What Is Your Reason for Loving God?

Have you ever given thought to your reason for loving God?

How often is our love for God rooted in a gracious and painless providence?  How often do we take for granted all the good that God has given us—gifts such as family . . . good health . . . satisfying career  . . . financial security . . . friends . . . a great church . . . our salvation—as if we are somehow entitled to them?

 Sometimes I wonder: Is my love for God derived from all the good gifts He gives me? Or am I truly delighting in the Giver of every good and perfect gift?  In all of sacred Scripture, there may be no better person than Job to provide insight into loving God for who He is and not for His good gifts to us.

Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” (Job 1:9-11)

 Despite the fact that this insolent challenge came from the father of lies, it is still a question we should continually ask ourselves as we search our sinful hearts for the real reason for our love for God.  It is all too easy to proclaim our love for God when the sky is blue and the clouds are fleecy.  What joy it is to sing out our worship for God when the sun is shining brightly in our skies!  Painless providences can certainly produce love.  But what about those days when all seems lost?  What about those weeks when it seems that darkness will cover our land forever?  What about those seasons when we feel that God is as distant from us as the east is from the west? 

 Think about the last time you suffered loss.  Perhaps a close friend betrayed you and caused you great pain.  Maybe it was a family member who let you down by not living up to your expectations.  Maybe you were called into an office and told that a career you had loved and poured yourself into was ending with a pink slip? How was your love for the Most High God then?  How fervent was your worship?  Your answers to these questions reveal a great deal regarding your true motivation for loving and worshipping God. 

 Job loved God simply because He is God and wholly worthy of his love.  Job knew that his God was God, and he could trust God even when he could not trace Him.  In reading the story of Job you see that he struggled mightily with the painful providence God had delivered.  He wrestled with God and cried out from the depths of his heart.  But through it all, Job trusted in the goodness of God, in spite of his circumstances. 

 So let me ask you: what is your reason for loving God?  How will you think about God the next time you suffer loss . . . disappointment . . . a painful providence?  To be sure, our hearts should overflow with joy and thanksgiving for all God’s good gifts.  But we are to love and worship God, the Giver of all our good gifts AND our painful providences, as the ultimate treasure of our heart in all things and at all times. 

 Let these words from the book of Job be an encouragement to you as you continue your pilgrimage on the way to the Celestial City.

Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”  In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.  (Job 1:20-22)

Even in the middle of unimaginable pain, Job loved God simply because He is God.  This will be the confession of our lives only to the extent that we understand the Gospel and what Jesus did for us on the cross.  The larger the cross looms in our lives, the larger our love for God will loom in our hearts.

 This is the gospel.  This is grace for your race.  NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!