Do you Really Love God?

I think most of us realize that Jesus loves us. I mean, we hear about Jesus' love for us all the time. So, this really isn't news to most of us. It is a pretty remarkable and amazing thing, that God, the creator of the entire universe, loves us. We are truly blessed to be loved by this Divine Creator and sustainer of everything, or are we?

The love of Jesus for us is truly remarkable, yet so many of us take it for granted and even use this love as a scapegoat. A friend of mine, just the other day, made the comment that she really doesn't think Jesus minds our total lack of reverence for Him at Mass and in the tabernacle. I mean, he loves us, He probably doesn't mind our weak and feeble attempts to honor and praise Him, right? Or does He? Make no mistake, God needs nothing to fulfill Him, certainly not our reverence for Him. Our obedience to His Ten Commandants does nothing to further or enhance His glory or magnitude. Nope, God does not NEED us. We certainly need God though. Not one breath we take is not dependent on Him. He holds us and everything we do and are in the palm of His hand. We certainly are arrogant and prideful creatures. We are so self absorbed that even God becomes infused as a part of our self centeredness. We after all, are the center of the universe right, certainly God is not?

So, God loves us anyway, even through our wretchedness. God loves us. Here though, is the question that really matters, do we love God? God certainly loves us, but do we love God. I think most of us would state that we do, and most of us probably even think that we truly do love God. I don't think most of us really do love God though. How can most of us love God? Most of us don't know the first thing about God. Sure, most of us know a god that we have defined and created for ourselves, one that loves us and is merciful and meets us where we are. A God who came to earth and hung around with sinners, how awesome is that? This is a God who understands our hearts, and he certainly would never condemn us, especially to a place of everlasting torment in Hell, right. So most of us keep on sinning, we don't even try to be good, we wallow in our self centeredness and we define our god, and then we live our lives within those definitions that allow us to be happy and do what we want. We live sinful lives of fornication, homosexuality, gluttony, lust, and strive for the desires and rewards this world has to offer for living that type of life. Our god loves us, so it doesn't matter. We can divorce and remarry outside the church, have children out of wedlock, wallow in drunkenness and addictions. We can murder babies, and lie and steal and cut throats to get what we want, and its okay, because god loves us, and we have defined this god around this life we have built for ourselves, and it is all good.

Isn't it? Well, look around at our world. Is it all good? Do we really think this is the world that the One True Living God wants for us? I would say no. Our world is a mess because God loves us, yes, but we don't really love God. We don't show Him reverence, we don't keep His day holy and offer sacrifice to Him on Sundays, we live horrible sinful ways, and are unrepentant about it, we even gloat about it on Facebook. In the last week, I've seen several Facebook posts from "catholics" who are proudly shouting to the world the state of their own and their children's sin. Some are living with boyfriends, some are remarrying on beaches after divorcing spouses without annulments, others are showing off pictures of grand-babies born out of wedlock. The common denominator, none of these people care that the Church denounces these behaviors. They figure that since God loves us and is merciful, these behaviors don't matter, everyone is saved, everyone goes to Heaven. And so, basically, these people do not know God, and they certainly do not love God.

If you love God, you obey His Church. If you love God you honor and praise Him at Mass on Sundays and even through the week if possible. If you love God you mourn your sins and go to confession to seek true forgiveness, If you love God you spend time with him in prayer and adoration. Basically, if you love God you do for Him what you would do for those people in your life that you do love. You sacrifice time, money, resources and energy to live a life devoted to Him in every way. if you love God, you fear Him, because you know that letting him down and sinning against Him doesn't hurt Him in the least, but it hurts us to the depths. Not showing reverence for God, and obeying HIs commandments has everything to do with us becoming Holy because God cannot become any more holy than He already is. So God's love for us, really is all about us, but so should our love for God. God knows what is best for us, and if we follow Him, we will become Holy, because following Him or not following Him is a choice. Living an eternity in Hell is a choice. You see, Heaven is God's domain, to get to Heaven we play things God's way. Hell, that is our way, the way most of us are choose to live our in lives. Why would we think we can spend eternity with God in Heaven after death when we had not desire to be with God while alive on Earth? It really does come down to that.

So, it is amazing that God loves us, God is amazing. God wants us to love him though, that is the important part of all this, because if we love God, and live that love for Him, then we become amazing too for all eternity.