To Encourage You

Hebrews 6:10 “For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for His name in serving the saints.”

Do you love God?  How do you know?  Is it that you have a warm fuzzy feeling whenever you think about Him?  Is it because you are swept up in a rapture of wonderful emotions when you sing catchy worship songs?  Is it because you read the Bible, pray, and go to church all the time?  How do any of us really know?  Well, thankfully, God would not have us to be ignorant concerning this most important thing.  The One Who has told us that the greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37), would not have us be ignorant of knowing if we are, indeed, doing just that.  Yet, God is invisible.  So, how in the world can we love such a being?  How can we know if we love Him if we can’t see Him? Well, in the verse above, we are given a very strong hint.  It talks about loving His name “in serving the saints.”  In other words, our love for God will be demonstrated in large measure by our relationships with other Christians.  The apostle John put it this way: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God Whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). 

So, the question now becomes, “How well am I loving other Christians?  Do I want to be around them?  Am I involved in their lives? Do I know them well enough to know their needs, and do I respond to those needs when I become aware of them?  Is one of the greatest joys of my life to be with other believers in fellowship?  Am I praying for them?”  If our answer to these questions is not “Yes,” then there is a very big question as to whether we love God.  Jesus put it this way as He taught about the day of judgment when we all must give an account: “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).  Note that He calls attention to “the least of these my brothers.” In other words, our love for God is not a love for some saints but not for others. Listen to how Paul speaks about this very thing in his prayers for the Colossian church: “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints” (Colossians 1:3-4).  Is that our attitude, a love for all the saints, or do we love some much more than others, because some of them are more loving to us? 

God calls us to the love of all the saints, and his standard is how we love “the least of these (his) brothers.”  Of course, that word, “least” is the way we look at others, not as He does, for “there is no partiality with Him” (Ephesians 6:9).