will show up, that He will reveal Himself in the “here and now” not just the “then and there.” This is not a one way relationship.

“The one who has My commands and keeps them is the one who loves Me. And the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father. I also will love him and will reveal Myself to him.”

Have you ever found yourself wanting and waiting to experience more of God? Wondering why you feel as if you have fallen out of love? Perhaps God is waiting on you to respond to what He has already revealed of himself. Perhaps you have drawn away from God by not keeping your end of the deal, not keeping his commandments. The Scriptures say, “to him who knows to do good and doesn’t do it is sin.” While asking God to reveal more of Himself and His love to you don’t sit around just waiting for revelation to fall out of the sky. Get up and keep his commandments for they will be life to your soul and in the very keeping of His Word you will experience Christ.