Pursuing a love for God.

Several posts have the theme of victory over sin. I'm amazed at how God adds to the main story of those posts. Let me briefly touch on things again from before.

The key to having victory over sin is a hatred for sin. In order to have a hatred for sin, you must have a genuine love for God. A love that will drive out all other loves.
In order to love God, we must experience His love. "We love him because he first loved us." If we don't know God's love for us, how can we possibly love Him?
In order to experience his love, we must abide in it. Jesus in John 15 tells us to abide in His love. He also explains how we can do it--by obeying His commandments.
To prove our love, we must also keep his commandments, as Jesus also said.

So, how do we love him? To abide in his love, there must be a desire to abide in His love. "We could ask God for a love for him," you might suggest.

But, our love for God doesn't fall onto our laps. We must pursue it. If it just fell into our laps, God would not have commanded us to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might." Loving God is active, not passive.

Your heart can be cold when you are keeping his commandments. You can close your heart to God and "obey" him. God may soften your heart through the various means of "obedience."

But a pursuit to love God will produce a desire to live for God, to obey God. And when we obey God with all our heart, we will abide in his love. And when we abide in his love, we will experience his love. And when we experience his love, it provide the possibility to love him. And when we love him with our whole hearts, the love for sin will go down the drain. (* Note at bottom) And when we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.


* Satan uses two tactics when he tempts us. One is to use something tantalizing. The other is to tempt us when opportunity exists. We can have the opportunity to sin, but if the sin isn't tantalizing, we will be able to resist Satan(after our process of submitting to God. James says to submit before he says to resist).

You can do all things through CHRIST who strengthens you. You will not sin when you are walking in the Spirit. Pursue a love for God.