John 14:15 (LSB) 15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
Following Jesus is not fundamentally difficult. Or at least it wasn’t meant to be.
Yes, we may face trials or persecution as His follower. But the principles of following Him are not inherently complicated.
His statement above shows the simplicity of what He asks of us; “keep (obey) My commandments”.
Now, there are spiritual principles in play that our walk with Him revolves around. And some of these are indeed very deep.
But what He asks of us isn’t deep at all.
He has told us that we are to obey Him.
He placed great importance on this.
How do we know this? Because He implicitly told us that we will do this “if we love Him”.
This places a great emphasis on what He said.
His words imply that not obeying Him means we don’t love Him, or at least that we don’t love Him in the way He desires us to.
That’s a sobering thought, isn’t it?
When Jesus spoke these words, He was encouraging us to obey, not out of rigidity or in a ritualistic way, but out of sincerity and devotion to Him.
So, there are two things that we can take away from this.
First, loving Him is something we learn over time. As we grow and mature, so does our love for Him.
Second, if we feel that maybe we aren’t loving Him in the way He expects or asks us to, we aren’t powerless to fix it.
In fact, we are the only ones who have the power to make it right.
Beating ourselves up over it won’t do any good. We just need to repent, pick ourselves up by the bootstraps, so to speak, and make the adjustments that need to be made!
And only we know what those adjustments are 😉
God is forever merciful. It is not His desire to punish us, but to draw us ever nearer to Himself where we can experience His love in its fullness.
Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie
Seven Seas Ministries
49 N Lamplighters Walk
Hampstead, NC 28443
401-439-3780
If you know someone who will enjoy this or be encouraged by it, please feel free to share it with them!
To have the Bible Verse of The Day delivered to your inbox each day, please Click Here and then enter your email address in the box near the upper left corner of the page.
Please consider making a Donation.