Love the Lord – flee embroilment with the world

An Emoji Devotional for Sat, Feb 12 2022

Topic: Love the Lord – flee embroilment with the world

by Hans Ulrich Wenger

Highlights:

One of you routs a thousand, because the Lord your God fights for you, just as he promised. So be very careful to love the Lord your God. (Joshua 23:10-11)

Jesus replied, ‘Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. (John 14:23-24)

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father [or the Father’s love] is not in them. For everything in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives for ever. (1 John 2:15-17)

Joshua led the Israelites into the promised land after the death of Moses. In Chapter 23 he is an old man and feels that he will soon die. For a last time he gathers the officials of the tribes around him and confronts them with the blessings the Lord has promised to the people for following his commandments and with the fate they will endure if they intermingle with the Canaanite people and depart from the Lord’s commandments. “But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them, then you may be sure that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the Lord your God has given you.” (Joshua 23:12-13) Considering the history of the Israelites the word gives me the shivers. With our eyes we have seen how the people of Israel have literally perished from their good land and the remnant had to live and to be persecuted among the nations for about 2000 years. The prophets of the Lord, however, announced that the Lord would have mercy on them and would bring them back into their land. Today Israel is one of the eight leading nations in the world and all the prerequisites for the Lord’s predictions for the last days of the world as we know it are fulfilled.

Loving God is not an emotional movement in the first place, but for the most part an act of obedience. Whoever turns to the Lord and accepts his rule, love, goodness and acceptance will, however grow into a deep love relationship with him that surpasses all other relationships. He is the rock on which faith and trust are deeply and unfailingly rooted. To obey his teachings for them is not a burden. They want to learn from him, because he is wise, gentle and humble in heart and he provides peace and rest for their soul. They try, they fail, and they know and feel that he accepts them anyway. His goodness, his grace and mercy and his love gives them a home that cannot be found anywhere else. 

Nevertheless the New Testament followers of Christ are tempted in the same way as the Israelites of old. The world offers much that is attractive to our senses, to our design of life and to our ego. Whoever tries to combine a little world and a little Jesus, will experience shipwreck. It does not go together. The love of the worldly things gives us only short time excitement and in the best case a short lived counterfeit of glory. Nothing really satisfies, but requires constant repetition. We have to make a decision. Following Jesus leads into the glory of God and into eternal satisfaction. The world leads us away from God into the wastelands of eternal horror and pain.

Jesus invites everybody to follow him and he accepts everyone who comes to him. We decide what we are sowing and with this decision we seal what we will be reaping. For closing let’s listen to Jesus’ own words: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. (John 3:16-18)

Brothers and Sisters let us love the Lord, for he loves us beyond our understanding long before we even think of loving him.

Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, dear Jesus, thank you for your love for me. Thank you that you know everything about me, even my evil thoughts and deeds. I am overwhelmed that you love me anyway with your goodness, your grace and your mercy. Let me always stay in your presence and make me immune for the temptations of Satan’s world. You, and you alone I will follow and love with all my heart, with all my mind and with all my soul. I am yours and thank you that you are mine. Amen.