Devotion

We show we love God by making the right choices

I find it absolutely incredible that God didn’t choose us randomly. Jesus says in John (15:16, ICB): “You did not choose Me. I chose you.”  It’s not about luck. It’s not a choice that ends in disappointment because we can all receive the reward of God’s grace now and eternal life in heaven with God in the future. 

It’s fair to say that I made some bad choices when I was growing up, and my parents showed me grace that I didn’t deserve. When I was seven, we were travelling in New Zealand, and I wanted to get a good picture of a seal. But for some reason, my Dad wanted me to stay where I was because he knew the rocks were slippery. I didn’t listen and kept walking further out. Sure enough, I stacked it and dropped my camera which made me so upset. Now my Dad could’ve easily turned around and said, “I told you so.” But instead, he extended grace even though I stuffed up. He comforted me about how upset I was that my camera broke and all the photos I’d taken on that film were ruined. 

God knew that we would continually need his grace which is why it’s special that we are chosen by God. He wants to love, guide, protect and provide for us because we are His children. As we are all chosen to be a child of God, we have a choice to love others in the same way that God has loved us. 

1 John 4:7-8 (MSG) reminds us that without God, we will never know true love. “Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love.” When we love in its truest form, we choose to commit to God. Every time we do something that involves others, we have a choice to make. Do I show the same love as Jesus to this person, right now, no matter how I might be feeling, or not? 

1 John 4:19-21 (MSG) further encourages us towards the way of love: “We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first. If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.”

So, if we love God, the choice is simple. We must love others. If we choose to love, something amazing happens for us too. As C.S. Lewis once said: “Good things as well as bad are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet, you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace and eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality.”