Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (emphasis mine)
Unrequited love. It’s when you love someone, but that love is not shared in return. It’s the stuff of tragedies. Eponine and Marius. Quasimodo and Esmerelda. Jacob and Bella.
See, when a love is one-sided, it lacks the joy of the whole. It is my love. Not our love. It is self-expressed, not a united expression. The beauty of our relationship with God is that his desire is that it is not just his love, but it is our love.
The greatest commandment declares, this God is our God. Love the Lord your God. In other words, our love is expressed to him. Because he is ours. We are already aware that he loves us – but in return we love him. “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine,” (Song of Songs 6:3).
So then, what does it mean to love our God? We know that it means to love our neighbour. But when we know and cling to the truth that He is Our God, things change dramatically.
Our worship is no longer empty. We don’t rely simply on perfect music, but our hearts can sing because he is ours. His life is our life.
Our relationships with others change because to love our neighbour is our expression of love to God. We love because he first loved us.
We defend him because he is ours. When he is our God, we defend his honour. We desire to know more about Him. We trust him because he is ours.
This is my God. And I love him with my life. All I am is for him.
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There’s a great song written by a friend of mine, Andrew Young, which I may have shared before. I think it captures what it means to love God as our God.
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These were some thoughts from the first in our series Our God, Our Church, Our City : Love Beyond The message on Deuteronomy 6:4-5 is available here and all our previous messages are available on the Sunday messages page.