I have written more than once that The Beatles were right and all you need is love. I believe in certain ways the ideas that I attempted to express in those times were right and still are. But at the same time, I didn't have it quite right. I realized this when my wonderful wife wrote Love Is Not Enough ~ Outside The Inside Of Me. She said it far better than I could, and I believe it's well wroth the time to read it. But if it's true that it takes more than God's love to heal us, change us and bring us to Him (God's love inspired the actions, but it was the life, death and resurrection of Christ the has the power), it also takes more than our love to respond to Him.
Jesus said that if we love Him we will obey Him, keep His commandments. It's true. Of course, it's true. Jesus said it, but if we're not careful that truth can take us to the wrong place. It can leave us vulnerable to condemnation when we fail to obey, because we start to believe that if we love we will have the power on our own to do right, and therefore if we don't obey it means that we don't love. The truth is that if we love God we will obey him, but it's not just our love that makes that possible. No matter how much we love God we don't have the strength, will or power to follow Him and obey Him on our own.
It's also a truth that with a lever we can lift or move a much greater weight than we ever could without one. But that statement doesn't mean anything without understanding how a lever works. We will simply find ourselves standing before the object we need to move with a lever saying, "Ok, I have a lever now what? Why can't I move it?" You have to know how to put the lever into its proper use to make it work. We also have to know how to put our love to its proper use to move the mountains in our life and gain the power to obey when we couldn't before. "I have this love for God. Now what?" The answer is not to try to use our love to enable or force ourselves to obey but rather to use is to surrender and submit. We give up and give ourselves over to God out of love for Him. And in our submissive state He can move through us, boosting our power with His own. It's through His power, and only His power, that we find the ability to obey Him.
Our love leads us to the proper position to walk with God. It is not itself the power to do so. Just like a lever lying beside an object won't move anything until it is put in the proper position. Let us not get sucked into the lie that twists God's truth that tells us that if we love God we will somehow find it within ourselves to keep His commandments. We never will have that power. But love is the key to finding the position that allows God to move the mountain of our sin and selfishness and lifts the weight of our brokenness out of the way so that we can walk with Him and obey Him.
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