Okay so why aren’t you loving God with all your heart again? Wasn’t this supposed to automatically happen? After all you did everything they told you to do to become a Christian. Loving God is part of the package isn’t it? Maybe in time it will happen… but its been time enough and still…nothing. So what did you miss?

 Every time you sin you separate yourself from Jesus. It is that separation that you feel is why you don’t have any love for Him. Oh I know, you will say that you do love Him but I am not going to believe you unless you also tell me that you obey His commandments. Do you? No? Well then the “love” that you feel in not the real McCoy love that I am talking about. You have the fuzzy feeling thing going, kind of like what you feel listening to your favorite Christian song. That is fine but that is a whole lot different then having the power of God cursing through your veins. Yeah, that is what I am talking about, that is love from above. Want some?

That kind of love you don’t just get automatically, it takes some effort on your part. And no this is not “works righteousness” get that thought out of your head. Jesus said that if you love me you will keep my commandments, so are you waiting for the love to come tumbling down from heaven and then you will think about keeping His commandments? Are you thinking that you will magically get on some “Jesus high” and that then obeying Him will be a piece of cake?

Here is the truth, you must start obeying Christ’s commandments first before you will start loving Him. That  is your starting point. Every journey starts with just one single step, your first step on this journey is obedience. And not just willy nilly obedience either, you are not going to thumb through the commandments and decide which ones you are going to obey. You already know what you need to do, that sin that so easily trips you up, you know the tough one, well that is where you are going to start, that my friend is your first step. I told you again and again that this is not going to be easy. If I told you how to obtain some treasure of great price, say worth 100 billion dollars would it surprise you to find out that it is not going to be easy to get it? Would you sell everything you own to obtain it? Sail across the oceans, climb the highest peak, tunnel deep into the ground. Most of you would say yes… as long as in the end you actually got the prize.

What I am saying is that this “prize” is doable, yes you can have the love of God flowing through your veins, God’s love for you and your love for Him. This is part of the gospel good news, we can have it if we want it.

So what did you miss in the beginning of your Christian walk? Probably nothing much you just failed to follow up on your part of the deal. The bible tells us to repent of our sins and ask forgiveness and to ask Christ to forgive us our sins and to come into our hearts. And when that happens it opened the door for us to have fellowship with Jesus Christ. When you think about it you have to say “how cool is that”. It is cool.

So probably I am guessing you did everything right at the beginning of your conversion. Let us say you did everything mostly right, and yes that is good enough for your initial salvation experience. God has made it easy for us to get started.

There is something else that we missed, it is missing in Christian teaching these days. It is the absolute need to rid ourselves of our sin habits. How can we see clearly spiritual things if we are still living in sin? How can we tell others about Christ? What do we say, “hey friend have you heard about Jesus, he will forgive you all your sins and give you eternal life and you get to keep your sins, you just have to repent for a short season, anyway that is what most of us have done, and Christ will come into your life and give you eternal live and promise to never leave you, once your in your in, it is a thing of beauty.” Doesn’t sound right does it?

It is your sins that have muddied the waters. You are going to have to deal with them now if you want to go farther in your Christian walk. You don’t want to continue living in sin and trying to be a good Christian, that is what we call a hypocrite and you don’t want to be that person.

Let me ask you something, do you want to keep your sins or do you want to get rid of them once and for all? Well, if your a sincere Christian then I think it is safe to say you want to get rid of them. At your conversion you said you repented of your sins and now I am thinking you have picked them back up again so the solution is to get rid of them again. You can do it and I am here to help you and to show you how. If there is one thing I have noticed in my church is a serious lack of faith.

 Faith is the key to conquering your sin habits, did you know that? And it is a simple process but it does involve endurance. Did you get that? It is a simple thing to do, it is not complex. It is simple! Got it? In later chapters I will show you how, but it is going to require endurance on your part. It is the endurance that is the hard part, exercising your faith is the easy part.

Just remember this, loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength is worth more than all the treasures this world has to offer. It really is. Elon Musk will have nothing on you. And it won’t end in this world either, it will go on and on through all of eternity. So let’s get started.

That is it for now, in chapter 5 we will talk about the temptation and the test so hold on to your hats the road is going to get bumpy.

Now may the Lord bless you and keep you, may he lift up his face upon you and be gracious to you, may he lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Jake