“Loving God will include obeying all His commands; it will include believing all His word; it will include thanking Him for all His gifts. But all that is overflow. The essence of loving God is admiring and enjoying all He is. And it is this enjoyment of God that makes all of our other responses truly glorifying to Him.”
John piper, what it means to love god
Daily Devotionals: Ascent’s Mission – Loving God, Loving People and Impacting Our World. Each day’s devotional will guide us through a scriptural thought based on the mission God has called us to follow.
We want to encourage you to grab a journal or a notebook – something to write on as you walk through each prayer guide or devotional. Yes, it will add a few minutes to the time it takes to do the devotion, and it will also deepen your experience and shape your walk with God for years to come. This journal or notebook will be a keepsake to remind you of God’s faithfulness during this challenging season for all of us. Each devotion will take less than ten minutes of your time.
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Engage the Word: Loving God
Read John 14:15-17
Jesus said:
15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.”
Connect the Heart
Jesus’ words to His disciples in the upper room might initially seem daunting. To love God, we must keep His commandments? I don’t know about you, but keeping God’s commandments and obeying Him perfectly seems like an impossible task especially to sinners like us who are imperfect – so it seems like truly loving God with our whole hearts might be an equally impossible task. Yet, Jesus doesn’t stop there. In fact, He doesn’t follow this statement with a list of the commandments we must keep. No – He immediately provides the solution: the Holy Spirit, our Helper. We can’t obey Him perfectly on our own. We can try – and it’s always good to do our best to obey God – yet, we will always fall short. But if we are in Christ, we have the Holy Spirit dwelling IN us. He is always WITH us. So, in essence, the Holy Spirit (equally God) aids us in loving God rightly. As we accept God’s gift of grace for us in Christ, we are covered in Christ’s righteousness, which enables us to love God.
Follow Jesus, trust the guidance of our Helper, the Holy Spirit – and trust Him to help you to love God well.
Reflect on the Truth
- Jesus equated loving Him to keeping His commandments. What thoughts or feelings rise in your heart as you think about this?
- As you reflect on the Holy Spirit’s role in guiding you into keeping God’s commandments, ask Him to lead you in this faith journey.
- How does trusting in the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and believing in Christ’s finished work on the cross on your behalf impact your perspective on loving God?
Depend on the Spirit
Ask the Holy Spirit to help you see the deeper longings, desires or motives in your heart that these thoughts are pointing to. (For example: you may write down, “O Father in heaven, by faith I want to love you with all of my heart. And yet, obeying You is tough sometimes. I need your Holy Spirit to help me do what seems impossible.”) The Lord can help us discern the path forward – through His Word, His Spirit, and His people.
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For Prayer
As you conclude your devotional time, please pray for our Ascent Church family to be a people who are growing in our love for God.
Fasting
Please read the first blog post entitled “Why Fast?” This explains what fasting is and why we follow Jesus in this spiritual discipline as together we seek the heart of God.
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Some parts of our 21 Days devotionals are adapted using various resources on scripture and prayer like The Bible Exposition Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, The New Bible Commentary, Logos Bible Software and other resources.
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