More Love

(something I ALWAYS want more of - lovely, lovely flowers!)

What does God want most from us? What a loaded question! Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what we can do to make God most pleased with us. If you flop through the bible, it seems chock-full of things God wants from us: not to lie, not to envy, not to be immoral, not to murder, not to be sexually immoral, not to have prolonged anger, and the list goes on and on and on. Certainly God can forgive me when I fall short of these expectations, but shouldn't I be always consistently striving to meet those expectations? And how on earth am I supposed to focus on doing all of these things at the same time? I think the answer relates to what we've been talking about: More. First and foremost, we should strive to want God more and to love God more.

And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. - Micah 6:8

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. - Mark 12:30

But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them. - Matthew 15:19-20.

While it's clear from these verses that God wants us to act in a way that glorifies Him, I think they also show that the only way we can possibly do that is to love God with our whole hearts. God does not most want sacrifices from us, He want all of our hearts. I believe that most of the time, we displease God because our selfish hearts lead to sinful actions that do not glorify God. By seeking first to love God more, we will be able to glorify Him more. And that's amazing :) I pray that today we'll try to love God more through thanking Him for all he has done for us and praising Him for his perfect character.